As we are wont to do when time is not on our side, here is a reprint of Football 365′s excellent Winners and Losers feature, which generally gives an accurate review of the impact of the weekend’s matches. Tottenham were obviously the biggest winners… Here is the original article if you’d rather read that.

Winners

Jermain Defoe
Would there still be a fuss about Michael Owen’s World Cup prospects if he did not now play for Manchester United? But for the media glare that is automatically directed on a United player, Defoe’s exploits this season would have consigned Owen to the status of an afterthought. One has 15 goals to his credit since August; the other has four and even fewer league starts.

Why is there still a debate as to which one Capello should take to South Africa? Owen had another chance on Saturday and didn’t take it. Defoe took five and was annoyed at not scoring from a sixth. If England can only take one finisher south next summer then the argument is currently over.

Tottenham Hotspur
To score nine goals is exceptional but the exceptional feature of Spurs’ season to date is that such days are not unusual. Spurs have scored five or more goals in a third of their 15 games played to date and are regularly unstoppable. When Tottenham are hot they are burning and they are burning often these days.

A total of 24 shots rained down on the Wigan goal on Sunday and if there was a general criticism of the Spurs performance then it was that their chances-to-goals ratio was merely average. They could and should have reached double figures, though saving a few goals for the matches to come may have been sensible. For a number of leading clubs a pivotal period of the campaign now looms and Spurs are among those set for a test which could have a decisive bearing on the outcome of their season. Between next Saturday and December 19, Spurs must travel to Aston Villa, Everton and Blackburn and host Wolves and Manchester City as well as take on Manchester United in the quarter-final of the Carling Cup. If they’re serious about being a serious player, then they can’t catch a cold now.

Darren Bent
A scorer against Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool this season, having scored against three of the Big Four last term.

Chelsea
January delusionists, take note: Deprived of Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, Michael Ballack, Ricardo Carvalho and Jose Bosingwa this weekend, Chelsea were without a group of players superior to the quartet bound for the African Nations Cup at the start of 2010 but still had the three points wrapped up within 22 minutes. Wolves were feeble, inadequate opponents but Chelsea’s strength is in exposing the weaknesses of bottom-half teams and three of the four teams they will face in the league during January are currently tenth or below.

If Chelsea do have a critical period in their season then it may be about to begin. All of their next four matches are to be played away from Stamford Bridge, though just two, at Arsenal and Manchester City, are league fixtures. The rest of the Premier League will have to wake up to the reality that Chelsea could run off into the distance if they come through those games unscathed. With Manchester United away to Portsmouth next weekend, it’s not inconceivable that the leaders will be eight points clear on Sunday night and 11 in front of the team in third place.

The Home Side At Stamford Bridge
Since the goal of Stephen Hunt on the opening day of the season, Chelsea have scored 31 goals at Stamford Bridge without reply in all competitions.

Manchester United
Unbeaten against Everton at Old Trafford in the noughties, United’s Saturday night cruise will not live long in the memory other than for Darren Fletcher’s strike and the addition of three goals from midfield. Given a choice of scorers, perhaps Sir Alex Ferguson would have preferred evidence that Michael Owen’s penalty-area sharpness has not declined but the United manager stressed the importance of goals from midfield during the summer as he plotted life without Ronaldo.

“Going back a few years, we could always guarantee goals from Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and David Beckham, who always pitched in with about ten a season,” said Ferguson. “Those goals from midfield have dried up a little in recent years, so we have to address that.” Saturday’s delivery had been overdue with Carrick doubling his tally for the season and Fletcher doubling the number of games in which he has scored. Valencia, so delighted with his third goal in the last five weeks that he actually commemorated it with a smile, has three. It may pale in comparison to the regular exploits of his right-wing predecessor but it’s as many as he scored in the whole of last season for Wigan.

Hull City
Jimmy Bullard is making a difference at Hull and his return to fitness has probably proved the difference between Phil Brown being on the dole and seemingly slipping the noose.

Emmanuel Adebayor
His first goal in two months, marked by a rather more circumspect celebration than followed his last.

Losers

Manchester City and Liverpool
Tottenham probably can’t believe their luck. In total, City, Liverpool and Aston Villa have won just three of their last 18 games and the surprise is that Spurs’ hold on fourth place remains so slender.

But the pressure on Mark Hughes and Rafa Benitez is becoming acute and something – or someone – will surely have to give. It was less than a year ago that Roman Abramovich sacked Felipe Scolari having grown fearful that Chelsea would fail to qualify for another season in the Champions League and neither Benitez nor Hughes can have valid reason for complaint if a similar fate awaits. Both managers will almost certainly survive until the end of the season to prove their mettle but if either survives beyond that, then it will be at the other’s expense. There are too many clubs chasing too few Champions League football than is sustainable.

