Toppled: Week 7 in the BPL

Photo by Tup Wanders

We spent a great deal of this weekend on the road, and managed to catch only bits and pieces of mutliple Barclay's Premier League matches.  Still, that won't come near stopping us from having opinions about what we saw and heard -- otherwise what would be the point...?

o Norwich City threw virtually everything they had at Chelsea on Sunday afternoon, and the Blues still emerged with three points intact.  The comfortable final scoreline belied how tight the match actually was, with Norwich threatening to burst into a 2-1 lead late before being pegged back in the dying minutes of the contest by late Eden Hazard and Willian goals.  These are the kind of gritty, grind-'em-out results we were writing about when we referred to Mourinho's presence in our pre-season prediction column, and his team will derive a very certain sense of confidence from pulling a victory out as the clock ticked down with the game on the line.

o And that's exactly the kind of confidence that Manchester United seem to be lacking under David Moyes right now.  Barely scraping by against the League's worst team has temporarily silenced the critics, but won't have done much for the team's morale.  Although the adulation was rightly heaped on young Adnan Januzaj, lurking uncomfortably close to the surface was the fact that United -- with the sole exception of the young Belgian -- created almost no offensive opportunities, and looked limp and lifeless for much of the match.  An immediate crisis may have been averted, but the many questions about the team's near-term prospects remain.

Back on Track: Manchester United 3 - Aldershot Town 0

photo by tompagenet	via PhotoRee

Playing in a stadium just one-tenth the size of Old Trafford, Manchester United went back to basics last night in a fifth round Carling Cup contest against Coach Dean Holdsworth's Division Two Aldershot Town.

Herewith, a few thoughts from "the game after," as United eased their way to a relatively straightforward 3-0 victory against industrious opposition, and began the effort to salve the self-inflicted wounds administered during the stoppage time beatdown on Sunday:

o I loved the feel of the broadcast. With its extra tight angles and close-up sideline shots, the camera was practically on the pitch during the contest.  The broadcast had a totally different feel than a weekend Premier League encounter, and the feeling pervaded the entire watching experience.  It had the effect of making the action on dsiplay seem initmately familiar: sure, this might have been Manchester United on display, but this was the game we all know and love at its very core, and the action felt much closer to what the average football fan's experience is with the game than the hyped-up glamour that is big time British football.

o Dimitar Berbatov looked a man among boys last night, which in all fairness, he should have. After all, the Berbinator did lead a certain English League in scoring last season....  The Bulgarian scored the team's first goal last night, and should have bagged a second just a short while later, before he was mowed down in the box by an Aldershot defender. Berba looked geared up and primed for the game, all full of poetry and trickery, and was the undisputed leader of United's attack.  In fact, as if proving a point to his Coach, Berbatov also played defense last night, tracking back repeatedly -- not a trait for which he is especially well known -- and took over the ball in many a deep lying position as he drove the team forward.

o After being thoroughly dominated for the first 25 minutes, Aldershot worked their way back into the game and gave as good as they got for much of the latter stages of the first half. But once again it was Berbatov to the fore: with a deliciously simple side-footed dish to an onrushing Michael Owen, Berbatov set the table for a 2-nil United lead, and quickly and dramatically closed off any remaining "shot" the Aldertownians had at getting back into the game.