United On Fire

Manchester United 0 Portsmouth 1 (Muntari 78 pen)

There is a bright side to this weekend.

• Chelsea got knocked out as well.
• We helped make the most interesting (for the neutral fan) FA Cup in years.
• It was a cup game and doesn’t affect our league pursuit.
• Arsenal dropped 2 points to Wigan meaning that if we win our game in hand, we’ll go top.
• City lost again.

However, it can’t mask all the bad points from the game.

• With Chelsea going out, we’d have surely won the cup
• City fans probably would have taken us losing over their team winning. They’re bitter like that
• It makes the 4-0 over Arsenal rather pointless
• If Van Der Sar has a long term injury and Kuszczak is suspended, who will play in goal for our next game?  Is Foster fit enough?
• Fergie ranting about referee Atkinson. Sure, we should have got a penalty early on, but it shouldn’t have mattered
• I’ve never seen a player walk the ball as close to the line as Carrick did and not score.
• Kuszczak (spill impossible to spell) isn’t up to standard and gave away the penalty far too easy

Where do we go from here?  Well back to the league and taking our game in hand and getting back into top spot.  There is quite a small part of me that is quite happy we are out of the FA Cup as there will be two (or more or less) less games to play this season.  The rest of me is just annoyed the double treble has gone.

Popularity: 17% [?]

It’s back to the FA Cup after the win in the Champions League against Lyon. Portsmouth come back to Old Trafford shortly after losing in Manchester comprehensively a short time ago in the league.

The good thing about playing all these Premier League teams is that we’ve had to put out fairly strong sides each time and not suffered what I call Reserve Team Syndrome like we did in the Carling Cup. It has also helped that most of the games have been at home.

Apart from long term absences (admit it; you completely forget we had Michael Silvestre, didn’t you? also admit that a shiver went through you when you realised he might play for us again) we have everyone fit, including Ryan Giggs and even Louis Saha. Fergie will role his special midfield picking dice and go for Anderson and Hargreaves.
Rooney won’t mind when he is put back on the bench.

Portsmouth are in a reasonable run of form but Jermaine Defoe is cup tied and he has scored 3 of the 5 goals Portsmouth have scored since playing us.

Prediction: 2-0 to United, one of the goals producing one of the following :-

Popularity: 16% [?]

This one will live long in the memory even if it was watched from a hotel bedroom. I managed to get to the hotel just in time, but spent ages checking in, getting into the room and trying to find the on switch for the TV. Got it turned on and it was still 0-0, United had a corner and bang 1-0 up, the perfect start.

The perfect start led to a brilliant game where United totally dominated Arsenal in a way that only usually happens in your dreams. If United had put away all their chances … 10-0 ? Probably not, but that was such the dominance we had. Oddly, Arsenal were completely inept in defence. Rooney is not the best target man in the world, but United would play a simple long ball up to him and it would case absolute havoc in the Arsenal defence.

United rested Ronaldo, Tevez, Giggs, Scholes and Hargreaves but Arsenal did rest some of their players too, notably Adebayor, their main player. They offered nothing up front, lacked any passion in midfield and were abject in defence. I can’t see that carrying on onto their next league game.

Darren Fletcher had a superb game and should be given more opportunities based on his performance, and if it proved anything, we rely totally on Wayne Rooney at the moment, not Ronaldo. 4 days on from the game and without taking any notes during the game, I don’t want to comment anymore on United. They responded to the defeat against City really well and should push Arsenal all the way until the end of the season.

I will add one thing about Arsenal, however. The horror tackle from Eboue that saw him get a red was just one of a number of incidents in the second half from the Arsenal side that was downright nasty and shows once again that Wenger cannot control his players, or perhaps even encourages it. Gallas and others on Nani was particularly disgusting. Nani showed great skill, that was a little bit in the way of a showboat, but it was a very clever way of using skill to evade his marker. His reward from an Arsenal team that is supposed to be about the “beautiful game” was a lunging tackle and minutes later a blatant kick off the ball, that should have resulted in a red card, or a suspension for Gallas using video evidence. Once again, the Premier League took no action.

Popularity: 37% [?]

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.

Popularity: 27% [?]

It’s international football weekend (as well as the Rugby World Cup and England v India in International Cricket) and, lets face it, watching England play is as much fun as watching Chelsea grind out the inevitable 1-0 win; without the inevitable 1-0 win.

So, I want to take you the other way. Last Saturday, FC United played their first game in the FA Cup, beating Trafford 5-2. If you want a feel of what a “real” English football atmosphere is like watch this FC United Video from Altrincham’s Moss Lane.

FA Cup FC United first ever match from biffadigital and Vimeo.

Coming from Timperley myself, I have some interestingly vague memories of Moss Lane and this video brought it all back.

I’d recommend you subscribe to the Biffafootie blog if you like getting a real ground eye level of watching Manchester United (and FC United) as there are regular video updates of going to Old Trafford.

Popularity: 19% [?]