SoccerBlogs

Wayne Rooney goes in search of his 100th United goal against Burnley tonight, something he thinks he should have achieved against Birmingham at the weekend.

He is also hoping United can make it four in a row this season with him playing in his favourite position.

"It could have been 100 against Birmingham," said Rooney.

Well there was a modicum of pride restored yesterday at Old Trafford, not enough to stop them lifting the Premier League trophy (sorry, 'smasher), but it was a much better performance than in recent weeks.

United certainly played within themselves, knowing they only had to draw, but we worked hard and kept possession well without ever causing them too many problems at the back.

The Chelsea Daily Drivel is a daily update of all the stories concerning our club, the rumours, the opinions and more....

So here are the Chelsea news updates on Tuesday 21st September 2010 including: Match report from Sunday, Hilario is injured and out for three weeks, Holloway believes Chelsea treated Blackpool as if they were Manchester United, Mikel believes in Chelsea's physical power, Ancelotti states that Zidane helped him as a coach to lead Chelsea to a flying start in the Premier League, Roman decides on more cut backs at the club as the players are told by Buck before the Blackpool game and the Peter Osgood statue at the Bridge latest.

Chelsea were crowned Premier League champions in record fashion by smashing 8 past a very poor Wigan side at The Bridge. It was the fourth time the Blues had scored 7 or more, and in the process scoring a staggering 103 league in the process, worthy champions? I think so.

Carlo Ancelotti sent a warning to the rest of Premier League by saying his work in England has only just begun.

As with so many of his compatriots, Rafa Benitez likes nothing more than unwinding over a game of 'mus', a traditional Spanish card game devised in the Basque country, which pits teams of two in a battle of tactics, concentration and collaboration. To the uninformed, mus sounds similar to the sedate, cerebral game of 'bridge'.

Rafa Benitez bought himself some time and patience by winning the Champions League in his first season.

But Liverpool fans are an incredible bunch for sticking by Rafa ever since, showing loyalty beyond compare in the Premier League. They are magnificent supporters.

There's not much more I can say that hasn't already been said in the wake of Barcelona's comprehensive win over United in Rome last night.

The La Liga Champions were extremely impressive. Bar the first five minutes, they completely dictated the pace of the game and at times, they had United run-ragged.

As you can imagine, I'm devastated. I was wrong about my prediction. I was also wrong about Barca's potential when playing against world-class opposition. They're immense, in every way.

Simply put, they were utterly superb. Equally simply put, we didn't turn up.

So please excuse me if this is short but I can't go into this right now, I'm going to drown my sorrows.

On this week's good, the bad and the ugly we feature lots of winners, some losers and Joey Barton! Click on the links below to find out more about the stories we feature. Good Manchester United are the winners of the Champions League for the third time in their history after beating Chelsea on penalties.

So, at last it's all over. Spain are worthy champions, the Netherlands are lucky to have finished the game with the amount of players they had left. In truth it was a shocking game, not one worthy of representing the end to the world's premier sporting event. Spain, for all their infuriating passing game (think [.

So the World Cup is over and it's congratulations to Cesc and commiserations to Robin. Spain won 1-0, as they did their previous three games in the tournament - "one nil to the Es-pan-ya" - and have added the world crown to the European one they won two years ago.

I suppose you have to say they were worthy champions.

The title race has turned into a title procession. Just a couple of weeks ago, we could gloat over the most fascinating Bundesliga title race in recent years. Now we have to conclude that Borussia Dortmund are simply far too consistent and everybody else, well, is not. Dortmund went seven points clear at the top, with a confident win over Mainz, that only briefly like two minutes looked to be in doubt.

In terms of excitement and drama, the USL couldn't have asked for much more from a championship game as red cards, late equalizers and a penalty kick shootout highlighted Orlando City's victory over the Harrisburg City Islanders to take the USL Pro title in front of their home fans.

After a relatively quiet first half, the game was sparked into life with the ejection of Orlando City's starting goalkeeper, Miguel Gallardo.

Oh the despair! The agony! The torture!


On a serious level are things really that bad?


Blimey the way some people are going on I'd have thought that the world was just about to end.


Of course yesterday was frustrating and disappointing but take a reality check!

Congratulations Barcelona, worthy champions of Europe for 2009.

An early goal can certainly set the tone of a game, and this morning's game provided a textbook example. United had come out of the blocks quickly, Victor Valdes had already fumbled a sighter from Cristiano Ronaldo into the path of Park Ji-Sung (how crucial Carles Puyol's challenge was, in the grand scheme of things), and Ronaldo had flashed a shot just wide after a well-executed move.

My future is here.
Slightly forced by Javier Mascherano, but still nice to hear.

It may not be easy to admit it at this end of the M62 but if a team is put under the kind of incredible pressure that United have been on the receiving end of for the past two months and still haven't crumbled then they would have to be seen as worthy champions should their current form continue and allow them to edge across the finishing line first.

A huge congratulations today to Louis van Gaal's AZ Alkmaar side who yesterday became the Dutch Eredivisie champions. They suffered a surprising 2-1 defeat to Vitesse on Saturday, but Ajaz's failure to ebat PSV yesterday (they were hammered 6-2) handed AZ only their second ever league title.

They are actually the only team outside the Netherlands' "big three" (PSV, Ajax, Feyenoord) to win the top flight title since 1964 (AZ themselves won it in 1981) although they have been there or thereabouts for three out of the last four seasons.