Review of Manchester United Season Review 2002/03 (2-disc set)

Introduction

Finishing numero uno in the Premiership on 83 points, we get two discs packed full of pretty much everything any self-respecting fan could want. It was the club`s eighth championship win in eleven years following a season plagued with injury and mixed results in the first half of the season. After December the team was back on form following good results in the Champions League and subsequently beat main rivals Arsenal, Newcastle United and Liverpool. It wasn`t a whitewash though and Man Utd had to play better to get ahead of leaders Arsenal and stay there. It was an interesting season for sure!

On this DVD there are interview clips with Alex Ferguson, Phil Neville and Rio Ferdinand amongst others breaking up the flow of watching match after match. If it`s instant access to individual games that you want, you get it. Fixture List lets you select from Premiership, Champions League, FA Cup and Worthington Cup. Within each competition you can select from home or away games and watch the goals in each. It`s very well done.

Bonus Disc - Manchester United, The Premiership Years. This is a 63-minute extra on disc two covers the period between 1992~2002 broken down into ten chunks. You get highlights of the key matches and short interviews from the period.

Video

Presented with a 1.78:1 widescreen enhanced transfer, the quality is variable throughout. The worst it seems to get is some smearing and pixellation, but thankfully it`s not a common occurrence and doesn`t obscure viewing. Colours and detail look good and you can see every goal without problem. It should be noted that the back of the box incorrectly states the aspect ratio as 4:3 fullframe. I was surprised and pleased to see this widescreen transfer and it`s a welcome change from the other fullframe football DVDs.

The bonus DVD is presented with a good quality 4:3 fullframe transfer.

Audio

Nothing fancy in the audio stakes, this is football after all! Plain old Dolby Digital 2.0 gives us exactly what we want, clarity. All the interview footage as well as football video is clear in terms of sound. No problems heard at all.

Like the main disc, the bonus DVD has a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack and it sounds fine.

Features

Easy to navigate animated menus with quite a few extras, all are widescreen enhanced.

• Title Celebrations (8:13) - The team celebrating its Premiership winning on the field isn`t that interesting to watch.

• Ruud`s Goals (11:23) - The man who scored the most goals in the season for the team gets a nice little segment here. He scored a phenomenal 44 goals!!

• Fergie Interview (17:45) - This is an interesting interview covering the season and other aspects of football in general.

• Statistics - layer Appearances table, Final League table, and Goal Scorers table. Great for all you stats fans.

• FA Cup Youth Final (15:40) - Man Utd play Middlesbrough in a good game. This is a good extra as it`s not something you usually see much of and is a welcome supplement.

• www.Manutd.com - A link to the Manchester United website.

Packaged in a slim Amaray case, the inlay features all the fixtures, results and attendance records from all the competitions played in the last season. There are no subtitles.

Conclusion

Manchester United, one of the biggest football clubs around prove why it`s got the skill, the players and the trophies that no other club has. Nistelrooy (44), Scholes (20), Solskjaer (15), Giggs (14) and Beckham (11) are the top 5 goal scorers and watching them play is a delight. Great too on DVD to rewind and watch again. For a non-footie fan like myself I was impressed and enjoyed watching the goals. Very entertaining.

Not just one disc, but two! The bonus DVD is a good extra to have and one that boosts the value of this set. With a total running time of around 183-minutes, this 2-disc DVD represents a good all round package. Recommended.