Scholes' Moment of Madness Costs United (Roma 2 - Manchester United 1)

The bad news is that we lost the game, and lost Scholes for the second leg. The good news is that we're still in with a shout. Given the circumstances, we were lucky to come away from this fixture with an away goal and only one goal down.

Roma were by far the better team right from the go get. They were inventive and vibrant, often catching our make-shift defence off guard. Even with 11 men on the pitch, it was just a matter of time before Roma scored. They were that much hungrier.

Of course the turning point happened when Scholes was booked a second time in the 33th minute, and was sent off. Already playing badly, it just made things so much worst for United. To be fair, Scholes was utterly horrendous in his tackles today. Hard the referee been much stricter, he should have gone for an earlier shower. His timing today was just so off that it was painful to watch.

Roma scored right at the break, making their man advantage count. To be honest, given the way Roma approached the game, they deserved it. It didn't matter if we had the full complement on the pitch. They simply outplayed us in every department.

Th second half was more of the same. Then right on the hour mark, Ronaldo took the ball from our half, dribbled past a couple of Roma players and fed the ball to Ole on the right edge of the Roma penalty area. A peek up, and a delightful cross found Rooney on the other side of the area. And all that was left to do was to shoot the ball past the keeper which Rooney did with both power and precision. It was a magificient goal. Counter-attack at it's best.

Much has been said about Rooney's and Ronaldo's lack of goals in Europe. While Rooney has answered his critics somewhat, I don't really give a shit what they say about Ronaldo. He has learnt to create for his teammates. There's absolutely no doubts in my mind that he's the best player on the planet, bar none.

Our equaliser stunned the Rome crowd into silence, but the parity was shortlived. 7 minutes later, Roma edged into the lead again. Again, nothing more than they deserved. A long goal-bound shot was parried weakly by Van der Sar into the path of Roma substitute Vucinic, who shot home the rebound. It wasn't an easy shot, but he did it with such class.

For the rest of the game, we were constantly under seige but somehow managed to keep the scoreline manageable for the second leg. At least we managed to dig deep after the piss poor showing in the first half to make a game out of it in the second.

We need to win the second leg and keep a clean sheet at OT. If we play anything like we did today, you can be sure we're going to make our exit from the Champions League.....which quite frankly isn't such a bad thing. Given the fixture congestion and the fact we're been piss poor in Europe anyway, it could very well be a good kick up our collective backsides.

The best teams in Europe impose their will and style in the games they play. We're obviously not anything near there yet. Our performances in Europe have been tame so far, and there's a clear sign from the management team that they do not trust the players to play the way we do in the EPL. How many times have we seen a tactical change in our style of play when we play European games in the past few years? Until we do stick with our style of play, it's going to take a momentous effort to lift the trophy again. Personally I'm hoping it would be this season given the route we've been shown, but hope and reality are poles apart here. That being said, I've my ketchup and chilli sauces on standby to eat some serious crow.

Talking Points:

• Crowd trouble at half time. There were some horrible scene of the Italian police using batons on United fans. Not too sure what exactly happened, except the unsavoury scenes happened right after Roma scored their first goal. My guesss is that there was a clash between the fans that got out of hand.
• Offical protest by United against the first Roma goal. Apparently when the corner was taken, prior to the goal, there was another ball on the pitch. Having seen the replay, it was really much ado over nothing. A weak protest at best.
• Hero at the weekend, zero today. Scholes really needs to stop thinking he's Keano. Some of the challeges out there were obscene. I'm glad the referee took him out. He was giving away freekicks at the edge of the area, and it would have been a matter of time before Roma actually made one count, having come close.