The only current consolation for both Hughes and Benitez is that the other is providing a buffer from criticism. But for Liverpool’s woes then it would be more widely appreciated that City are currently falling short. Likewise, but for City and Villa’s moderate run of form, Benitez would be in genuine jeopardy of becoming this season’s Scolari.

The other shared denominator is that they both badly need a victory and gained precious little from Saturday’s draw. It was, though, a better result for City than it was for Liverpool and, whilst his management has not impressed this season, the criticism Hughes received for his supposedly negative tactics was unfair and misdirected. The omission of a striker who reputedly cost a great deal more than £25m was a brave move, especially in the week that followed a meeting with the club’s benefactors, and found room instead for the under-rated Stephen Ireland. As there is no obvious place for him in the City side whenever a second striker is included as a partner for Adebayor, the accommodation and use of the Irish midfielder represents a significant test for Hughes – and, given the deemed precariousness of his position, one he must pass.

Arsenal
If they win next weekend then the defeat at Sunderland will merely be a blip. But having lost this weekend, nothing other than a victory over Chelsea will suffice.

Manuel Almunia
‘Yet a crash is just a matter of time if they continue to only field outfield players’ – Winners and Losers.

Manuel Almunia was not culpable for Darren Bent’s winner, though he was slow to react, but the fact remains that he conceded to the one and only shot on target Sunderland produced during the 90 minutes and that the number of games in which the Gunners have conceded to either their opposition’s only shot on target or first shot on target this season is already in double figures. In only one game this season, at Fulham when Vito Mannone was between the sticks, has Arsenal’s goalkeeper been a participant. In all the rest, he has been a passenger.

We’ll keeping repeating it because it gains in truth every time there’s a reason to repeat it: No side has ever been successful without a goalkeeper and Arsenal’s season will end prematurely unless Almunia, or whoever is between the sticks, starts to make a regular contribution.

West Ham
2-0 is an odd score when West Ham are involved. The Hammers rescued a point against Arsenal a month ago having trailed by that score with 20 minutes remaining, were then pegged back in opposite circumstances a week later at Sunderland and found themselves 3-2 down at Hull, before ultimately rescuing a point, this weekend having scored twice in the first 11 minutes.

Wigan Athletic
Even their status as the league’s most unpredictable side does not account for the bafflement of how their first 13 games of the season includes deserved wins over league leaders Chelsea and Aston Villa as well as defeats of 0-4, another of 0-5 and a 9-1 humiliation at White Hart Lane.

Wigan were so bad on Sunday that, even after he conceded nine goals, The Times still awarded Chris Kirkland seven out of ten. The next highest grade any of his team-mates received was three.

Mark Clattenburg
A liability to the league. His weekly inconsistency was so glaring this weekend that even Match of the Day spotted it.

Time is tight this busy Monday but having a ‘weekend preview’ as the top story is just irritating. So instead we’ve used Football 365′s ever excellent ‘winners and losers’ feature. Cheers…

The original story can be found here.

Winners

Wigan
Defeat for Chelsea, history for Wigan, relief for the chasing pack and welcome credibility for the other half of the Premier League. All in all, quite some afternoon at whatever Wigan’s stadium is now called.

Perhaps their relegation rivals will not have cheered the result so ecstatically as the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal but Wigan’s bottom-half peers can still take heart from their first defeat of a Big Four team at the 35th time of asking.

Before this weekend, the only matches to truly inspire had been top-of-the-table clashes. With Burnley’s victory over Manchester United reliant on a penalty miss and already a distant memory, here was welcome proof that the bottom-half clubs needn’t be mere cannon fodder but could still step forward into the limelight by giving a heavyweight a proper fight.

To their credit, Wigan looked capable of toppling their illustrious opponents even before the game’s critical moment. Petr Cech loses any sympathy for ridiculously asserting that, “I don’t think it should have been a penalty,” when his trip on Hugo Rodallega was blatant, but it remains a ridiculous anomaly of the rulebook that a single offence, even when made with the best of intentions, can carry a three-pronged punishment. Dismissal, penalty and suspension: it is too much. Cech will have until the end of October to reflect on the excess of that triple whammy.

Yet while their goalkeeper was somewhat unlucky, Chelsea were not. Didier Drogba’s 46th-minute equaliser was the result of their first meaningful attack and a rare howler by Chris Kirkland. As Roberto Martinez observed: “The sending-off changed the perception of the game but it would be very unfair to say we beat Chelsea because of that decision. The performance from the first minute to the last deserved that.”

Liverpool
Has the Anfield nut been cracked? Seven home draws were Liverpool’s undoing last season but just two of those setbacks occurred after February and the new season has started with resounding wins over Burnley, Stoke and Hull – precisely the sort of teams that frustrated Pool a year ago into stalemate.

