This Sporting Weekend

Quick recap.

United appear to be approaching full stride. They beat Blackburn at Ewood Park 0-2 on Saturday but it could quite easily have been 0-15. My star player of the match - aside from Blackburn goalie Jason Brown whose play was Buffon-like - was Anderson. He was everywhere and fought for everything. The guy is simply getting better and better and is going to dominate the midfield for United for a long time. I always felt that Chelsea could beat us at any time because of the power and speed of their midfield but Anderson will go a long way to allaying my concerns. In other game note, Ronaldo dove twice, Rooney missed two nearly open nets but did later score, and Berbatov and Tevez still need to go to a barbershop and not a salon.

Anybody catch Inter versus Bologna? Zlatan Ibrahmovic's back of the heel kung-fu goal was absolutely ridiculous. My predictions seem to be forever wrong but I feel confident in saying that I can quite easily see them winning the Champions League this year. At full health, they have a devastating offense (Ibrahimovic, Adriano, Quaresma, Mancini, Balotelli, Muntari, etc) that can be matched by perhaps two or three other clubs. And while Mourinho may be an instigator, he does seem to get large doses of loyalty and hard work from his players. Watch out for Inter.

In a clash of the pathetically underachieving, Everton and Newcastle drew 2-2 today. What on earth is going on with these clubs? We know some of the reasons why Newcastle is floundering, even if we can't understand it, but Everton is in freefall for no particular reason it seems. This was a tight team last year and now they're giving up goals like crazy. Joleon Lescott won me my fantasy soccer league last year by scoring about 8 goals and giving up not too many but now he, and the team, are really hitting the skids.

Look out hockey -the New York Rangers are in first after taking two in a row from Tampa in Prague. Poor Petr Nedved, could the Rangers have dropped him and ended his comeback attempt at a worse time? Right before the team travelled to his home country to play a few matches?

And finally there's the Cubs. Good lord, what's left to be said about them? What new way will they find to not win the World Series? This was basically the best team in the NL and they went out without firing a shot. Oh to be a fly on the wall when Sweet Lou got them into the clubhouse after the final game. And remember when I mentioned the Lee Elia Incident? Here it is.