The first round of fixtures in the 2010/11 Barclays Premier League season offered some shocks, but also some expected results - with Manchester United's falling in the latter of the two.
United looked quite convincing and were never really troubled in their 3-0 win over Premier League new boys, Newcastle United.
To their credit, Newcastle kept to their game plan by playing with sheer determination and working hard, but some neat finishing from Dimitar Berbatov, Darren Fletcher and Ryan Giggs United walked out of Old Trafford comfortable.
United created enough chances to make the scoreline even more impressive, but poor, unfocused finishing from a few players - Berbatov and Wayne Rooney - saw decent chances missed.
However, they are trailing in the goal differential column thanks to a despicable performance by another newly-promoted club against their main title rival.
Awful
There was a couple of surprising performances, but the way West Bromwich Albion laid-over against Chelsea was pathetic to say the least.
Chelsea, the reigning champion of the Premier League, won 6-0, but the goals, and the timing of the goals, showed a team that is destined for a short stay in the top flight.
Former Chelsea star, Roberto Di Matteo is the current manager of West Brom, so it came as no surprise that his team would perform as they did.
However, the most shocking result has to have been Blackpool's well-deserved 4-0 win over Wigan Athletic at the DW Stadium.
The Seasiders were preseason favorites to play in the npower Championship next season used goals from Gary Taylor-Fletcher, Marlon Harewood (2) and Alex Baptiste, but for their sake they need to hope they do not pull a Hull City and can carry this form for the rest of the season.
Draws
There were two mouthwatering clashes - Tottenham Hotspur versus Manchester City and Liverpool against Arsenal - on the offering, but two of the involved teams failed to show.
Spurs showed their intent to make another run at the top four by manhandling City, but thanks to a very fine performance from Joe Hart, the team shared the spoils in a 0-0 draw.
The other high-profile match, Liverpool wasted a chance to take all three points after a very late Pepe Reina own goal cost them severely against an impotent Arsenal they shared the points in the 1-1 draw.
Arsenal played more than half of the match with a man advantage following Joe Cole's reckless challenge on Laurent Koscielny, but home team took the lead right after the interval as David Ngog smashed home from close range.
Manchester United got a good start to their 2010/11 campaign with the win over Newcastle United, but as Sir Alex Ferguson knows, the champion of this division needs to consistently perform at the highest of levels and make the fewest mistakes over the course of the long nine-month season.
Contributed by David Hammons / The United Religion
No comments:
Post a Comment