Lodged in the consciousness of all upwardly mobile clubs is the realisation that Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have won every English championship since 1995, when Blackburn Rovers broke the three-team cartel. The score since the Year Zero birth of every neo-liberal's favourite division is Big Three 17, Rest of the Premier League 1.
City lost 3-0 at home to the Gunners, United endured another scare to win at Stoke and Chelsea beat Wolves 2-0 in a routine execution. To adapt Lothar Matthäus on the England-Germany dichotomy, football is a simple game: 20 teams run around for 38 games and the best three end up in the nicest chairs. Liverpool, who have finished second twice and third on five occasions, must be given a name-check here, especially as their 2-1 win over Blackburn featured the rarity of a Fernando Torres goal.
Muscle memory has been exposed as a myth. By all accounts human tissue cannot record the information necessary to repeat an athletic feat, so Javier Hernández would be unwise to promise a rerun of the backward twisting header that put United ahead at Stoke. But in the league's three most successful clubs we see a talent for riding the undulations of form, for problem solving and self-renewal.
The big names tend to make the correct choice more often than the wrong one. In a week when Sir Alex Ferguson span Wayne Rooney round so hard he ended up facing United, rather than City (his original intention), the Old Trafford talent-spotting department could back-slap itself over the scouting of Hernández in Mexico: not the most obvious hunting ground for an English club.
At £6m, 'Chicharito' provided timely vindication for Ferguson's insistence that youth acquisition is a major part of the answer, even if there remains an obvious case for buying two A-class midfielders. Bastian Schweinsteiger and Wesley Sneijder, say.
While Ferguson buffs his reputation for disaster-avoidance, a hard reading of Roberto Mancini's stewardship of City would say he slipped up by selecting a 19-year-old centre back (Dedryck Boyata) against Arsenal ahead of England's Joleon Lescott. Boyata is a fine prospect but he lives on the edge of the law, as he showed recently against Chelsea. His eagerness to engage Didier Drogba and others in hand-to-hand combat that day augured well but against Arsenal his over-eagerness left City playing with 10 men for 85 minutes.
On such nuances managerial careers turn. Mancini is playing a high-stakes game by turning the sky blue Carrington into a boot camp and the only way he can keep hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent on his side is by making all the right calls. Another Italian coach, Carlo Ancelotti, has mastered that art at Chelsea, displaying a politician's sense of how power works.
The platform is now rammed with people waiting for the train of Arsenal's next trophy-winning phase to arrive, but you can see why Wenger exudes such confidence that the delay is nearly over. Stopping Cesc Fábregas leaving for Barcelona was a triumph to exceed Ferguson's coup with Rooney. In the final hours the Glazers had to smash the United wage structure to halt Rooney's defection across town but Wenger dealt mainly in promises. Fábregas knows the speech so well by now he could recite it to Wenger before the manager has opened his mouth.
Arsenal have not held a major pot since the 2005 FA Cup but their resources are deeper than for many years at the attacking end of the side. With a fully-fit squad, Wenger could turn for creativity and goals to Fábregas, Andrey Arshavin, Jack Wilshere, Robin van Persie, Theo Walcott, Samir Nasri, Marouane Chamakh, Tomas Rosicky, Carlos Vela and Aaron Ramsey, eventually.
The doubt, as ever, is whether Arsenal possess a sufficient number of warrior‑players who can drive them over the line, or too many like Rosicky, who can decorate but not decide a season-defining game. Chelsea employ proven winners in abundance and Ferguson is adamant the resolution of the Rooney saga will ignite United's form and allow him to make big-name signings from a stable base.
These are daunting obstacles to City and Spurs. Those in the chase mature and strengthen but the big three are never standing targets. When they weaken they respond and recover. 'Give somebody else a go' is not in their vocabulary.
Source: Paul Hayward, The Guardian on 25 Oct 10
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