Manchester United at their best, or the Premiership at its worst?

Interesting article in the mirror this morning, thought it might make great discussion. Apparently at the West Ham game yesterday. An unnamed 'legend' approached the press before the match with the programme, upon the cover of which is the quote from Alex Ferguson 'this years squad is as good as any I have ever had'. He asked them if they believe he's right. The press didn't know what to say, but the legend certainly disagreed.

In a statistics perspective, at least recently he has a point. In the history of the premier league only two teams have ever scored more points at the half way mark, Chelsea in 2006 with 58, and Manchester United the year after with 53.

But is the squad as good? Van Persie I would say is one of the finest strikers the premier league has ever seen, so their attack is as strong as ever. Their midfield however sees Giggs and Scholes, two talismanic figures of the division faltering due to old age, and players like Kagawa and Cleverly are thus far failing to prove they can take on their crowns. Id also go as far as to say that the fact Ferguson felt he needed to ring Acholes out of retirement meant he knew this too. Their defence has Vidic, a fine defender, but other names like Rafael are in equal measures brilliant and useless. Their defence has conceeded an enormous amount of goals, it's a miracle they have won as many games as they have. Then of course they have De Gea, who while not as bad as people like to pretend he is certainly isnt in the same league as Van Der Sar and Barthez.

So are Manchester United a team as good as they ever have been and proving it with results, or are they simply a good team in a league full of rubbish? The champions league seems to be supporting the second theory. Spanish and German teams are repeatedly seeing us off, and I heard somewhere this year you'll never get lower odds of all remaining English teams being knocked out in the next round. Fans dread when they see names like Barcelona, Madrid, Dortmund pop up against them, because they are straight away underdogs. It never used to be so bad.

I think the EPL standards are slipping as proven by the Champions League results. It's a very ordinary United side in my view, e.g. I don't rate Carrick at all.

I've been watching the Bundesliga highlights show on ITV4 this season and have been impressed with the quality.
There are also a high number of German players in the top sides, around 6 each in the starting XI of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund.