(http://www.themanchesterunited.com/)  The latest international break means Premier League action will resume on October 18th with still unbeaten duo Chelsea and Liverpool having established a three-point gap at the top of the table - over third-placed Hull City, remarkably. Arsenal are four points behind the front two, and Manchester United (with a game in hand) trail by six. United, though, will be delighted to have followed up an emphatic away victory over Aalborg in the Champions League by producing their most convincing performance so far this season in the Premier League, beating old boy Paul Ince’s Blackburn Rovers 2-0 at Ewood Park with goals from Wes Brown (albeit with namesake Jason, the Rovers keeper,

being impeded by United’s Nemanja Vidic at the time) and Wayne Rooney, who profited from an electric burst of pace and perfectly weighted pass by Cristiano Ronaldo. With Carlos Tevez also hitting the woodwork as the Red Devils swept to a fourth consecutive victory, the champions look to be settling nicely into their stride at last.Leaders Chelsea, of course, hit the ground running from the start, and Luiz Felipe Scolari can take credit for seemingly making a good team significantly better, and certainly easier on the eye. Aston Villa had arrived at Stamford Bridge in third place on the back of an impressive sequence of results, but Chelsea never looked for a minute like losing their four-and-a-half-year old unbeaten home record in the League, with goals from Joe Cole and Nicolas Anelka putting the issue beyond doubt in the first half.

Scolari was without the services of such key talents as Ricardo Carvalho, Alex, Michael Essien, Deco and Didier Drogba, yet still played with the sort of freedom rarely seen under the reigns of Jose Mourinho or Avram Grant. Villa manager Martin O‘Neill, who wants Villa to be up there challenging the top four, had to admit that Chelsea played exceptionally well while his team didn‘t. In fact Brazilian coach Scolari thought that, in the circumstances, it was the best performance from the Blues all season; certainly it sent out a strong message to all would-be title rivals.

Nevertheless, Liverpool have been matching Chelsea stride for stride so far, and if their performances have been less compelling, the manner of their victory on Sunday will have given Rafa Benitez and his players huge satisfaction and sent self-belief coursing through the squad. At half-time, with Chelsea two-up at home and the Merseyside Reds trailing 0-2 at Manchester City, it looked odds-on that the London side would be putting clear blue water between themselves and the rest come 5 o’clock.

But Liverpool summoned priceless reserves of character and grit to battle back into it, Fernando Torres cancelling out earlier strikes from Stephen Ireland and Javier Garrido before Dirk Kuyt completed the perfect comeback in injury time to secure all three points from what had seemed a lost cause. Those are the sort of fighting qualities that can help forge the steel of a title challenge, and while the inconsistency of City’s work-in-progress was exposed, confidence will be bubbling at Anfield ahead of the upcoming challenges against Atletico Madrid and, intriguingly, Chelsea.

Inconsistency and comeback were also words you could apply to the fourth member of the Big Four, Arsenal - though while their fight-back also reflected spirit and determination, it yielded a solitary point at the Stadium of Light, where Sunderland had got their tactics spot-on and frustrated the Gunners before threatening to ruin their weekend entirely with an 86th minute thunderbolt from Grant Leadbitter. Cesc Fabregas ensured another costly defeat was avoided with an unaccustomed header deep into stoppage-time, but Arsenal are living on the edge, a defeat, win and draw in the space of a week underlining their loss of momentum.

While question-marks remain about the Gunners’ title credentials, their neighbours and arch-enemies Tottenham are faring so much worse. Winless Spurs are staggering under the weight of the rest of the League in bottom place, enduring their most miserable start to a campaign since the year the Titanic went down, and with the hitherto lauded Juande Ramos looking like the helpless skipper of a sinking ship at the moment. Tottenham fans are beginning to turn against the Spaniard, Daniel Comolli and chairman Daniel Levy as another season that was supposed to herald a breakthrough has already dissolved into one needing urgent salvation.

In truth Spurs did not play that badly on Sunday, and hit the woodwork twice. But as Arsenal discovered a week earlier, Premier League new-boys Hull City are revelling in their first taste of top-flight football, and with the shooting of Geovanni in their armoury, they are merrily pricking others’ pretensions. For Hull fans - and surely for many neutrals - it is both unprecedented and sensational to see the Tigers riding as high as third. It may prove hard to sustain for Phil Brown and his squad, but so far there is no question they are up their on merit.

