Premier League Weekend Preview

After a week off for international play where England somehow managed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup of Soccer 2010, we are back to league play tomorrow with some pretty juicy match-ups coming our way.

By the way, I should probably clarify that I hate the English national team with a fiery passion and even though this is a site that deals almost entirely with English soccer, they will not get my respect... I am of Irish heritage and will forever dream that they will one day actually be as good as those dicks in white and red. For the record though, England looked super solid in absolutely thrashing a very good Croatia team on Wednesday and it appears they may actually be a contender in South Africa. *shudders* Let's be honest though, it's England. They WILL choke. You know it and I know it. Anyways back on topic...

Here are the fixtures for this weekends games in The Premiership along with my predicted scores:

Wolves (YES GO WOLVES! They are in fact my favourite team and I am deeply biased...) 2 - 1 Blackburn - I just really like Wolves...
Liverpool 3- 0 Burnley - Liverpool prove to be way too much for little Burnley to handle.
Portsmouth 0 - 1 Bolton - Bolton are awful but Portsmouth are even worse.
Stoke 1 - 3 Chelsea - Stoke are tough at home but they just don't have the talent to win this.
Sunderland 0 - 0 Hull - This is two bad teams playing each other. Bet on a draw.
Wigan 1 - 2 West Ham - Wigan have been really poor lately and West Ham are on the up.
Birmingham 1 - 2 Villa - Villa to win a closely contested match between arch-rivals.
Fulham 1 - 2 - Everton pull it out to get their season back on track.
Spurs 2 - 2 Manchester United - This should be a great one. It is a chance to see if Spurs are legitimate contenders or merely early season pretenders...

GAME OF THE WEEK:

Arsenal vs. Man City

This is a very interesting game because it will be City striker Emmanuel Adebayor's return to face his former club Arsenal. I expect him to get booed viciously by the Arsenal supporters but I also expect him to take his revenge and score.

The real test will be to see if Man City's struggling defence can handle the Arsenal forwards. If they can, I think City could win this game and stake a claim for that all important fourth place spot. If they can't, well I can see Arsenal, who will be missing key player Arshavin, winning this one comfortabley.

To be honest, I have yet to buy into all of the hype surrounding Manchester City and I expect the Gunners to win this match. Arsenal have been counted out way to early by a lot of pundits and this is a chance to really shut them up.

Verdict : Arsenal 2 - 1 Manchester City

So there you have it, those are my predictions for this week. You can check out Mark Lawrenson's picks here. He is the guy who does the predictions every week for BBC. He is almost always totally wrong though so uh, goodluck if you want to trust him.

NOW GO WATCH SOME SOCCER!