But COME ON!!! How can United even live with themselves after a such horrid performance against Coventry City?? Anytime a solid Premiership squad falls to a second-tier team it’s an upset, but here we’re talking about Man United! Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about them facing a relegation battle (ha).

In fact, forget about calling it a horrid performance. Instead, give all the credit to Coventry, who were clearly the only squad who came to Old Trafford to play some football. Even the the other “big clubs” have a lot of trouble giving United a good battle on their home ground. Seriously, the fact that the Reds lost on their home pitch makes the story ten times as surprising.

I know that Sir Alex sent out a younger, more inexperienced squad, but the lineup still included Nani, Anderson, and John O’Shea. Name one player on Coventry who matches up to that level of talent. Manchester United’s B-Squad, and maybe even their C-Squad, is generally thought to be more than capable of easily defeating any of the clubs in the lower divisions. Today, Coventry proved that theory wrong. Make no mistake, United didn’t give the game away- it was taken from them.

It truly does seem like the gap between the Big Four and all the other clubs in England is slowly staring to shorten. Perhaps this is just an off-year, but I’m not convinced that Chelsea, United, and Liverpool are just “going through a phase” of bad performances. Mourinho certainly didn’t deserve to be fired, and it is a CRIME that Martin Jol from Spurs wasn’t the first manager to get the sack this year (remember at the beginning of the year when Tottenham were considered to be a serious darkhorse contender for the Premiership title? Yeah, me neither). One could argue that the quality of play in the Prem has been subpar this year, but we’ll see how the rest of the season plays out. Who knows, maybe Chelsea and United will find their form sometime soon?

Another Russian Bajillionaire is looking to take over an EPL squad, as a firm owned by a guy named Alisher Usmanov(ich?) has reportedly bought another 14.5% of the remaining Arsenal shares. That’s right Gunner fans, your club is about to be 100% Russian Mafia controlled! If this takeover goes through, Emirates Stadium and Stamford Bridge will likely join forces and transform into giant black holes of evil which suck everything in their path, which is bad news for Fulham supporters. For the non-EPL initiated, Stamford Bridge is Chelsea’s home stadium. It hosts football matches in the EPL, FA Cup, and the Champions League. Occasionally, it also hosts grass.

So in the last couple of years, we’ve see Henry, Pires, shareholders, and Highbury all go down the drain. Essentially, Arsenal is transforming from a French team into a Russian team. They’re lucky to be holding on to the #4 ranking right now, since rivals Tottenham decided to destroy their season right off the bat. Still, I think there’s an outside chance that Arsenal might be on the road to a UEFA Cup berth this season, ha ha har.

Hard to ignore the fact that Roy Keane will be facing his former club this weekend, though the whole story seems a little over-hyped to me. There was tension when he unexpectedly left the club a couple years ago, but it’ll be tough for United fans to get riled up about Sunderland. Those who do will probably get to witness a 3-1 drubbing by the Red Devils. For Fantasy purposes, I’m pulling for two Tevez goals, a Nani goal, and one from Chopra either 10 minutes in or in garbage time. After the third United goal, expect Keane to run over to the United bench and attempt a “hard but fair” tackle on Sir Alex. Then the ghost of Cantona will throw a shoe in an unsuspecting Sunderland fan’s face.

Speaking of getting shoed in the face, the LA Galaxy are “fucked,” according to manager* Frank Yallop. After the defeat to Pikachu in the SuperLiga final, the usually mild-mannered Englishman dropped four f-bombs in the postgame press conference, which indicates that he knows he doesn’t have a job any more. Though Lalas probably deserves the sack more than Yallop, I still have to question Yallop’s commitment to the team. His frustrations are causing him to make quick, rash, uninformed decisions with lineups and substitutions. And I don’t understand why he’s had such a hard time explaining the concept of one-touch passing to his team.

Unfortunately, all the Klinsi talk could possibly just be fabricated rumors designed to give us hope. Fox Soccer Channel incorrectly leaked the story about Yallop’s (then) imminent firing, and Frank still has control of the team for the time being. It appears that he’ll still be at the helm for Saturday’s laugh-fest against Real Salt Lake.

The rest of this year should really be focused on re-building. One thing I can tell you for certain, the Galaxy need to ditch Buddle, Gordon, Vagenas, and Veris right away. Martino can only stay if he learns how to beat defenders one-on-one. He also needs to put the ball on target more often than once every five games. Pavon is the other huge question mark. He’s used to playing with a whole bunch of forwards in the box with him, which explains why he lets a lot of balls pass him and tries a lot of heel-flicks, etc. He’s painfully slow, however, but he does seem to do well in the air. If the Galaxy abandon their current 4-4-Donovan-1 formation and go with a more aggressive 4-4-2 (good God we need Klinsmann), Pavon might be able to keep a spot.

Beckham’s injury is more of a blessing than a curse, as this will force him to rest that damned ankle until it’s healed properly, or as he likes to say, “until it’s right.” Hopefully the knee damage isn’t too extensive and won’t limit his mobility for the rest of his career. Hate to say it, but the guy is getting old. Stuff just doesn’t heal the same way when you’re past age 30…

Oh, and the Champions League draw was today. AC Milan get a free pass to the knockout round, United fans need to sign safety waivers before attending Roma games, and Liverpool whine about getting a tough draw. More on this later.

*for now

5AM and I’m ready to go. The first televised match starts in about two hours, so here’s some important information to browse through:

Supposedly, Sir Alex has predicted that United will win their first match this weekend. At the moment, it’s unclear what significance this has, as the same prediction was issued a week ago…. and the week before. It has also been announced that Brazil international Anderson will make his debut, in hopes of energizing the squad and getting everything back on the right track. Does anyone remember the last time a situation similar to this happened? (Kleberson ). With Rooney and that Portuguese guy still out, things aren’t looking good for the Red Devils.

Kasey Keller joining Fulham means that there are now four bald Americans with a starting goalkeeper position in the EPL. Keller probably won’t start this week, but next week we could see a riot squad. If the sun shines, expect to see it glisten off the heads of Keller, Friedel, Hannnanhemasnhffbh (however the hell you spell it), and Howard. Alexi Lalas will then proceed to call one of them “the best goalkeeper in the world”, depending on which one happens to be mentioned in his next interview.

I have no idea if there have been any updates on Michael Ballack, but I wouldn’t expect to see him anytime soon. Supposedly he weaves all of Peter Cech’s rugby caps by hand. I’d really like to know if that little piece of cloth will really save Cech from head trauma if he’s involved in a scrum half as bad as the one that seriously injured him.

I’m also really bummed about the whole Brian McBride’s kneecap deciding to twist the wrong way and fly out the socket deal. Dempsey will look even more lost out there without the only decent striker the U.S. has ever produced. Shoot… with Keller, Bocanegra, Dempsey, and McBride, there’s no telling how many wasted build-ups and frustrating finishing moves that squad would be able to pull off. And we’d all get a birds-eye-view from that awesome Fulham roof cam (if you haven’t seen it, it basically looks like you’re looking at the action vertically for the entire game). I’ll cry if they are relegated.

Coming up in an hour or so: Arsenal vs. Man City.