What A Day Of Football!

April 3rd it was. ‘The Premier League Title Decider’ or so-called as now it seems. Manchester United faced Chelsea at home, and with just 5 matches to go after it, it seemed that the match would live up to its reputation. And it did. A frantic first-half played at breathtaking pace, much of it dominated by Chelsea’s “strongholds”, and they walked away into half-time with a well deserved goal. But the game is made of two halves. And so it was to be. United came back strong and pushed very hard for the equaliser, but a costly decision by the linesman towards the later stages paved the way for Chelsea’s second, dimming the hopes of a possible comeback. But giving up has never been a choice for the Red Devils. They pushed badly and with Nani’s quick footwork against the tiring opposition, scrambled one and almost got the second. But in the end, it was not meant to be. Chelsea walked away with a not-so-deserved win and a two-point lead in the title race.

Midweek came, United were edged out of the Champions league by away-goal rule and thus all focus shifted solely on the Premier League. United faced a 7-on-the-trot-unbeaten-on-home Blackburn and they looked to maintain it as they stretched us to the very end, without a single goal. The title race seemed to worsen as Chelsea won by a single goal against Bolton to take a much better four-point lead over the defending league champions and it looked as if all had been lost.

But then, the guys planning the Premier League schedule had done a tricky job, wanting the league to finish on a real close note. Look up the last seven matches for the current top six clubs of the league and you’ll see that every one of the top six clubs have three big matches against someone from that group itself.

This kind of schedule led us to our current week i.e. yesterday, when we had two city derbies, Manchester and London. United were away to Eastlands in the afternoon while Chelsea faced Tottenham at White Hart Lane in the evening. The former match proved to be a real nail-biter as United dominated in the first half but never took any real advantage of the chances that came their way. And so it continued in the second half. It was all set for a draw and I had given up on United’s title hopes for this season as the clock touched 90 but the relentless push till the end resulted in a perfect ball by Evra and an even perfect header by Scholes, skimming the post as it went past Given. A burst of ecstasy and I jumped and shouted because I knew that the 35-year-old-legend had put us right back into the title race!

And then, the long wait for the evening. I could have given anything for Tottenham to win, and oh they listened to each and every prayer that might have been sung by every Manchester United fan. A splendid start, or shall I say a splendid performance by Tottenham as they put Chelsea on the back foot, right from the very beginning and with two goals before half-time, looked set to carry on the momentum. And they did that, exactly. A real inspired-performance in the second half combined with two costly decisions by the Chelsea captain which led to him being sent off made sure that the Spurs were on their way to fourth place, regaining the spot that they truly deserved today. Chelsea tried to rally late in the end in injury time with Lampard but after that, there just wasn’t enough time for any possible comeback. Better finishing for Spurs would have given them a couple more but Pavlyuchenko and Cech had otherwise.

Thus after a power-packed day of football, the title race is wide open again as United are on Chelsea’s heels again with just a single point between them. From here, United need to contain the two-out-of-form two-in-form Tottenham if they want to be the first ever to win four Premier League trophies in a row and plus surpass Liverpool’s matching 18 league titles.

Can we do it? OH YES, WE CAN!