Now we've won 10 Premier League titles, how does everyone else rank them?
Was thinking about this question this morning on the train while reading a little potted history of them in the paper.
Here's my ten:
1. 1998/99. Can't look at the league campaign in isolation from winning the other two trophies, because the successes in each kind of built on each other. The amount of comeback wins, cavalier football, spectacular goals, fan camaraderie... it really was the perfect season in every way.
2. 1992/93. They say you never forget the first time. After the humiliating scenes at Anfailed the previous year I was starting to think we'd never ever win it. I cried like a baby when we did... and I never dreamed it'd be the first of ten I'd see in my lifetime, let alone in the next 16 seasons!
3. 2006/07. We hadn't won it for a while, and Chelsea looked to have raised the bar impossibly high. Sold Van Nistelrooy, Rooney and Ronaldo were supposedly hating each other after the world cup, and everyone said we hadn't a hope in hell. We showed 'em.
4. 1993/94. For the sheer quality of football. That side were unstoppable.
5. 2007/08. Mightn't stay that high in the long run, but I'm still buzzing. CHAMPIONS!!!!
6. 1995/96. "You won't win anything with kids." Wanna bet, Hansen? The dogged pursuit of Newcastle was particularly memorable - we loved it, loved it!
7. 1999/00. 97 goals and some absolutely breathtaking football. We were really tearing teams to shreds that year. Except when we picked Taibi and the roles were reversed...
8. 2002/03. Wenger - with
one title win - had been talking of a "power shift" in English football; we shifted it back again.
9. 2000/01. Is there such a thing as "just another title"? Never!
10. 1996/97. A bit of a slog, this one, results were more ground out than spectacular. And we lost Cantona at the end of it. Felt like the beginning of the end, rather than the kick on to the next level it actually turned out to be.