Problems indeed. United is struggling with form just at the time of year when it used to be most powerful. Its team Saturday contained Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, all in their mid-30s. The draining experience of playing, and losing, in Munich on Tuesday weighed heavily in the limbs, and, seemingly, the minds, of United’s team.

Chelsea’s owner would have preferred the Champions League, but his rich players had nothing else to do all week but concentrate on United.

By winning, Chelsea took the lead in the domestic race, with just five games to go. By losing, United confirms a disturbing habit. It has lost seven times in England this season — five of those directly following games in the Champions League. And while in this most unpredictable season in England the leadership has changed 20 times already, no club has been the champion after losing seven times in the season.

These are changed times. It used to be Italian teams that were sapped by attempting domestic and European duality in the same week, and it was the English who appeared to thrive on it.

Now, with Italy’s Carlo Ancelotti coaching Chelsea, and with so many foreign players performing in English soccer, the old certainties are fading.

United might yet overcome Bayern at Old Trafford on Wednesday. But an injury to Wayne Rooney in the first game in Munich has certainly affected United’s attacking threat and its all-around confidence.

In great teams, of course, this should never be. However, Rooney has scored 34 goals in 40 matches this season and as he sat behind glass in a private box at the stadium Saturday, his absence was manifest.

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Dimitar Berbatov, a Bulgarian who cost just shy of $50 million — roughly the same as Rooney — is not remotely the same player. Berbatov has ability and guile, and a languid style of performance. Rooney has bulldog determination to win every game.

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Three times Berbatov had difficult headed chances to score, three times he missed. He is more comfortable with the ball at his feet, but he mis-hit a volley that Rooney would probably have put past the goalkeeper.

The defining moment came instead from Malouda as he created the early goal that defined the pattern of the contest. Here is a player on fire, an athlete whose talent was spotted playing street soccer in Cayenne, in French Guiana, and taken to Châteauroux in France when he was 16.

From an early friendship with Drogba, through moves to Guingamp, then Lyon and then Chelsea in 2007, Malouda’s talents slowly matured. At Chelsea, he needed someone to trust in him, to let him settle in one position.

Five managerial changes in three years hardly helped that process. He was picked as a winger, a fullback, a wing back, a second striker.

Finally, he pleaded with Coach Ancelotti for a chance to express himself in one role, as a left winger. Ancelotti was straight with him: Malouda would have that chance, but he had to take it.

The Frenchman repaid that trust with four goals in two games before Saturday.

On Saturday, he danced down the wing at Old Trafford. With the ball at his command, with strides as rhythmical as they are strong, he went past Antonio Valencia and then Darren Fletcher.

It wasn’t simply a matter of quickness. Both opponents attempted to charge Malouda and both bounced off him. When Malouda sensed the moment to release the ball, his low pass into the goalmouth was met by Joe Cole, who scored with an impudent flick across the line.

Consider the nationalities involved in those few seconds: Malouda is a Frenchman, Valencia is Ecuadorian, Fletcher is a Scot, Cole an Englishman, and Edwin van der Sar, the beaten goalkeeper, is Dutch.

So the outstanding moments of the top game in England combined five nationalities. No one knows where the title will end up next month, but Chelsea has beaten United home and away, beaten Arsenal home and away, and won at home against Liverpool.

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Chelsea still has to visit Anfield Stadium to face Liverpool on May 1. Malouda’s magic, and Chelsea’s collective response to an owner’s jibe, might be definitively answered there.