Manchester United 2-0 West Brom: Why the Win Makes United the EPL Favorites

Manchester United hosted West Brom Sunday where Wayne Rooney’s double was enough to lift them over the Hawthornes and procure their place atop the English Premier League title for the rest of the season as local rival Manchester City floundered in a 1-0 loss to Swansea.

Though the final whistles for both matches may have sounded 225 miles apart, they both meant the same thing—Manchester United will repeat as the EPL champions.

It does not take an in-depth statistical analysis by a Harvard post-grad to know that the latter months of a footballing season in England belongs to the Red Devils. Sir Alex Ferguson has established a dynasty by recognizing the fundamental principal that a season is a marathon not a sprint, and who finished first is not decided out of the starting blocks, but down the home stretch.

In their last five title winning seasons, they have lost a grand total of three games in April and May, with one of those losses being after they had already secured the league in 2007 (Fergie fielded a weak side with an eye toward the FA Cup final against Chelsea later that week).

With a look at their remaining schedule, there is little to suggest that the impressive spring months the club has shown in the past will not continue as the bloom begins to show this year.

Of their remaining 10 games, the stiffest competitions they face in terms of the current table is Sunderland, Everton and Fulham who are eight through tenth place respectively, with only playing the role of visitor against Sunderland on the last match day.

Their other opponents? Only the bottom five teams (Wolves, Blackburn, QPR, Wigan and Aston Villa) with Swansea visiting on May 5^th.

Again, a PhD in math is not required to figure that I am leaving out a game, one that will truly decide what part of Manchester will take home the Barclay’s trophy.

On April 30^th, United will make the short bus ride five miles east to Etihad Stadium, where they will take on City which will be the most important match City has played since the glory days of the 1960’s.

For United, it will be the same match they have played against Chelsea over the past six or seven seasons. And before that against Arsenal. And even against Liverpool, Newcastle and Blackburn before that.

The pressure on City has built up already, as the team that once put three or four goals away on a regular basis has found it difficult to breakdown the average defenses of Sporting Lisbon and Swansea over the past two games, shutout by both. Even against lowly Bolton where the dysfunctional attack of Chelsea was able to score three, City needed an own goal to keep it from being only a nervy 1-0 victory.

Their schedule is not nearly as comforting. Visits to Stoke, Arsenal and Newcastle follow hosting reinvigorated Chelsea – the team that gave them their first loss of the season.

The City fans an United doubters will surely point to the thrashing the Citizens laid on the Red Devils at Old Trafford back in October. The visitors dismantled the hosts 6-1, the largest margin of victory in the series 130 year history and was the moment they established themselves as a real threat to the league.

But it was a game where the perception of outcome vastly differed between the two sides.

For City it was vindication the of hundreds of millions of pounds spent, the results of the restructuring of an organization, the consequences of a philosophy, the justification of it all.

For United it was a mid-October game.

Six goals against United at Old Trafford by the eternal little brother, piqued interest because it was new.

Had the result been reversed, it would have been viewed as just more of the same. The commentary and analysis would have followed this general thesis: “City is not there yet," something the long-suffering fans in sky blue have heard for decades.

City may have not officially lost the title today, but history will remember when they made the fatal flaw of allowing United to control their own destiny.

I wrote a few weeks back that the title would be decided on April 30^th and that is still true. However, the aura around that match has now changed. It will no longer be a question of whether or not City can endure the pressure and outlast the Countries most storied team. It is now about whether or not they can even win when they need to most.

Everything they have accomplished this season—the 14 straight games without a loss, the +49 goal differential, career best performances by half the squad, means nothing if they cannot finish the race.

There are many different versions of the tortoise and the hare story, but remember, they all end the same.

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