Another of the newly-promoted teams, West Bromwich Albion, are acquitting themselves well too. The Baggies won the Championship title last season with a cultured, attacking brand of football, and Tony Mowbray’s team are beginning to find their feet at the higher level. They achieved back-to-back Premier League victories for the first time in a long time when beating Fulham at the weekend thanks to Roman Bednar’s goal. Albion are up to ninth but Roy Hodgson will be concerned that the Cottagers, after a bright start to the season, have lost four games on the trot in all competitions and slipped to 17th place - far too close to where they spent most of last term. Hodgson has said he hopes the tide turns soon; it needs to.

Below Fulham, in 19th, are the other promoted club - Stoke City - who are struggling, with one win to their name so far despite not yet having been seriously outclassed. In Rory Delap’s long-throw they have a potent weapon that few teams relish trying to defend against; but their attacking threat needs more than one dimension: although the tactic brought their goal against Portsmouth on Sunday, converted by Ricardo Fuller, Stoke still lost as the long and the short of Pompey’s strike-force, Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe, plundered a goal apiece. The 2-1 win completed a great week for Harry Redknapp’s team at home and abroad - and meant the two strikers had netted six between them in three games, form that earned them a call-up into Fabio Capello‘s England squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Kazakhstan and Belarus.

One of those places was at the expense of the striker hailed for a decade as England’s least expendable, Michael Owen. At least Owen could console himself that his club Newcastle’s post-Keegan rot was halted with a stirring fight-back at Everton. The Magpies, under the guidance for the first time of Joe Kinnear, he of the limited if expressive vocabulary, fell two goals behind in the first half as Everton threatened to banish their own Uefa Cup exit blues with some bright football. But Steven Taylor pulled one back on the stroke of half-time, and Kinnear perhaps mined his seam of expletives at the break to inspire the completion of a battling comeback. It was a disappointing outcome for the Toffees, who are 15th, but for Newcastle, who’d endured four straight defeats in the wake of King Kev’s departure, the point was a ray of sunshine amid the gloom of farce and despair that Mike Ashley’s reign has collapsed into.

For one of the Magpies’ North-East neighbours, though, the weekend was even better. Middlesbrough went to the JJB Stadium with Wigan manager Steve Bruce claiming the Latics had now established themselves as a Premier League force after some encouraging results. Ex-Boro midfielder Lee Cattermole, now at Wigan, had also predicted that England winger Stewart Downing would soon be leaving Teesside for a bigger club. But Gareth Southgate’s side stayed focused on the job in hand and triumphed thanks to an 89th minute goal - supplied by Downing, converted by Jeremie Aliadiere - to clinch their first away win of 2008.

Bolton Wanderers also won away for the first time this season, in the process inflicting on West Ham their first home defeat of the campaign. Hammers keeper Robert Green gifted the Trotters their first two with a couple of howlers, and Matty Taylor produced a screamer for the third after Carlton Cole had given Gianfranco Zola’s side hope. The credit crunch is beginning to bite at the Boleyn Ground - the Hammers lost their shirt sponsors, XL, a few weeks ago, and since the Bolton defeat have been forced to admit they will have to sell players before they can buy any new ones because owner Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is a major shareholder in Iceland’s Landsbanki, which went into receivership on Tuesday.

Such developments, accompanied by dire warnings of the perils of indebtedness from Fifa president Sepp Blatter and FA chairman Lord Triesman, provide a sombre backdrop to the Premier League as its best players go off on international duty until the middle of next week.

But when the action resumes no doubt all attention will be focused on the pitch again, with Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United hosting Everton, Wigan and West Brom, respectively, while Chelsea travel to Middlesbrough. Hull will entertain West Ham and Spurs will strive for their first win of the season against Stoke in the Potteries. Newcastle, seeking a buyer, will be looking for home points against Manchester City, who were recently bought. Blackburn are at Bolton in a Lancashire derby, while Sunderland are at Fulham and Portsmouth at Aston Villa.

All the managers concerned will be keeping their fingers crossed that their international stars return from various World Cup qualifiers unscathed, while Scolari will no doubt take out extra insurance with a timely prayer.