Stretching superlatives and defences alike, Cristiano Ronaldo continues on his remarkable path. The prolific Portuguese may be better than the best around the world and, indeed, better than Best.
It is now 25 goals in 23 starts for Ronaldo, whose domination for a second successive Premier League season has now extended to overcoming Tottenham in the FA Cup. He is on course to surpass the 32 goals that is the current record for a Manchester United winger. That was set by George Best four decades ago and, while it once bordered on blasphemy at Old Trafford to suggest as much, Ronaldo may be the superior player.
In the manner of the great goalscorers, he has the capacity to decide games where his involvement has been peripheral. That is a trait more associated with, say, Ruud van Nistelrooy, than Ronaldo but as arguably the Premier League's two finest strike partnerships met at Old Trafford, the match was decided by the country's most productive winger.
In the process, he contrived to upstage Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez plus Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov. And, not for the first time, he proved his manager wrong. This week, Sir Alex Ferguson made the remarkable admission that: 'I signed him as a winger, pure and simple. I didn't spot his goalscoring potential at all.'
It has been a welcome benefit nonetheless. Ronaldo's latest brace were among the least memorable in his collection, though a coolly converted penalty and a shot that, thanks to an error by Radek Cerny, squirmed under the Tottenham goalkeeper turned a potentially awkward replay into a safe passage into the last 16 of the FA Cup.
The accumulation of seven goals in his last four games is the sort of statistic that each of the four specialist strikers on the pitch would have coveted. In an era when partnerships in attack are a comparative rarity, United and Spurs possess perhaps the best around. Yet it is notable that each of the quartet are footballers first and strikers second, with a capacity to involve themselves all over the pitch.
[Source: ESPN]