Liverpool 2 (Brown 27 og, Babel 77) Manchester United 1 (Tevez 2)
Robbie Keane shields the ball from Rio Ferdinand
A combination of good Liverpool pressing and woeful defending meant it was a bad day at the office for Fergie and his United team.
United’s mediocre start to the season continued, and on this showing it won’t start until a certain Portuguese bloke returns to the team.
It didn’t look very bad at after 2 minutes when Dimitar Berbatov’s United career got off to a great start. Seemingly from nothing, Berbatov was able to get past the Liverpool defence but took the ball too wide for a direct shot. Instead he pulled the ball back for the oncoming Carlos Tevez who placed the ball expertly into the net.
This shocked Liverpool a bit understandably and it took twenty minutes to get into the match, but when they did, United didn’t have the ability to cope. Worryingly, it was a mistake in our formidable defence that allowed Liverpool to equalize. Van der Saar seems to have caught a severe case of the wobbles. He came for a cross and misjudged the flight of the ball. He ended up overreaching for it and was only able to palm it away. Nightmarishly, he palmed it onto the knee of Wes Brown who saw the ball fly back into the net.
United never recovered. An injury to Carrick saw him and the team limp through to half time, where I had misguided thoughts that we could get back into the game. However, Liverpool dominated the second half and United didn’t get much of a look in. About the best chance came to Giggs who had come on for Carrick. His long range shot was wonderful, but just to central and Reina was able to save it.
The whole United defence was a wobbly and I think that Patrice Evra never recovered properly from a clash of heads in the first half. He looked dazed and confused immediately afterwards with the referee checking he was alright, and he seemed a bit out of it the whole game.
Liverpool’s winner came from the left, but it was Ryan Giggs at fault not Evra. He failed to deal with a ball on his own goal line; neither putting it out nor shielding the ball properly. Mascherano was able to take the ball off him and cross back to Babel who was able to bounce the ball into the net.
United didn’t have time to get an equalizer, but Vidic had time to commit two yellow card offenses and get sent off. The first could probably have been a straight red as he was more or less the last man. He’ll now miss the Chelsea game and with our defence in the poor form it is, he’ll be really missed.
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That boy Ronaldo, he scored again. For the 30th time this season, to be precise. It was enough to make the last 10 minutes a little tense instead of unbearably unwatchable.