Like the abominable snowman, the lost city of Atlantis and Hillary Clinton’s libido nobody was quite sure that it even existed. At Old Trafford on Monday night the debate was laid to rest. Dimitar Berbatov finally smiled. Not only did he smile, he also outplayed Wayne Rooney, looked pretty useful all round and seems to have started the season meaning business.
Dimitar Berbatov
Newcastle were pretty terrible and this match certainly doesn’t provide us with much of a test of our title credentials. On the other hand, West Brom certainly weren’t a test of Chelsea’s either. I remain surprised they didn’t take the field at Stamford Bridge strapped into parachutes such was the level of their awfulness.
Whilst I believe the collective strength of the league this year is just awesome, with an incomparable six top-quality teams competing at the summit, there are a fair few lame ducks in the pond too. The Geordies are one of them and both our geriatrics and our promising youngsters were allowed to look like Brazil circa 1970.
Despite bearing an outrageous resemblance to the young Michael Jackson, Nani’s trickiness is becoming more and more productive, at time Newcastle just couldn’t handle him. It was a joy to see him pelting down the wing to pick up another lavish
Pass from Mr. P. Scholes and in general I am delighted to see United playing with orthodox wingers in the league. I can’t see Fergie doing it say, away in Barcelona, but we look far more dangerous when spreading the play out wide.
I am officially out of vocabulary to describe how good Ryan Giggs is. There is no thesaurus big enough to fully illustrate what a legend he is. I try and hit first-time volleys like that every Sunday in the park and usually end up clobbering a bit of air before falling onto my face. If anybody else had scored that goal plaudits would be raining from on high. As it is Giggsie, you just shrug your shoulders, smile, and say ‘there he goes again’.
The game was starting to fizz out by then and whilst I think we deserved four this was still a fairly by the numbers home win for us. To be fair, at least we were forward-moving and incisive. If Scholes, Giggs and Berbatov can play like that every week we’ll win the league by a country mile. Unfortunately they won’t.
Nonetheless, a good start and a welcome return to the top-flight for 6points United. I’m off to practice my volleys.
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Photography courtesy of Meffi at FlickrCcoms