Martin Samuel told the Supplement that Chelsea's defeat to Wigan is good for the Premier League.
Wigan win paves way for more open Premier League
Every Premier League club should join Wigan in celebrating their victory over Chelsea.
That's the view of the
Daily Mail's Martin Samuel, who believes the Blues' 3-1 defeat is a victory for greater competition.
The loss cost Chelsea their unbeaten start to the season and means that each of the main title contenders have now lost at least one game.
"I've not got anything against Chelsea but it is good when the big teams get turned over," Samuel said on
Sunday Supplement. "It's going to make the league more open.
"It's not going to happen too often. There are not going to be shocks like that every single week but it is good that each of the big teams have lost matches, and in a lot of cases lost matches to lower opponents."
Fantastic
In a spectacular start to the season, Liverpool have scored 22 goals from seven games while Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs have all found the net on more than 15 occasions - returns that have impressed Samuel.
"It's been fantastic in terms of most games having a winner, the league hasn't missed Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo has done magnificently for Madrid - he's everything we all thought he was.
"But if there was going to be a dip because the league has lost one of its great players, it hasn't been seen yet because the games have been so good.
"Arsenal-Man City was a fantastic game, Arsenal-Man U was a good game, City v United was a classic. There have been tremendous matches this season."
Stories
However, Neil Custis of
The Sun felt that Chelsea's defeat to Wigan - which opened the door for United to go top of the table - was perhaps an ominous sign for the league's title hopefuls.
"I don't think Chelsea losing was necessarily a good thing because I think Chelsea need a lead on United to sustain it because I think United will come on strong," he said.
"United have won seven games in a row now in all competitions and I've yet to see them play as well as they did in stages last season.
"There have been players like Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes have been coming to the fore when you should really be looking for younger, other players to be doing it and those two players can't last forever. But they haven't played well and they are top of the league.
"But some of the games have been tremendous. The incidents we've had, we normally have them stretched over a season whereas we've had them in the first six weeks.
"There is so much to talk about as well - Adebayor, Man City and the money coming in, what's happening at Portsmouth. There are great stories everywhere."
Flow
The strength of the Premier League is reflected in the form of English clubs in Europe.
Not since 2004 has an English side failed to reach the final of the Champions League, but Samuel warned: "We can't expect to win the European Cup every single year. We've been flattered by that, it's been great to watch and we've got used to having three out of four teams in the semi-finals.
"But that's got to come to an end sooner rather than later and the reaction to it is that Real Madrid have gone out and spent a huge amount of money, Barcelona have kept hold of this generation of players and spent a lot of money as well.
"Last week (Carlo) Ancelotti was speaking so enthusiastically about English football in comparison to Italian football. In England referees are working on 25-30 fouls a game, in Italy it is 50 or 60. He says English football is better because they (referees) let the game flow.
"Now, you can argue that we let some tackles go that we shouldn't but without a doubt there is a pace about the English game that is so good."
