A season of fantastic highs and occasional lows essentially came to an end on Sunday with Chelsea’s draw at the Arsenal confirming Manchester United as the champions of England for a ninth time in the Premiership. Manchester United fans all around the world deserve to shout it out loud and truly revel in this moment because this has been a well earned success when few outside Man United actually predicted it. The ‘special one’ himself at various times in the season predicted that the table was false and that his Chelsea team would eventually topple United from the top and eventually win the league. They got close on a few occasions especially when our injury list got longer, and I actually believe that if we had been removed from top spot, Chelsea would have gone on to win the league. That they didn’t says an awful lot for our players, the ones that get the headlines and the ones that do not. I’m speaking specifically here of Darren Fletcher, who I have been critical of in the past but who, even I will admit, has risen to the challenge in recent weeks. Such players may not be first team material on a week in week out basis and there were times I wondered why we kept such average players around even for the bench. The fact that we did shows why Alex Ferguson is the manager and I am not. We built a team mentality that was not based on superstars in every role, but was instead based on players playing for the shirt whenever and wherever they were required. You do not need twenty two headline grabbers!
Category: Chelsea
Today Now You’re At The Wheel
This fantastic season is on the verge of blooming into everything we have desired, and more and thanks to the events at Goodison we are in theory a win, a loss and a draw away from the title. If you want to get into ifs and Nicky Butt’s, we could win it at Eastlands on Saturday but let us not get ahead of ourselves. Neither our manager nor the players will be getting ahead of themselves despite the excellent chance we have given ourselves. Everyone seemed to be looking at our game as a stumbler, and in turn completely underestimated Bolton’s chances to make life tough for Chelsea.
As You Were
Hands up all those who expected this at the end of Saturday’s game against Middlesbrough? Still three points clear at the top of the league with one fewer week to play. In the great scheme of things that is like Christmas considering how I felt at full time at Old Trafford. I know it’s terrible to admit it and I should have had faith but for the first time since Christmas when we first went six points clear, I had real doubts about our chances of staying in front and winning this league. I could see nothing but a Chelsea victory, Chelsea team celebrations and an arrogant post match interview with Jose. In the event only one of those things happened, Chelsea looked like a team dented as they left the St James’ pitch and it is all a case of as you were in the league. It would have been lovely to take three points from Boro and get the Newcastle result the same but life doesn’t happen like that. We should thank whoever you like that we were not made to pay for our stumble.
Given to Score 