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Something strange is happening to the Premiership and it's happening fast. Last night proved that our influence on the clubs supposedly in contention stretches beyond the mere three points at stake when we meet them - it goes to the very heart of their attempts to compete at the new high level created last season. ManU, Liverpool and Arsenal no longer have the staying power, the resolve or the tactical acumen to challenge Chelsea supremacy over 38 games and, if those three are not careful, it will soon be the likes of Wigan and, heaven help us, Spurs, Bolton, Blackburn Rovers and West Ham who end up our nearest rivals. Why?
I believe the answer lies in a comparison between the entrenched ideas of the 'old school' and the emergence of younger, hungrier managers eager to learn. Even when we perform below par the so-called hierarchy don't make us pay and instead provide enough ammunition to shoot great holes in their own feet let alone any argument they might put forward to counter my thinking on the subject.
Take ManU first - steeped in the 4-4-2 tradition, they fail miserably to ape our 4-3-3 success through lack of conviction and real width on both flanks (Rooney has to be accommodated), reverting to type by strengthening the back four with Vidic and Evra rather than finding the class midfielder they desperately need. With the Smith experiment looking to be just that, Ferdinand is asked to perform (put his foot in?) in the middle of the park against the worst disciplined side in the EPL. Brilliant! Sometimes I wonder who writes Ferguson's script because a man of his experience should know better.
Talking of men of experience who should know better, we come to Benitez - there has to be a limit to any team's love of nostalgia and if Robbie Fowler doesn't go way past it with his track record I don't know who does. Drawing the line, crossing the line, sniffing the line, Fowler epitomises the Scouser image that Rafa presumably wants to pander to, but there is just so much you can gain from playing the crowd pleasing card before familiarity (complacency) sets in and, before you can say 'God help us', you've conceded an equaliser in the last minute against ten men. Still, at least the Spaniard makes no pretence at mimicking our 4-3-3, preferring to bolster the 4-4-2 image by spending money on Agger and saving it in the wing department. Doubtless, all part of the long term plan to attack teams from every angle instead of playing the long ball game.
Talking of plans, let's move to the manager who doesn't appear to have one at the moment - Wenger, as we should all have guessed, didn't see the red current slump coming. Just like he didn't see his last captain going or his present captain starting to pack his bags. On a night when the ghost of David Bentley came back to haunt him big time he should have at least seen Zamora, Harewood and Ashton, being that they are all bloody great big blokes who lead the line as if their lives depended on it. Didn't see them Arsene? Well, Sol Campbell did, right up close and personal in Bobby's case, but I guess the only way you are going to realise these players have any use on a football field is if they run around carrying a placard with PLAN B written on it. Then the penny might drop that any one of them would have been more useful to your lot than master Walcott was sitting next to Martin Keown in the crowd.
And there we have it, three examples in one night of why we are running away with the EPL. Three teams constructed by three managers who over the course of a season and a half have failed to find an answer to Jose's methodology. Fergie tinkers, Rafa panders, Arsene ignores and all three continue along the 4-4-2 road, seemingly oblivious to the widening gap above and the closing gap beneath. Long may it continue.
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The press ALL believe it was never a red card......