Well, the fact that you've still turned up on the commuter train this morning indicates that you're not one to fall for all that garrulous swarthy foreign gentlemen tell you when so much of what they say is obviously rubbish – for example complaining about Man U diving and wasting time at Old Trafford with vanishing balls following their fortuitous slender win over the defending champions (I mean, how credible would that be?).
Actually, Sir Alex introduced a few extra balls to his post-match interview and therefore had to be warned about his language, but in the circumstances you could understand him being in an ebullient mood. Today is the nineteenth anniversary of his appointment at Old Trafford in replacement of Big Ron Atkinson, and whereas the chances of his making it a score of years in charge were looking remote prior to the game, they'll have been somewhat bolstered by the fact that his players managed to understand the use of the word – score, that is - as a verb as well a noun. I don't think Fletcher was really attempting to beat Cech with that header so much as just to knock the ball back across the box, but if you remember a couple of hardly intentional Jesper Gronkjaer goals from recent years which got them closer than they really deserved to a Champions League final, you'll think to yourself that Chelsea have no grounds to complain I am of course delighted to have seen Chelsea's unbeaten league run come to a shuddering halt at Man United's hands, 9 games short of the record held by some other bunch of past-it-hasbeens-whose-era-is-over (such an epithet applied to Arsenal only by the most myopic of our sporting press, which is to say most of it). There is a nice symmetry about the fact that it was Man City who beat them at the other end of that run, but I think the best and most satisfying thing about it is that elsewhere in this weekend's Premiership programme, results have conclusively proven that there is more to football than money, and that success is sweeter when it's earned against the odds rather than bought in to render them irrelevant I'm not talking about Arsenal, despite what you might have thought there for a moment, although I'll admit the fact that Robin van Persie has just started emerging as a lethal foil to the incomparably effective offensive force that is Thierry Henry gives me more grounds for optimism today than I thought I'd have at the outset of the season No, actually I was talking about Wigan, which is not the greatest football club in the land, nor even the greatest place you might have chosen to place one (they prefer odd shaped balls up there really, I'm told). Notwithstanding the odd bit of illegal cartel price fixing by club sponsor and chairman's fortune maker JJB Sports, there is a much sweeter smell to their position in the table, which is an amazing second place. Actually, if you were to assume that Wigan win their game in hand, and if you were to mentally discount Crespo's opening day goal which gave the Blues an away win in Wigan, then you'd find them in joint first place points-wise. So who says Chelsea can't be caught? Just wait til Paul Jewell takes his team to the Bridge!
Actually, Sir Alex introduced a few extra balls to his post-match interview and therefore had to be warned about his language, but in the circumstances you could understand him being in an ebullient mood. Today is the nineteenth anniversary of his appointment at Old Trafford in replacement of Big Ron Atkinson, and whereas the chances of his making it a score of years in charge were looking remote prior to the game, they'll have been somewhat bolstered by the fact that his players managed to understand the use of the word – score, that is - as a verb as well a noun. I don't think Fletcher was really attempting to beat Cech with that header so much as just to knock the ball back across the box, but if you remember a couple of hardly intentional Jesper Gronkjaer goals from recent years which got them closer than they really deserved to a Champions League final, you'll think to yourself that Chelsea have no grounds to complain I am of course delighted to have seen Chelsea's unbeaten league run come to a shuddering halt at Man United's hands, 9 games short of the record held by some other bunch of past-it-hasbeens-whose-era-is-over (such an epithet applied to Arsenal only by the most myopic of our sporting press, which is to say most of it). There is a nice symmetry about the fact that it was Man City who beat them at the other end of that run, but I think the best and most satisfying thing about it is that elsewhere in this weekend's Premiership programme, results have conclusively proven that there is more to football than money, and that success is sweeter when it's earned against the odds rather than bought in to render them irrelevant I'm not talking about Arsenal, despite what you might have thought there for a moment, although I'll admit the fact that Robin van Persie has just started emerging as a lethal foil to the incomparably effective offensive force that is Thierry Henry gives me more grounds for optimism today than I thought I'd have at the outset of the season No, actually I was talking about Wigan, which is not the greatest football club in the land, nor even the greatest place you might have chosen to place one (they prefer odd shaped balls up there really, I'm told). Notwithstanding the odd bit of illegal cartel price fixing by club sponsor and chairman's fortune maker JJB Sports, there is a much sweeter smell to their position in the table, which is an amazing second place. Actually, if you were to assume that Wigan win their game in hand, and if you were to mentally discount Crespo's opening day goal which gave the Blues an away win in Wigan, then you'd find them in joint first place points-wise. So who says Chelsea can't be caught? Just wait til Paul Jewell takes his team to the Bridge!