It has taken 90 minutes of the season for Chelsea to overtake Manchester United as bookies favourites for the Premier League title following the Champions’ 1-1 draw with Newcastle on Sunday.
United were knocking on the door for the majority of the match after Darren Fletcher’s equaliser but were unable to break down a suprisingly resolute Newcastle defence. This has led to ridiculously premature predictions that Chelsea will run away with the league unless the Red Devils splash out £30m on Dimitar Berbatov.
Does 2 dropped points really make the current Premiership and European Champions incapable of competing with Scolari’s men? Of course not, but this is the nature of football in this country. Teams and players are only as good as their last game.
A refreshing sight was Ferguson’s inclusion of young Frazier Campbell alongside Wayne Rooney. The striker was bright, creative and looked far from out of place in the Theatre of Dreams.
Unfortunately, having failed to win the game, Ferguson is now looking increasingly likely to stump up the 30 odd million to replace Campbell with Berbatov for the next game. Carlos Tevez will also be back by then so it looks as if the 20-year-old’s chance may well have been and gone barring another injury crisis.
Campbell has this week spoken of his desire to stay at Old Trafford and fight for a starting place rather than go back out on loan to Hull but this seems a naive choice rather than a gutsy one. It’s a shame that the price of failure in the Premier League is now so great that raw talent such as Campbell rarely gets the chance to be nurtured at the highest level any more.
Nevertheless, the imminent signing of Berbatov will definitely improve United’s squad. The one thing the Reds have lacked since the sale of Ruud Van Nistelrooy is an out-and-out goalscorer but the Bulgarian has proved that he can get goals at the highest level.
With Chelsea also looking like banging in goals for fun this season, we could well be in for one of the most exciting title races yet.
