Merciful (Manchester United 3 - Birmingham 0)

Maybe it's because it's Steve Bruce's team, or maybe we just lost that ruthless edge, but whatever the case is, we were merciful today. The scoreline could and should easily have overtaken the midweek scoreline Birmingham suffered in the hands of Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter finals (7-0, and yes I caught that game, in fact I caught all the FA cup quarter final games).

The game effectively ended as a contest in the 14th min when Giggs scored our second goal, adding to the first he scored in the 2nd min. After that, we were basically just hoofing the ball over to Birmingham and inviting them to test out our defensing pairing of Vidic and Rio.

I've also noticed that the midfield pairing of JOS and Giggs seems to work pretty well, despite not one of them being a recognised central midfielder. I realised that alot of it boils down to playing Rooney and Saha as the front 2 pairing. Rooney basically plays slightly in front of JOS and Giggs, and Saha actually plays pretty deep despite being the frontmost guy. I noticed in the past few games, he's always been playing deep and making penetrating runs when we do move forward. He acts as the extra midfield, helping the 2 guys in the centre. It's something Ruud is unable to do because he lacks the speed to make a dash forward when we win the possession back. Which probably explains why he started the 4th consecutive game on the bench.

On a sadder note, this is probably going to be Bruce's last game as a manager of Birmingham. I think his players have already thrown in the towel and pretty much a foregone conclusion that Birmingham are going down to the lower division, even though it's not a mathematical certainty. The other sad note is that Brian Robson's West Brom might just join them. As I mentioned some weeks back, Portsmouth is finally starting to gel and playing some terrific soccer. If both Birmingham and West Brom continue not to pick up points, there is a very high possibility that Portsmouth is going to overtake them.

Warning: Not soccer related
Just like to add that Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) are geniuses. In their latest offering, they basically showed the middle finger to that fruity little club, while giving Chef a fitting farewell.

And hail Xenu.