By Jonathan Birchall
It was hardly taken at a canter but Manchester United’s path to the Premier League title had a sense of inevitability about it long before the season came to an end.
However, it was somewhat fitting that the best team in the land secured their 19th title through a questionable penalty and a scrappy performance away to relegation battlers Blackburn as 2010-11 was no Red Devils vintage.
The temptation would be to say that Sir Alex Ferguson won’t care as long as the trophy cabinet at Old Trafford bulges, but it is the pursuit of perfection that he craves, not merely doing enough to scrape by – and last season’s stats tell their own story.
In 2009-10, Carlo Ancelotti’s Chelsea scored 103 goals on the way to the title. Only a point behind, United hit the back of the net 86 times. Last season’s champions, however, scored 25 goals fewer than the team that they displaced at English football’s summit with a mere 78 and finished with six points less than when they had finished as runners-up 12 months earlier.
Furthermore, United kept possession more successfully in 2009-10 than a year later and averaged more shots per game despite the addition of undoubted success story Javier Hernandez.
With the Mexican in blistering form and Wayne Rooney resurgent, the question of United’s relative timidity in front of goal begs the question of where the problem lies.
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