Football 10/11: vs Chelsea (Community Shield)

Good opening performance. I had concerns about United’s form heading into, this, the first competitive fixture of the season.

But a lot of good performances. Fabio and Vidic were solid. Scholes bossed the midfield while Nani and Valencia were a constant threat on the wings. Rooney showed a great work rate, Hernandez impressed greatly on his debuet, and even Berbatov put in a good show.

Excellent assist from Rooney for the first, and Berbatov did extremely well in creating the second and finishing the third.

Concerns though. The defence became more and more rattled towards the end, near-hapless at the end. Smalling, when he came on, had a nightmare. Van Der Sar had a few wobbles and Chelsea had long periods of dominance where United had difficulty getting the ball.

But, a win and another Community Shield. Next up, Newcastle on Monday week.

As for the upcoming season, todays performance, while encouraging, still leaves plenty of doubt in my mind. If I had to call it right now, I’d have a top four of Chelsea (still top class all over the field, though ageing a bit), United (an improved squad from last years, but problems remain), Spurs (They can only improve in my opinion) and Arsenal (same old story, ‘this is our year’, like last year and the year before and so on), with the next three being a toss up between Man City (a squad of mercenaries won’t win anything), Liverpool (we’ll see how Hodgson settles in) and Villa (depends on Milner a lot). A lot of other teams have the potential to challenge for a place in that chasing pack – Fulham, Everton, Birmingham – so we’ll see if one of them can make a prolonged challenge.

And Blackpool, West Brom and Wolves to go down.

We’ll see how I get on, prediction wise, in nine months time.