EPL Game 7 - Man Utd 2 : 0 Chelsea

The first big game of the season and United come up trumps convincingly! Goals from Tevez, his first for United and Saha were good enough to round up an entertaining, yet controversial encounter.

Going into the match, there was so much controversy emanating from Stamford Bridge. 'The Special One' Mourinho had quit unceremoniously. And there were doubts if his replacement Avram Grant was qualified enough for the job. I was wondering how Chelsea could let their most successful manager go in such fashion! With all the drama surrounding Chelsea, I doubted they would match a United team that had already started to peak this season.

United seemed to make matters worse for Chelsea by showing their inclination to attack right from the start. Rooney almost scored inside two minutes, with a curling right footer, only to be denied by Europe's best goal keeper Petr Cech, who made a finger-tip save. This match was probably the most entertaining between the two since that dead rubber towards the end of the last season. Chelsea too showed that they were prepared to take the fight back to opposition. They too made impressive moves early in the first half, but couldn't penetrate deep enough. It looked that they were badly missing their star striker, Dridier Drogba. Meanwhile, Giggs could easily have opened the account for United when he received a looping pass, but could only put it over the bar. The most controversial incident of the half was the sending-off of Mikel, for a not-so-harsh challenge on Evra. Everybody who was asked to comment on that incident felt it was too harsh a decision.
With United making steady progress with probing attacks, the inevitable happened in the injury time of the first half. Tevez headed off a beautiful pass from Giggs at the near post. A long awaited goal for Tevez and he'll surely settle down now with that goal in his bag.

Second half saw Chelsea sitting back and defending and hoping to break through on the counter attacks. And United were biding their time in constructing their attacks and enjoyed great amount of possession. Giggs could easily have doubled the aggregate in the middle of the half, but couldn't keep his volley down. Joe Cole could easily have seen the second red card of the match when he threw a reckless tackle at a sprinting Ronaldo, catching him on his ankle. He was very lucky the referee chose not the spoil the game any more. When Saha came in as the sub towards the end of the second half, he brought the second goal with him. He was brought down inside the box by Ben Haim, though not convincingly, and that was enough for the referee to award the penalty he had denied United in the first half. Saha stepped in to put it behind Cech and it was curtains to Chelsea's hopes.

Tevez's goal augurs well for the team. It was a much deserved goal too as he's been working very hard from day one at United even without great match-fitness. United looked like they were back to playing at their attacking best. The performance was a hint to how dangerous United could be if they settle down to a 4-4-2 this season. And with the new set of players jelling well - Nani, Hargreaves and Saha could fit easily into this combination without taking anything away. That shows the bench strength that's been built so far, something we lacked last season.