United Sweeps Aside Kiev to Progress (Manchester United 4 - Dynamo Kiev 0)

It was a convincing 4-0 victory to see United into the knockout stages. And it was well worth it braving the rain in the middle of the night to catch the game with Kentona at the kopitiam near where I live.

The first half was a pretty dormant affair with little excitement, but somehow we managed to get a 2-0 lead.

Pique, who had his first start in the CL in place of Rio, opened the scoring in the 30th min with a rather fortuitious goal. The ball had rebounding off a blatantly off-side Tevez before he headed it into the Kiev net. While the build up was lucky, take nothing away from Pique's header which was well placed past the keeper.

The second goal 7 mins later brought back memories of when the soul brothers played together. Tevez stripped a Kiev midfielder of the ball and received a give-and-go from Tevez to find himself one on one with the keeper. He had the simple task of blasting the ball to give us a 2-0 lead going into the half time break. We didn't create many chances in the half, but the lead was well deserved since we had almost complete control of the game.

The second half was a much better affair. Kiev came out of the blocks with a purpose and had it not been for substitute, Kuszczak's brilliant saves, we would have had a hard battle on our hands.

Instead it was United who went further in front thru Rooney in the 76th minute. And Ronaldo finished off a demoralised Kiev with a brilliant individual goal.

Personally, I felt Ronaldo had a pretty piss poor game. He spent too much time trying to showboat when we were 2-0 up, which I thought was unnecessary and rather insulting to the opponents. We had beaten them rather comprehensively and there was no need to add insult to injury. I suppose if there is one thing I would love to see him improve on is this.

Overall it was a competent display and the scoreline reflected our dorminance although Kiev did threaten in very short spurts.

With Roma and Sporting drawing in the other game in this group, we've progressed into the knockout stage.

Knowing Fergie, I'm pretty sure he's going to start using this opportunity to start resting players. I would rather we go all out to win at least one of the next two games to ensure that we qualify as the top dog from the group. I remember vividly that we were in a similar position a few years back and we went on to fuck up the next two matches, and more importantly, lost the top spot in the group, thus facing a stronger than expected opponent in the next stage. I believe it was the season where we faced Real Madrid and lost out to a brilliant Ronaldo (the fat one) hat-trick. That one was a fucking nightmare.

Let's hope someone has learnt his lesson and not start taking things for granted.