Manchester United In For A City Mauling?

Sir Alex Ferguson, in retrospect, bottled it at Anfield last weekend. In contrast, Roberto Mancini decided to freshen up after the international break and Manchester City got their just reward. It is the "noisy neighbours" who are stepping onto the "prawn-sandwiched" 75,000 capacity-filled Theatre of Dreams as the Premier League leaders.

United starts and finishes all their games strongly. Their movement and quick passing right from the get-go, often forces the opposing teams to make mistakes. The Red Devils also finishes matches very well. No team in the Premier League (bar Liverpool two seasons ago) has ever come back from losing positions more times than the "comeback kings" of Manchester United. This is reflected by their 22 goals scored at the 0-30 mins and 66-90 mins period.

City has a more controlled game, a bit like an Italian team. Their patient buildup play usually stretches defenses and creates numerous goal mouth opportunities. The Citizens have scored 19 goals between the match periods of 31-75 mins, showing that they kill off the opposing teams while able to conserve energy in preparation of the next game.

Both teams have been playing football that is exciting, full of flair and entertaining to watch. The Manchester Derby has been highly charged in the recent seasons and this meeting at Old Trafford will have the added significance of Premiership leadership at stake.

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Manchester Clubs Setting The Premier League Pace

These are exciting times to be supporters of either Manchester United or Manchester City. The two Manchester clubs are currently slugging it out at the top of the Premiership. Whatever City can do with their expensively assembled superstars, United are outdoing them with their expensively acquired youngsters!

You just have to raise your hat to that legendary statesman, Sir Alex Ferguson. Just how does he do it is the question I want to ask. Credit must be given to the Red Devils coaching team. Phil Jones, David De Gea and Ashley Young are talented players but they aren't mentioned in the same breath as City's signings of Aguero, Nasri and Silva. And yet, Young, Jones and De Gea are contributing to the best start that United has had to a Premiership season.

Manchester United are traditionally slow starters in the Premiership. The coaching staff at Melwood have done such a great job with Fergie's Fledglings Mk II that the Red Devils have been nothing short of explosive in their Premiership matches. West Brom, Spurs, Arsenal and Bolton could not keep up with the movement and pace of this young team. Not many in the Premiership can, in actual fact.

Wayne Rooney's transformation from sulky star to United's only superstar has been more telling. Eight goals in four games including two hattricks represents a complete turnaround to a player who wanted to leave United a year ago. His goals should dry up eventually as he is a notoriously streaky striker. When that happens, Rooney will simply thread killer passes to Hernandez in order to maintain United's goal scoring threat. Such is his importance to United that Rooney must already be regarded as one of United's greatest ever players.

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The D-Wreck Soccer Radio Show!

A fantastic blogger / interviewer, D-Wreck does some fantastic parodies on football personalities.
He comes up with some of the greatest football spoofs and I receive these interviews every week.

This is an interview he made up with Alex Ferguson, David Moyes and Rafa Benitez

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The Boy's Done Good!: Manchester United's Park Ji-Sung

Manager Alex Ferguson rejected the theory that midfielder Park Ji-Sung was signed merely to increase Manchester United's popularity in the Far East. Ji-Sung arrived at United for £4 million in 2005 but until this season rarely looked like establishing himself as part of Ferguson's first-choice XI.

Undoubtedly, though, Ji-Sung's United connection has brought the Red Devils huge commercial spin-offs, with a million club credit cards currently in use in South Korea and two hugely successful pre-season trips to Seoul helping to cement them in the country's affections. However, for Ferguson, this was a peripheral issue.

Even though he left Ji-Sung out of his squad completely for the 2008 Champions League final, Ferguson always felt the energetic player - who first came to prominence with his performances in a Champions League semifinal against AC Milan for PSV Eindhoven in 2005 — had a major role to play for his team.

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World's Best Football Manager

Bob Bradley is the most winningest coach/manager in MLS history with 141 victories. That got me thinking about who could be the best active football manager. Naturally, the usual suspects were around, namely, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Rafa Benitez.
I came across the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) website and found All-Time World Coach Ranking.

From the period of 1996-2008, the accumulated rankings compiled by IFFHS are as follows,
1. Sir Alexander Ferguson (Manchester United)
2. Marcello Lippi (Italy)
3. Arsène Wenger (Arsenal)
4. Guus Hiddink (Russia/Chelsea)
5. Sven-Göran Eriksson (Mexico)
Sir Alex had a winning percentage of 58.3% out of 1261 matches and is the only manager from this list to have won the Champions League twice.
Guus Hiddink however had a slightly better win percentage (59.2%) with a lower number of games.

6. José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Felix (Inter Milan)
Jose Mourinho was 6th overall. Jose has a superior win percentage of 68% but lost out on the elusive Champions League Cup while at Chelsea. Still solely on win percentage, Jose is the world's best football manager.

In 14th place, is
14. Rafael Benítez Maudes (Liverpool)
- a winning percentage of 55.5% and boosted by the consecutive semifinal appearances in recent years in the Champions League.

16. Vicente del Bosque (Spain)
The current Spain boss is in 16th place, cruelly let go by Real Madrid but now proving that he has the managerial nous for international football. Del Bosque's Spain is still unbeaten in the World Cup 2010 Qualifiers.

20. Fabio Capello (England)
Have won 9 out of 12 England games with a win percentage of 70%. Let's hope he wins the World Cup for England. It's been too long for the oft-suffering England fans.

Becks with Fergie before Inter CL game (image from Getty images)