The change can be explained in just one word: Goals. Not only have Liverpool scored four more goals than any other Premier League club since the start of the season but their last ten league matches at Anfield have provided 34 goals.

Rafa Benitez claims that the difference is a consequence of altered belief rather than altered tactics. Yet it cannot be denied that this is a different Liverpool team to any seen previously under his tenure with Benitez encouraging a more adventurous outlook by deploying two attacking full-backs and adopting a horses-for-courses policy of dropping Steve Gerrard back into midfield – as he did on Saturday at Javier Mascherano’s expense – in order to accommodate another attacker. The results have been emphatic: This season, Anfield has been treated to15 goals in four games whereas in their opening five home fixtures for the 2008/09 campaign Liverpool produced just eight.

There will, inevitably, be a price to pay for this increased aggression. But the overall benefit of the Glen Johnson trade-off demonstrates the value of aggressive risk-taking: The right-back’s defensive vulnerability will on occasion be exposed but just how many teams will be capable of exposing his weakness? The number is less than the amount of goals Johnson will either create or score himself.

After a sticky start, Liverpool are positively moving forward. At Stamford Bridge next Sunday we’ll discover just how far they have come.

Fernando Torres
Much more of this and the ‘two-man’ Liverpool team will become a one-striker outfit. Hull’s defending may have been indefensible but Torres’ hat-trick was another faultless exhibition of centre-forward play. He may not have a trademark trick but his ability to step off either foot is one of the secrets to his phenomenal success. He glides past so many defenders not merely because of the quickness of those feet but because it is impossible to predict which way he will turn.

Manchester United
And much more of this and Ryan Giggs will be crowned the new Cristiano Ronaldo. In two games, the Welshman has claimed five assists – more than any other player has managed all season. The inspiration against Manchester City a week ago, he was the game-changer at Stoke after replacing the dreadful Nani with an hour played to create both of the visitors’ goals.

Yet behind the awe at the longevity of both Giggs and Paul Scholes will be concern that United are still reliant on their old-stagers. Nani, the hoped-for ‘new Ronaldo’, flopped at Stoke, with Sir Alex Ferguson’s observation that Giggs “added intelligence” to “that side of the pitch” a particularly damning indictment of the 22-year-old’s display. Patience is surely running out in what is the winger’s third season at the club.

Scholes’ excellence at Stoke was less obtrusive but the statistics do not lie. Of the 260 passes he has attempted since August 16, 251 have been completed. Another telling statistic is that, despite suspension and the need for regular rest, he has started twice as many games as Michael Carrick this league season and his relatively-regular pairing with Darren Fletcher is the closest United have to a first-choice midfield partnership.

Scholes turns 35 in November and Giggs 36 in the same month. To keep relying on both is a dangerous business. Sooner rather than later, Ferguson must find replacements for both, but the bittersweet evidence of Saturday is that he is no nearer to completing that task than he was three years ago.

Ben Foster
What a fuss about literally nothing: Stoke managed just a solitary off-target shot in the entire 90 minutes on Saturday.

Arsenal
For a side renowned for their passing game, Arsenal can be incredibly inaccurate on occasion. Fulham did not even have to hassle the visitors out of their stride on Saturday night because Arsenal, and their captain in particular, were just as prone to surrendering possession even when a white shirt wasn’t in nearby attendance. A statistical revelation of their staggering inaccuracy is that just four of the 18 shots they attempted were on target. And it’s not as if the Gunners are long-range shooters. At a rough count, just one of those 14 off-target efforts was taken from outside the penalty area.

Fulham’s superior accuracy deserved better and Arsenal’s victory was thus dependent on their fourth different goalkeeper in as many months of action actually producing some saves and two touches of class from Robin van Persie. In last season’s corresponding fixture, he missed a golden opportunity a couple of minutes before Brede Hangeland scored what transpired to be the winner. This Saturday, he improved his Premier League record to 41 goals in 85 starts with a lovely left foot control, right foot shot combination. He’d be among the absolute elite if he’d also scored with half of the 18 shots from which he has hit the woodwork since last August.

The Dutchman is a difficult character to fathom and he caused a stir before the game by admitting he has previously “exaggerated” his fall. Still, at least he’s honest enough to admit a degree of dishonesty and he remains one of the few players in the current Arsenal squad who possesses both mental strength and a football brain. In the absence of any other credible candidate – Thomas Vermaelen is too new, Manuel Almunia too vulnerable, Gael Clichy too locked into decline – Van Persie looks destined to be the club’s next captain if and when Fabregas departs next summer.

Bolton Wanderers
Five of their seven points have been won with goals scored after the 86th minute.

