The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

EPL dream team: The best of Manchester reserves

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 06:34 PM PDT

OCT 29 — The inspiration for this article comes from a Tottenham Hotspur fan in Malaysia. During an online chat session on a Spurs supporters' website, this fan, who carried the online moniker St Helder, drew attention to both the Manchester clubs' reserves bench during their big clash at Old Trafford last Sunday.

He suggested that the Manchester United and Manchester City benches would make a formidable team by themselves and that such a combined team could make a strong challenge in the Premiership too.

And why not? After all, the calibre of both teams' multi-million pound reserve players will be enough to shake up the English Premier League (EPL) and even take on the likes of Chelsea, let alone the rest of the Premiership.

United's reserve team goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard has proven that he has the quality and ability to challenge first-choice David de Gea for a spot between the posts and is even comparable to City's Joe Hart.

He has already played in several matches in the Champions League this season and might even resent being only a reserve goalkeeper over time and come to regret not moving for more regular football elsewhere.

At centreback, Argentina's Pablo Zabaleta has become a personal favourite of mine because the South American nation has a tradition of producing quality defenders.

He is clean and solidly effective in the way he covers at the back. Additionally, he likes to do overlapping runs to help out in attack and definitely is a player with a strong winning mentality and spirit within him.

Also on the bench in last Sunday's Manchester derby was Alexandar Kolarov. The Serbian is a doggedly persistent defender while also possessing a strong left foot, especially when taking free kicks.

The pair of Phil Jones and Kolo Toure in the centre of defence makes for an ideal partnership as it is a combination of a young up-and-coming player with an experienced player who has won the league before while playing for Arsenal.

Jones is a player with flair and stylish control of the ball despite being a defender. He is also bold enough to go on the offensive.

Toure, on the other hand, was a pillar at the heart of the City defence before he was suspended from playing for allegedly consuming a banned substance, said to be a performance-enhancing drug. He still hasn't reclaimed his place in the first team since returning from the ban.

Such a line of defence — comprising Toure, Jones, Kolarov and Zabaleta — will be difficult to be breached by any team in Europe, let alone the EPL.

In midfield, having a world-class player such as Nigel de Jong as a defensive midfielder, supported by Park Ji-sung on the left wing and Antonio Valencia on the right wing is a dream line-up for me.

Then, if we add the agile Samir Nasri as a playmaker, this team will be strengthened simply by having one of the best players in the world as its mastermind pulling the strings from the middle of the pitch.

In attack, strikers Javier Hernandez and Edin Dzeko will bring different qualities to every game but combined, they will pose a variety of problems to opponents.

Hernandez has his quick runs to find space and create danger while Dzeko, as targetman, will simply produce goals from any corner of the world.

To summarise, the starting line-up for this totally hypothetical Manchester Ci-nited team of second stringers could be as follows — in the 4-3-1-2 formation: Lindegaard; Zabaleta, Jones, Toure, Kolarov; Valencia, de Jong, Ji Sung; Nasri; Dzeko, Hernandez.

Such a team is more than capable of having a shot at the EPL title... provided no one gets injured of course.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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A change in the balance of power in Manchester?

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 06:26 PM PDT

OCT 29 — What a weekend that was. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard the hugely shocking news that Manchester United lost 6-1 at home to their traditional enemies Manchester City. Yes, you read that right, it was 6-1, and it was at Old Trafford.

If you're not a follower of the English Premier League (EPL), I'm sure that bit of news still managed to reach your radar through the normal media channels, or even from fans of other EPL clubs taunting Manchester United fans, and of course from Manchester City fans themselves.

When a club has been as incredibly successful as Manchester United has been in the EPL era, it is natural for some fans of other clubs to get sick of seeing the same team winning over and over again, but it is also natural to have some fair-weather fans join the Manchester United brigade whose only reason for being seem to be to gloat about how great their club is, so much so that you'd think that they're actually the Manchester United players who sweated and fought for all the glory.

That is why Manchester United fans generally have a bad reputation among fans of other clubs, even though there are also huge sections of their fandom who are perfectly reasonable and humble people and who just love the football being played, but being the rational people that they are, they will never be as loud as the loud and obnoxious "glory hunters", so it's the glory hunters who are unfortunately the "face" and "voice" of Manchester United fans to most normal people.

So last Sunday's 6-1 result (God, how I love writing that scoreline over and over again!) was simply lovely to all us non-Manchester United fans just to see the reaction of the "glory hunters." Not only did their team lose to the "noisy neighbours", but they were humiliated by that unbelievable scoreline, and all this at home in front of their very own fans.

After years of suffering on our part having to listen to the "glory hunters" gloat and gloat endlessly, it's beautiful to see them stunned into silence, and struggling to come up with lame excuses for the humiliating loss.

Some in the media have even boldly claimed that this earth-shattering result signals a seismic shift in the balance of football power in Manchester, and by the same implication in the EPL, as Manchester City has, for the last two seasons threatened to break into the top two with hundreds of millions of pounds being invested into their team by their rich owners.

Their impressive start to this season, which has seen their players finally gelling together as a cohesive unit, has made a lot of people think that winning the EPL this season is not a far-fetched proposition anymore.

Couple that with the loud chorus that "one of these days Manchester United will get a pasting because of their shaky defence and soft centre of a midfield" that's been ringing for the last couple of matches, then this result can even seem inevitable. Against Liverpool they were poor, but even against Norwich they were lucky because if Norwich had striking firepower of slightly better calibre, Manchester United might have even got a shelling then.

Of course if you've been watching the Manchester derby, when it was 11 vs 11 players in the first half, Manchester United didn't do that bad as it was frankly a dull match with both teams playing with caution and mostly battling it out in the middle of the park. Manchester City carved out only one opportunity but made it count by turning it into a goal.

But sitting back and waiting to counter attack is a sensible strategy when you're the away team, especially at a ground as tough as Old Trafford. It was Manchester United who were slightly disappointing for failing to test Joe Hart in any serious manner in the first half, but still the way they played in that first half may at worse result in a draw, which still wouldn't be too bad.

Starting the second half quite brightly and with more attacking impetus, Manchester United practically shot themselves in the foot when Jonny Evans was handed a red card for a silly foul, and with one man less and in their attempts to find a goal to at least salvage a point, they were left horribly exposed at the back against attacking opposition of City's quality.

Even as a non-United fan, I wouldn't put too much stock on this result signalling a shift in the balance of power yet, as manager Sir Alex Ferguson has won the EPL with even worse teams than the one he has this year. And I'm sure he gave the full hairdryer treatment to all those players who seemed to have given up when there were still around 10 more minutes to play against City.

For all we know things might even be back to normal come December when the games pile up, as Ferguson has long utilised this busy part of the football calendar to catch up on some points against his rivals. But for now, at least, we can enjoy the noise from the noisy neighbours, and the beautiful silence from the "glory hunters."

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Sabtu, 29 Oktober 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

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