United On Fire

Uefa Champions League, Group E - Man Utd v Villarreal
Venue: Old Trafford Date: Wednesday, 17 September Kick-off: 1945 BST

Just time for a very short preview today.  United have to bounce back from the defeat to Liverpool on Saturday with a good win against Villarreal in the Champions League.  Last night both Liverpool and Chelsea won, so it is even more important to get a morale boosting win before the game at Stanford Bridge.

Scholes is suspended following the Super Cup, Carrick is out with a broken foot and Berbatov is a doubt with knee trouble (I hope Dimitar isn’t a direct replacement for Louis Saha in the injury department as well).  However, tonight could see the return of Christiano Ronaldo after an operation and a summer of transfer rumoured discontent.  Virrarreal will be without ex-United player Giuseppe Rossi who would have received an excellent reception from the United crowd.

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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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Manchester United 1 (Ronaldo 41) Lyon 0

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.

Shortly before half time, Wes Brown put in an excellent cross, from which Anderson’s cross was blocked but Ronaldo pounced on the loose ball, make space and finished far too hard for Coupet to get to.

This wasn’t the best game there ever was, but this was as much Lyon’s fault as much as United’s.  For all the hype of Benzema, Lyon didn’t threaten enough.  This was despite Alex Ferguson’s very odd midfield selection of Anderson, Carrick and Fletcher.  With Ronaldo and Nani on the wings; this just didn’t work.  Anderson, despite not having his best game was the most effective, inventive of the three.  Fletcher and Carrick was anonymous for most parts of the game.  Ronaldo and Nani, whilst providing pace were too wasteful when in possession.  Rooney did sterling work up front but was isolated until Tevez came on.  The saving grace was the defence, solid and dependable, all of them.

Lyon ended the game with four strikers but it was telling that United had far more chances to score once Tevez came on.  Both Rooney and Ronaldo missed good chances to finish the game, whilst at the other end Leita hit the post with a shot that beat Van Der Sar.

United move onto the quarter finals and a possible meeting with Arsenal who knocked out AC Milan, beating the holders 2-0 in the San Siro.

Image Ronaldo, originally uploaded by chuffy

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Due to a calendar malfunction, I’ll be away for this game.  I forgot to add the FA Cup tie dates into my diary.  I’m concentrating on the league and europe this season, ok?  Anyway, hopefully I’ll be able to find a TV screen in a pub or something up in Edinburgh to watch the game.  However, the omens are not good, on my previous visit to Edinburgh on a stag do, I watched Arsenal clinch the 98 title.  Amongst others, Tony Adams scored a cracker against Everton and I knew it was all over for that season.  Might have been earlier that 98, come to think of it, but I don’t tend to remember the seasons when Arsenal won the league.  I don’t remember too much of that stag do either, but that’s another matter.

Speaking of boozing, on a completely unrelated note, honestly, it’s sad to see Bryan Robson got relieved of his duties at Sheffield United.  Captain Fantastic was once down as a future United manager, but surely his career as a manager must be over now.

FA Cup 5th round and United are at home to Arsenal.  After the last two poor performances, United get back to form otherwise the Gunners will knock us out.  Having thought about the derby defeat, aside from missing Rooney the main problem was that United had nothing at all in midfield.  Ronaldo, Nani and Giggs cannot play in the same team at the same time.  Scholes and Anderson didn’t work as a central midfield pairing.  Scholes and Carrick we know works.  Hargreaves and Anderson works.  I think Scholes and Hargreaves would work as well and that would be my first choice for the remainder of this season and long time for Anderson to replace Scholes.

Tevez needs to play alongside someone.  Dunne and Richards totally bossed him, which I don’t think would be the case if Rooney had played.  So we lost out in midfield and up front.  Oh, and our defence had a shocker too.  We were lucky it was only 2-1 in retrospect.

Let’s hope for better against Arsenal and we’ll scrape through to the 6th round and dent Arsenal’s confidence in the process.

Any other United fans have a heart attack when they read about Ronaldo being out for 9 months and possibly having a career ending injury?  I breathed a lot easier when the news sites altered the headlines to “Milan’s Ronaldo ….”

And finally, what are the copycats at Liverpool up to?  Only starting an AFC Liverpool.   Now, forgive me if I’m wrong but didn’t the Anfield mob initially welcome their American owners with open arms?  It doesn’t look good when you then say “oh, but it turns out they are shite so we’ll bugger off”.  At least FC United were opposed to Glazer from the start.  I used to own a piece of Manchester United, but the Glazers took it against my will.

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Quote of the season comes from the mouth of Sunderland manager, Roy Keane :-

‘The Irish job?’ He gives me a look. And says nothing. Which is a shame, because when Eamon Dunphy asked him if he might one day be player-manager of Ireland he replied magnificently: ‘Yeah! Nobody would play for me but we’d have great facilities.’

This is at serious odds with Dunphy’s latest comments that Keane is a “rent-a-quote” manager :-

“But now he holds these lengthy press conferences every week in which he anoints David O’Leary to be the next Ireland manager, anoints Terry Venables to be the next Ireland manager.

“He talks about how wonderful it is for the Premier League to play games abroad and he’s just become rent-a-quote. It’s quite extraordinary,” Dunphy told the Pat Kenny show on Ireland’s RTE channel.

The thing is that a Premiership manager’s job is one long press conference (unless you are Alex Ferguson who can just do what the hell he likes because he is Sir Alex and doesn’t give a damn) where you are asked the same questions over and over and over again.

You can either waste you life taking each journalist seriously or just deal with it with platitudes and simple ciche “we are facing a struggle, but we’re up to it and taking each game one day at a time”. I know what I’d rather have my manager concentrating on and it isn’t some crappy hack. Dunphy should know better.

Also, people complain that Michael Carrick is a rent-a-quote, always in the press. They should realise that he is probably the designated commentator this season and he was probably chosen because he can speak fairly articulately (for a footballer) and has had some training. Don’t blame him for being the one coming out with the obvious comments, just blame the press for asking the same questions over and over again.

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