Tottenham Hotspur
Harry Redknapp may have his faults but false modesty isn’t among them. “That’s why I’m the manager,” the Spurs boss declared gleefully after Robbie Keane had vindicated his controversial retention with the first four-goal haul of his professional career against hapless Burnley.

An alternative viewing from White Hart Lane was that any of the club’s strikers would have vindicated their selection against a defence as incompetent as Burnley’s and Keane wasted almost as many gilt-edged chances as he scored. Redknapp suggested that the “key factor” was “movement against Burnley’s two big central defenders” but a key was hardly required when any sort of ball directed towards the centre of their defence found Burnley hopelessly unlocked. The headline writers may have been deceived by Keane’s haul but his critics were not.

Louis Saha
To realise just what a player Saha could have been, just appreciate the player Saha has been despite all the many injuries. Since his transfer to England, Saha has produced 92 league goals in 232 appearances – 66 of which were as a substitute.

Gabriel Agbonlahor
Five in five for the Villa striker after just one in his previous 18. But is it not somewhat disconcerting that confidence makes such a difference to his game? Even when in form, feast or famine players are always just a couple of games away from a rut.

Sunderland
When Steve Bruce remarked after Sunderland’s 5-2 victory over Wolves that “the side’s mentality has to change,” one of the shortcomings he probably had in mind was the decision of Darren Bent to let Kenwyne Jones take the Black Cats’ 48th-minute penalty because “of the look he was giving me”.

“It won’t happen again. Darren is one of the best penalty takers in the country,” responded a furious Bruce. “If Kenwyne had missed there would have been hell to pay. It’s something kids do with their mates.”

Bruce’s irritation with the incident will have been compounded by his ignorance of the events until after the game. As he superstitiously turns his back whenever his team takes a penalty, Bruce wasn’t even aware that Jones took the spot-kick and finished the match thinking that Bent had scored a hat-trick.

Losers

Chelsea
Carlo Ancelotti’s grace in defeat impressed but not his admission that “we did not play well and I don’t know why”. Managers are paid to understand and know these things. The Italian’s subsequent confession that he was “surprised” by how well Wigan played may, though, provide the explanation for his side’s below-par outing.

A football team is often said to perform in the image of the manager and Chelsea’s on-field complacency was the mirror of Ancelotti apparently making the fatal mistake of underestimating their opponents.

Aston Villa
A messy, annoying, unnecessary defeat to end a period of encouraging revival. The decision that downed them, with Richard Dunne penalised for an unwitting handball, was poor but the brevity of such a review flatters Villa.

Against a side low on confidence and reduced to ten men for the final 22 minutes, luck, bad or otherwise, shouldn’t have still been available as a decisive factor with 60 seconds remaining.

Burnley
100% at home, 0% away from Turf Moor. Burnley are yet to score a goal on their travels, let alone collect a point.

Almost all teams fare better on home soil than they do away but it is the absolute of the Burnley contrast that makes it worthy of remark while condemnation stems from their penchant for talking up the effect of the intimidating atmosphere at their own stadium. But, like Stoke, who boasted of the Britannia Stadium being “a horrible place for visiting teams” on Saturday, they cannot have it both ways.

If visitors to Turf Moor and the Britannia are to be belittled for shrinking in a supposedly-hostile environment, then what are we to conclude from their own regular disappearances away from home?

Portsmouth
Some of the details in their seven matches to date defy belief.

Phil Brown
And that, surely, is part of the problem at Hull City. It’s not Hull that are being talked about but their manager.

The club has almost become subservient to the Phil Brown story with the man himself, no stranger to third-person references, doing most of the writing. “I can’t expect any favours from Liverpool,” he declared on Friday before talking up the “biggest week of my career” and openly admitting that his job was on the line. In fairness, he did not hide after his side’s 6-1 demolition but perhaps he should have described it as something other than “a demoralising result for me”.

Enough is enough. No other club, not even Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United or Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, has taken second perspective. Either Hull come first or an unhappy ending up will surely be theirs and his final chapter.

Cesc Fabregas
An additional point about Fabregas, warranted by the sheer staggering wretchedness of his overall display at Craven Cottage.

The Spaniard’s performances have declined, without exception, in every match since he suffered a hamstring strain on the opening weekend of the season at Everton. Having limped through the Champions League encounter at Celtic three days later he was, incredibly, still selected to start the home meeting with Portsmouth on August 22. Predictably, the injury was duly antagonised and he was withdrawn at half-time before missing the trip to Old Trafford. Even more incredibly, he was, like Andrey Arshavin, then released for international duty despite being evidently injured.

At least, unlike Arshavin, he did not return in an even worse condition, but it now seems highly probable that Fabregas is suffering for not being given the period of extended recovery the injury required and may even still require. At the next international break, Arsenal should try saying no for once.

Pete Gill