We Need a Left Back.....Badly (Manchester United 2 - Inter Milan 3)

All I can say is that, thankfully, this one's a friendly. Things got off to an ominous start when I had all sorts of trouble finding a reliable feed to watch this game on. In the end I settled for some really crappy Thai feed. It was already bad enough trying to make out the Thai commentary, but things got compounded when the entire feed was lost at half time. Hence I'm only able to review what I saw in the first half.

In front of what looked like a very packed and very vocal Old Trafford crowd, we faced some real competition since the FA Cup finals. Facing Inter was an entirely different prospect from the sub-par opponents we've been playing in Asia in the past month. And it showed.

Our defense was completely and utterly out-played by the Inter forwards. To put it mildly, it was embarassing that this was the best the Premiership had to offer. Rio and Brown were ok, but Vidic and Evra, in particular, were terrible. You would think given the whole Heinze-gate row, Evra would be grabbing the opportunity to seal his position in the left-back spot, instead he totally bungled it.

He was responsible for all three Inter goals (they all happened in the first half when I was watching). For the first goal, Evra failed to cleanly head the ball out of the penalty area allowing Inter to score. His timing to meet the header was horrible, and for a black guy, he didn't seem to get enough lift. In short it was embarassing to see Evra completely botch the defensive header.

For the second goal, Evra was caught in possession which subsequently resulted in the goal.

The third Inter goal was a trademark Evra defensive mistake. He went so far up the opponent's half that he entirely neglected his defensive duties. When Inter attacked, he was literally nowhere to be found. It was easy for Inter to find the open man when the numbers were in their favour.

While Evra was possibly the goat, the entire defense had to take the blame. Brown and Rio were time and time again caught out by Inter's fluid passing. Vidic was a mess, and it didn't help that he had to cover the left back position as well. The guys in front of them, O'Shea and Carrick were rubbish.

The silverlining in all this is that this is still preseason. They can make all the mistakes, but they had better have their heads screwed on the right way in less than a fortnight's time.

Just as our defense is leaky, we're always going to score goals when Ronaldo and Rooney are playing. Along side Giggs and Eagles, we played some amazing one-touch football. The Inter defense worked over-time prevent us from scoring.

Hopefully this game provides a wake up call that we're not going to canter to the finish line this upcoming season. And we need a REAL left back in the worst possible way. I wonder if there is anyway to tempt Denis Irwin out of retirement.....