Did Manchester United's website take a dive?

With England's big name stars underperforming on the football pitch last night against Australia it seems fitting that some of the country's big name clubs should be struggling online - with Manchester United making particularly heavy-weather of things.

Statistics provided by Keynote revealed that over the past month United's website has laboured at a pedestrian average of 5.36 seconds to download. This compared to online high-flyers Chelsea who claimed top spot in silicon.com's monthly league table with an impressive 0.2 seconds.

Other big names languishing in the bottom half of the table are Liverpool (4.46 seconds) and Arsenal (4.48 seconds) in twelfth and thirteenth positions respectively.

However it appears there may well be something rotten in Manchester as United's local rivals City also struggled throughout the month, and occupy last place in the table, registering an average time of 5.88 seconds. This is not the first time Manchester United have been down the 'wrong end' of the table. In last month's league table the Red Devils were rock bottom and have occupied similar positions all season - barely managing to break the four-second barrier.

However, at the other end of table Leeds are enjoying better luck online than on grass, with a sparkling 0.72 seconds which leaves them in second place.

"This year's surprise package" Everton are also continuing in the same rich vein of form which saw them claim top spot in last year's online Premiership. The Toffees recorded an average time of 1.66 seconds to claim third spot.

The full table looks like this:

1. Chelsea 0.2 2. Leeds 0.72 3. Everton 1.66 4. Aston Villa 2.04 5. Sunderland 2.74 6. Charlton 3.16 7. Blackburn 3.31 8. Tottenham 3.53 9. Newcastle 3.99 10. Southampton 4.2 11. West Ham 4.27 12. Liverpool 4.46 13. Arsenal 4.48 14. Fulham 4.5 15. Bolton 4.85 16. Manchester United 5.36 17. Manchester City 5.88

*No data was available this month for West Brom, Birmingham or Middlesbrough.