Late Goals See United Thru (Aston Villa 0 - Manchester United 2)

This game was utterly uninspiring. For a good 80 odd minutes, nothing special really happened.

Ronaldo and Saha were paired upfront forming an odd partnership that was doomed to failure. Saha seems to have aged 10 years since returning from injury. There is no pace in his movement and for large parts of the game seemed unable to keep up with the tempo of the game. Ronaldo, on the other hand, was a winger converted to a striker and it showed, especially with a partner who couldn't keep up with him.

It didn't help matters that Carrick looked absolutely rubbish today. Whenever he touched the ball, the sting in attack just seems to fizzle. I know he's noted for his telling passes, but when he doesn't connect (which was probably all the time today), he looks very ordinary. It's hard to see how in the bloody world we paid 17 million pounds for him.

The silver lining in today's game was that Villa were equally woeful. Maybe it was just good defending on our part. Villa rarely threatened.

That all said, the game was full of cut and thrust, yet at the same time without much excitement to go around.

In the end, we still managed to score 2 goals in the last 10 minutes to continue our proud record playing at Villa Park in the FA Cup. The first goal was supplied by Giggs down the left flank. His pass eluded the Villa defense and found Ronaldo rushing into the box.

The second was a powerful strike by substitute, Rooney after Ronaldo's inital attempt had been blocked.

No doubt it was little cruel to Villa to fall in such fashion after the game was heading towards a bore draw, but in the end it was United who show a greater desire to progress into the next round.

One thing's for sure, we've not been playing up to our lofty standards for quite sometime. Unless we address the issue, I have a feeling it's going to come back to bite us in the behind someday.