Manchester United v Chelsea – crucial but no
title-decider
How effectively Dimitar Berbatov can fill the hole created by
the injury to Wayne Rooney could determine whether Manchester
United win a record 19th title. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty
Images
League championships are rarely settled by a decider between the
leading contenders. An obvious exception was Arsenal's last-second
goal at Anfield on a Friday evening in late May which snatched the
title from Liverpool in 1989, but that game had been postponed
following the Hillsborough disaster. It should have been played
five weeks earlier.
Tomorrow's encounter between Manchester United and Chelsea has been billed as "possibly
decisive" although it will not even be that. For while the Premier League trophy is almost
certain to end up at Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge, Arsenal are
by no means out of the running, and if the remainder of the season
adheres to the pattern of the previous eight months there will be
further fluctuations of form and more points dropped in unexpected
circumstances to keep the plot boiling until the last.
At best tomorrow's game will provide an indicator of who is
likely to emerge triumphant. United would regard beating Chelsea as
the strongest evidence yet that they are on course to win a record
19th championship, not to mention an historic fourth successive
title. Chelsea, on the other hand, would see the completion of a
season's double over United as further proof of their renaissance
under Carlo Ancelotti even if the team is approaching its sell-by
date.
Either way, neither Ancelotti nor Sir Alex Ferguson is going to
be left staring blankly into space at the final whistle as
Liverpool's manager, Kenny Dalglish, did after Michael Thomas's
goal had won the league for Arsenal 21 years ago. Ferguson has
surely already suffered his worst moment of the week, in Munich on
Tuesday when Wayne Rooney turned an ankle just as Ivica Olic was
scoring Bayern Munich's winner in the first leg of the Champions
League quarter-finals.
The fact that Rooney is going to be out for weeks rather than
months may have been greeted with relief by England but is likely
to be of small consolation for Manchester United, who now have to
prove that Alan Shearer was wrong when he declared, in a radio
interview, that the striker "has been carrying United on his own at
times" and without him "they would not be where they are in the
league".
Ferguson will now turn to Dimitar Berbatov, his second-highest
scorer by some distance, to keep the momentum going at the top of
the Premier League and turn the Champions League tie against Bayern
around at Old Trafford on Wednesday. Berbatov's match-winning
qualities are much subtler than Rooney's; he slips round to a side
door whereas Rooney tends to crash through the front. It will be a
bit like replacing Cannonball Kid with the Invisible Man.
The reality is that the whole United team, not just Berbatov,
will need to do a bit more to make up for Rooney's enforced
absence. The most startling aspect of Tuesday's defeat in Munich
was the way Bayern, having been bowled over by Rooney's early
strike, made a conscious decision to go for stealth rather than
speed as they sought to save the game, concentrating on keeping
possession and only quickening up near goal. This had the effect of
exposing the shortcomings in midfield which, in the Premier League,
United have managed to disguise for much of the time.
Manchester United are a team in transition, youth is on their
side, whereas there is a touch of the old guard at dusk about
Chelsea, who have a preponderance of players either in their late
twenties or early thirties. For Chelsea, Didier Drogba is almost as
much a talisman as Rooney is for United but they have stronger
goal-scoring options and proved as much only last Saturday when
they beat Aston Villa 7-1 with Drogba on the bench.
Whatever the result tomorrow the Premier League needs a match of
superior quality to cherish and not just another series of grim
clinches. It has been a non-vintage season domestically, the
interest being sustained as much by the slip-ups as the successes.
When the question of who comes fourth prompts as much discussion as
who comes top then clearly something is lacking.
After the week's dramas in the Champions League tomorrow's game
has some hard acts to follow. What a pity it has to kick off at
12.45pm. For some reason lunchtime matches produce few classics and
this game should be occupying a prime spot on a Sunday, not
sandwiched among the shoppers on a Saturday.
