Moving Target

We'll start today with this, from Jim White in The Telegraph on our march to the title:

After a week in which they extended their lead at the top of the Premier League from the merely comfortable to the apparently unbreachable, Manchester United have assumed the air of an under-10s team taking a 23-0 lead in a Sunday-morning park stroll. Their rivals at the top have been reduced to calling on the services of fortune. Petr Cech's insistence that anyone can fall prey to bad luck gives the impression that Chelsea's tactical plan now consists of senior players sticking pins in a Wayne Rooney doll. That is when they are not, like Ashley Cole reportedly, drowning their disappointment in late-night boozing sessions.

It turns out that Steven Taylor won't be getting any further action against him after Steve Bennett watched a video of the arm to the throat of Ronaldo and decided it was a yellow card offence. Steve Bennett is really unbelievable. There's further stuff on the "bust-up" in the tunnel at half time in the Newcastle game. There's confusion about whether anything did actually happen, from The Guardian:

"There was no bust-up with Ronaldo," Taylor told the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. "I shook hands with him at the end of the game."

While The Independent report:

The Manchester United players were outraged by the nature of Taylor's neck-high arm on Ronaldo and captain Rio Ferdinand stood inches from Taylor's face on the pitch gesticulating and shouting at him. That was seconds before half-time.

The two men then continued their confrontation in the tunnel, with Ronaldo present and Wayne Rooney and Nemanja Vidic also involved. Separated by other players, the gist of Ferdinand's accusation was that Taylor was showboating to Newcastle fans in clattering Ronaldo. It was to Rooney that Taylor made his "ugly" remark.

And The Daily Star:

Words had been exchanged between Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Taylor after the Newcastle defender had sent the winger crashing into hoardings.

But Ferdinand then intensified the row, eyeballing Taylor as he launched a blistering attack on the 23-year-old, accusing him of being “bang out of order”.

Arsene Wenger's words on Ronaldo get a few column inches. Quote from The Independent:

"Every bad tackle that is not punished I feel is not right," the Arsenal manager Wenger said when asked about a terrible two-footed challenge on Ronaldo by Alan Smith during Wednesday night's Premier League match against Newcastle United at St James' Park.

"With Manchester United I am a bit cautious because sometimes I feel they get too much protection and sometimes they don't get enough," Wenger said. "Ronaldo is a specific example of that. Sometimes his arrogance is provocative – and his class as well."

I think the most interesting thing is the first part of this sentence. Surely every team on occasion gets too much protection, and on other occasions they don't get enough. I'm not exactly sure what his point is when applying this to us. And as for the second part, surely the point is that quite a lot of the time Ronaldo's class is mistaken for arrogance. And I'm not sure the problem with Ronaldo is other players diving in trying to break his legs, but the little niggling fouls he constantly attracts (See Ronaldo's own comment on this further down the post). The referee in The Inter-Utd game had it right, blowing up for all of the little things, whereas English refs let opposing teams get away with them when it comes to Ronaldo. Sir Alex has it right when he says, quoted in The Guardian:

"Ronaldo is an easy target for referees," he told MUTV. "It's easy to give decisions against him because he is such a great player and he is so celebrated. When he is away from home the crowd boos him, so he has to handle that. But it is not helping him."

To return to Arsene, this sentence is particularly rich. coming from a man who has never ever seen one of his own players do anything wrong, "Maybe we [managers] need to be stronger with our own players"... He should look at himself first and foremost.
There's some words from Rooney in The Sun:

“Can I see any way we won’t win the title? I’m not sure.

“There are still 11 games to go and a lot can happen but, obviously, we are in a good position at the top of the league.

“But we have to make sure we stay focused from now until the end of the season and be professional.

“Hopefully, if we do that we can retain the title.

“We’re in a good position at the minute, we just have to keep playing our football and hopefully we’ll be OK.”

While The Mirror have an "exclusive" interview with Ronaldo, leading with the story that Ronaldo likes Phil Collins. The full interview is here:

“I don’t like to relax,” said Ronaldo. “I have to continue winning awards and trophies because I’m still young. I have a big path ahead of me and I want to stay in this important position, so I have to continue playing like I’m playing.

“I feel I’m at a club that gives me a guarantee to win titles and trophies. That makes me very happy. When we play for the Premier League or whatever, we know that we can win something.

“The Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup and the Carling Cup are all important, because if we win them it improves our confidence."

He also says something concerning about being fouled, he doesn't believe players set out to harm him, as I argued above:

But the midfielder, who according to statistics is officially the Premier League’s most fouled player, insisted the majority of his opponents do not set out with the intention of harming him. “On the pitch I’m a target for defenders, so it’s difficult to avoid certain things,” said Ronaldo.

“But I don’t believe people just want to do something wrong on purpose. In my experience, the game is not carried out that way. I’ve never had any serious problems.