Both of the players, Robin van Persie of Manchester United, and Andreas Weimann of Aston Villa, came off the pitch as winners from their matches. The problem was that they also added two very memorable misses to their resumes.

Weimann, the young Austrian winger, was the first on the day to deliver a terrible miss as Aston Villa hung on for a 2-1 win against West Ham, pushing themselves further away from the relegation zone with a second consecutive undefeated match. Weimann pounced quickly on a rebound after a bad parry by Jussi Jaaskelainen, but sent the ball wide of the post despite having a wide open net from a comfortable angle to score from.

Robin van Persie didn’t have the comfort Weimann enjoyed, but still, he had Tim Howard beat as he was making his way towards goal, with Everton defenders chasing him down and attempting to cover the goal line. Van Persie beat them to it, but probably the fact that he had to shoot with his right instead of his left hurt his chances, sending the shot into the post instead of into the net. It wasn’t much later that he scored in Manchester United’s 2-0 win against Everton.