United's To Lose?

I watched the two Grand Slam Sunday matches and as a neutral I have to say I was extremely disappointed overall. Watching the Chelsea v Arsenal match I found myself thinking in the five minutes before the two Chelsea goals, where is the spark coming from? Arsenal played like a side low on confidence and Chelsea played like a side who weren't convinced they could win. In the end a couple of inspired substitutions by Avram Grant made all the difference.

Arsenal have gone into their shell of late, with ironically only the famous win in Milan being an example of their flowing football, and now look like they will have to play qualifying games for next seasons Champions League - unless of course they manage to beat Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United to win this seasons Champions League. I think Arsenal made a big mistake tactically in playing with Adebayor on his own with a clearly unfit Van Perise dropping off him, if Bendtner had been used from the start it would have kept Terry and Carvallho fully occupied, I felt sorry for little Theo at the end, it took ten minutes before an Arsenal player passed to him, not much use bringing on width and then still playing down the centre. The fast flowing Arsenal style of earlier in the season was lost as they went back into playing this twenty passes and then sideways style, hopeless against a midfield that contains Makelele, Lampard and Ballack.

Chelsea, for all their stumbling, look like a big blue machine on the march, yet they still have to pick up two wins more then Manchester United in the last seven games of the season - one of those at home to United.

Of the big four star players on display at Old Trafford: Rooney, Ronaldo, Torres and Gerrard, only Rooney looked anything like his true self, he was brilliant all afternoon, keeping the Liverpool back four occupied and showing that if you want to score badly enough you don't need to fall down and get a fellow professional sent off. Mascherano's sending off was inevitable really, he's lucky he wasn't sent off against Middlesbrough and Inter Milan this season, he has reportedly been conducting interviews in English, you have to wonder if he responds to very question with his, apparently, favourite English expression, Fuck off.

It's worth remembering that back in August Manchester United were in the bottom three, and that Arsenal were in the top two from September until yesterday. As with most things in life it's not where you start but where you finish that counts and it just looks as if the two clubs with the biggest squads may just be finishing first and second again.

We had a bit of a dilemma deciding who we wanted to win the Chelsea v Arsenal match, as clearly being West Ham supporters we don't like either. Having looked at all the arguments we decided that their was a decent five-a-side team out there who we hoped would do well: Michael Essien, Claude Makelele, Micheal Ballack, Joe Cole and Cesc - not sure who should go in goal out of that team.