mate, I’m worried about United, really – but not for this season. Next year though, Scholes n Giggs n Nev and van der Sar have to be replaced. Hopefully we bring in the players needed to replace them.

on a serious note Man U will need to start replacing the older members of the team now if they wish to keep the momentum up, i wonder if this will start to happen in January.

Fergie is no mug and he will know that confidence is playing a big part in man U’s early success this season, when that gets knocked its a case of how they deal with it and whether they have the resources in the squad to recover and meet the demands of competing in several competitions.

At the moment Chelsea are the only club that have the resources to deal with the amount of games which a top premiership club should be expexted to play in a season, i would expect them to draw on these resources after January when fatigue starts to show in some of the older squad members, united do not have this luxury and i would expect this to contribute to their downfall later on in the season. Having said that they have surprised many this season and maybe the team spirit will be a deciding factor, Chelsea for all their embarrasing riches seem incapable of finding a true bond with each other and tend to be succesful because of the Man resources they have at their disposal, throw another team into th e mixture with the very same financial footing & we will see a very different proposition next season.

The prem is about to become a lot tighter over the coming seaseons due to some big financial investment (West Ham, Villa & probably Liverpool) and dhis will have a deciding factor on where points will be dropped rather than won, Chelsea & Man U will need to improve in different areas if this seasons two horse race is to continue over the coming seasons. However the remainder of the season pans out will be interesting but not as interesting as developments currently taking place elsewhere, there is a whole new prospect looming for both clubs, the prem is about to get a lot more competetive.

Goalies get points ie. punching a ball out (sure, it’s a save). But if there’s no defenders to clear the ball and thus leading to opponent scoring -> less points… (stupid, but simple example)

I’m not trying to say that Actim stats are inaccurate, but one really should be quite critical while comparing them…

All in all, I know that I really can’t change our mind about this (and actually not even trying to), but strong opinions belong to football, right?

Personally I have a slightly different opinion as to why we are doing better this season compared to the last two … it simply boils down to us suffering fewer injuries to our first team players. Whilst we did peak at 8 players injured the injuriew in this first half of the season were nowhere near as savage as they have been in the first halves of the 2 seasons previous.

More to the point, if we had started last season with as few injuries as this season I strongly suspect we would have won the Premiership then (as it was we were still hanging on till the last couple of games as Chelsea’s form was creaking).

Backup it up if you dare ! Are you talking Actim stats;
http://www.premierleague.com/fapl.rac?command=forwardOnly&nextPage=actimTop5&type=Goal%20Keeper

Or Premiership table;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/table/default.stm

Is it goals conseeded ? (VDS has only let in 8 Premeirship goals this season which is only matched by Chelsea.

By claiming otherwise all you do is invite comparison. Well I have checked your claim and it is proven wanting so how do you back it up ?

Get it right, man… VDS comes way behind Jaaskelainen, that’s for sure. And I’m not even a Bolton-fan.