John Helm column: Why Rafa’s outburst is totally off target!

Oct 23 2008 by David Lockwood, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

OVER 208,000 turned out last weekend to watch the Big Four.

I won’t call them footballing folk because many will have been there more for the prawn sandwiches than the purity of the game.

The figure though is significant at a time when many are suggesting the Premier League has lost its glitz due to predictability.

At half-time the VIPs would have been choking on their corporate cuisine.

Arsenal 0 Everton 1, Liverpool 1 Wigan 2 and Man Utd 0 West Brom 0.

Only Middlesbrough 0 Chelsea 1 was going the way it was supposed to.

Yet 45 minutes later normality had been restored as we surely knew it would be with all the upstarts having been put in their place.

Were it not for Hull City’s amazing start to life among the elite the Premier League table would bear an all-too familiar look.