Year Of The Berbatov

Manchester United 3 - West Ham 0
Scorers
Manchester United: Rooney (pen 33), Nani (49), Berbatov (70)

Team: Van der Sar, Vidic, Evans (Smalling 74), O'Shea, Evra, Fletcher, Scholes (Carrick 74), Giggs, Nani, Rooney, Berbatov (Owen 74)

Superb performance at Old Trafford today. Scholes and Giggs were simply awesome, and Nani didn't show any side-effects from last week's missed penalty. In fact it was a penalty that decided today's game.

Scholes has been magnificent with his passing this season, and his one of his searching crossfield passes found Giggs facing Spector on his favoured left wing. Turning back the clock, Giggs did his mazy dance and was about to run riot inside the box before Spector clumsily brought him down. The referee had no choice but to award United a penalty.

Desperate for a goal, Rooney stepped up and blasted the ball into the net. From then on, it was one way traffic. The gulf in class was huge and with a goal advantage, the best West Ham could do was to stem the red tide.

The second goal came shortly after the break with a fine individual effort from Nani. He took Rooney's pass and sliced his way through an incredibly porous West Ham defence and smashed home the second goal. It's defending like this that leaves West Ham rooted to the foot of the table, even at this early stage of the season.

That's not to say West Ham was that poor in any way. When they could, the did muster up a number of credible efforts, one of which was a beautiful passing sequence that resulted in Dyer striking the post. But such passing fluency was few and far between.

United on the other hand, were playing some superb football. After some intricate passing, Nani faked a shot and lifted the ball into the path of Berbatov and he volleyed home spectacularly from close range. It was a well deserved goal, especially after a really hardworking performance by the normally lacklustre Bulgarian. In fact, he seems to have pulled up his socks and finally started putting in much more effort into the games he's played and the crowd and teammates seem to have responded as well. It's a vicious cycle sometimes. The harder the player works, the better the response and in turn, he works harder for the adulation.

With the result, we've kept pace with Chelsea and Arsenal, who won their respective games as well. It's vital to keep the distance close while we can fully concentrate without the cup distractions. Last week was an unfortunate loss of 2 points.