3 Up, 3 Down: Featuring Manchester United and Arsenal stars

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Down: Simone Zaza

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Does anyone actually know what Simone Zaza is good at? He isn’t particularly quick. He isn’t very strong. He’s not exceptional on the ball. He dives in the box and he takes stupid penalties. Why on earth is he starting for West Ham?

The Italian mustered two dismal efforts against Southampton today, and offered no real hold up play to allow the Hammers to build any sort of momentum in the game. It was too easy for the Saints to take control of the match and walk away with a 3-0 win, and Zaza’s lack of performance up front was a massive part of that.

Plus, his dive to try and win a penalty from Oriol Romeu was just embarrassing, and rightly earned a yellow card. Bilic needs to find another option up front.

Down: Gary Cahill

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Poor Gary Cahill had a nightmare at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday night. It all started in a similar fashion to how his game at Swansea City ended, when Alexis Sanchez picked his pocket, admittedly in a much cleaner move than Leroy Fer did, to sweep Arsenal into a lead that they would build into a thrashing. Cahill’s dilly-dallying was solely to blame.

He continued to struggle in the second half, and almost conceded another goal from dwelling on the ball in the area, although he was hardly helped by Thibaut Courtois, who looks a shadow of the goalkeeper that was so solid at Atletico Madrid.

The truth is, Cahill hasn’t looked the same since that Swansea game. Whether it was the foul or the loss of John Terry, he has seriously struggled. He needs to put it all behind him as soon as possible because he is becoming a liability at the moment.

Down: Ahmed Elmohamady

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Ahmed Elmohamady is hardly to blame for Hull City’s mauling at Liverpool; his red card didn’t alter the fact that the Tigers were going to be destroyed at Anfield, but it did raise a good question about the role of a covering defender on the line.

Liverpool favourite Luis Suarez famously kept his Uruguay team in a World Cup quarter final against Ghana with a last minute handball to prevent certain defeat, but in the circumstances, he did it to give his country a glimmer of hope by putting off an inevitable exit.

Elmohamady was less than half an hour into a Premier League game where his side were struggling with 11 players, let alone ten, and has now picked up a suspension which a stretched squad will have to deal with. It would not have changed the outcome of the game, but Elmohamady should have just let the shot go in and helped his team for the rest of the afternoon.

A bad decision from the Egyptian.

Featured Image: All rights reserved by Emrah Partal