After Arsenal, Man U aim for title

Manchester United travel to the south coast to face Portsmouth tomorrow determined to build on last week’s 2-0 win over Arsenal and kee...

Manchester United travel to the south coast to face Portsmouth tomorrow determined to build on last week’s 2-0 win over Arsenal and keep their own Premier League title challenge bubbling along.

United ended Arsenal’s record run of 49 unbeaten league matches with a controversial 2-0 win over the Gunners at Old Trafford last Sunday to close the gap between them and the champions to eight points.

Despite losing their unbeaten record, the one certainty about Arsenal is that they will not taste defeat in many more matches this season.

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Challengers like Chelsea and United — and even current high-flyers such as Everton and Bolton Wanderers, need to keep winning just to stay in Arsenal’s slipstream.

United lost 1-0 at Fratton Park last season — the first time Portsmouth had beaten them since 1957 — and a similar result on Saturday would likely see them lose ground again.

Arsenal, who play Portsmouth’s arch-rivals Southampton at Highbury on Saturday, are unlikely to drop points again — so it is imperative that United keep winning. United will be without suspended top scorer Ruud van Nistelrooy, but Wayne Rooney, who scored the match-clinching goal against Arsenal on his 19th birthday, should relish the chance to face Pompey.

Rooney scored Everton’s winner in a 2-1 win at Fratton Park last December — and also scored the only goal when they beat Portsmouth 1-0 at Goodison in March, one of his last goals for his old club before his close season move to United.

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Roy Keane, who missed the Arsenal match because of flu, should return to the side, who are unbeaten in 14 matches since their opening day defeat to Chelsea in August.

In contrast, Harry Redknapp’s side have had an erratic start to the campaign — exactly like last season when their first nine matches produced three wins, three draws and three defeats — the same as their current record.

Ominously, perhaps, on the corresponding weekend last year, in their 11th match, they lost 3-0 to Manchester United.

Both sides won in the League Cup in midweek with Portsmouth beating Leeds United 2-1 at home and United winning 3-0 at Crewe Alexandra.

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Yakubu Aiyegbeni, Patrick Berger and goalkeeper Shaka Hislop should all return to the Pompey starting lineup.

(Reuters)

United launch tunnel fracas probe; Wenger welcomes it

		MANCHESTER: Manchester United have launched an internal investigation into the tunnel fracas that followed their 2-0 defeat of Arsenal at Old Trafford. In the latest salvo in a war of words between English soccer’s biggest clubs, manager Alex Ferguson said he was “very disappointed” by Arsenal’s response to Sunday’s events when, according to media reports, he was pelted with food. “We are doing our own thing,” Ferguson told a news conference on Friday. “We have got our own investigation into it. We are collating a lot of information. A lot of statements have been made by witnesses and we willbe forwarding it to the FA and letting them get on with it.” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger welcomed the news saying, ‘‘That is exactly what they should do. For me nothing happened.’’ He also added, “I have not seen any pizza. What is important for me in football is what happens on the pitch.”

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