Premier League

Premier League Team of the Week - Raheem Sterling, Sadio Mane, Jamie Vardy

By Barney Corkhill, Editor | 11 March 2019

Sports Mole selects its Premier League team of the week for gameweek 30, including Raheem Sterling, Sadio Mane and three Arsenal players.

The Premier League top-four race took a significant twist this weekend as Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Manchester United all dropped points in a profitable gameweek for Arsenal.

The Gunners rounded the weekend's action off with a 2-0 win over United - who fell to their first domestic defeat under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer - having already seen Spurs beaten by Southampton and Chelsea draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Meanwhile, the gap at the top remains one point courtesy of wins for Manchester City and Liverpool against Watford and Burnley respectively, while it also proved to be a telling weekend at the other end of the table.

Brighton & Hove Albion, Cardiff City, Southampton and Newcastle United all picked up valuable wins, the latter coming from two goals down to beat Everton.

Relegation appears to be edging ever closer for Fulham and Huddersfield Town, though, after they both lost again to be cast further adrift at the bottom.

Here, Sports Mole selects its Premier League team of the week for gameweek 30.

Arsenal are the best-represented club in this week's XI courtesy of their victory over United, and that starts in goal with Bernd Leno making four saves to keep Solskjaer's side at bay and record a clean sheet.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos was another key contributor to that clean sheet and takes his place in a back three alongside Brighton's Lewis Dunk - who registered an assist in the win over rivals Crystal Palace - and Bournemouth's Nathan Ake.

The likes of Bruno Ecuele Manga, Jan Bednarek, Willy Boly and Virgil van Dijk also deserve honourable mentions for their own performances, but the majority of the standout displays this weekend came in attack and therefore leaves us with a 3-2-3-2 formation.

Granit Xhaka completes the Arsenal trio having not only helped the Gunners to the clean sheet but also scored the opening goal with a swerving effort which completely deceived David de Gea in the United goal.

If De Gea should have done better with that one, there was nothing Hugo Lloris could have done to keep out James Ward-Prowse's stunning free kick for Southampton against Spurs - a David Beckham-esque effort which slammed right into the top corner to seal a big win for the Saints.

It is goals galore ahead of those two as well, and arguably the standout individual performance of the gameweek came from Raheem Sterling, whose 14-minute hat-trick against Watford took Man City another step closer to defending their title.

Both Ryan Fraser - who scored one and assisted another against Huddersfield - and Ayoze Perez could also be in the running for game of the weekend, with the latter having inspired Newcastle's rousing comeback against Everton by producing a brilliant assist for the first goal and then scoring the next two himself.

Sadio Mane and Jamie Vardy both also registered braces - including the latter getting his 100th goal for Leicester - to hold off some stiff competition in the forward places in this week's team.

Mane's Liverpool teammate Roberto Firmino is unfortunate to miss out having also scored twice, while Callum Wilson and Salomon Rondon also deserve a mention.