United Wakes Up In Time To Dump Spurs

Manchester United 3 - Tottenham 1

Scorers
Manchester United : Tevez 37, Ronaldo 69 (pen), 88
Tottenham : Keane 24

Team : Edwin Van der Sar, Evra (Simpson 90), Rio, Brown, O'Shea, Hargreaves, Carrick (Scholes 64), Giggs , Ronaldo, Tevez (Anderson 80), Rooney

I don't even know where to begin. Despite the scoreline, we were shit for very long periods in the game. Had it not been for individual errors for Spurs, they fully deserved to go thru in to the 3rd round of the FA Cup. But football is a cruel game.

The run up to today's game couldn't have been any more different. We spent a couple of days in the sun in Saudi Arabia playing some meaningless game, while pocketing a million pounds for our greedy American owners. While Fergie and his croonies argue that it's a good break from the cold, we all know it's greed at play. As a football club, we've fucking sold our souls to the devil. No two ways about it. We can't even have a decent tribute to the Busby Babes without having our sponsor somehow wiggling their logo in.

Spurs, on the other hand, came to Old Trafford with their tails up, after giving a pretty decent Arsenal team a good old-fashion thrashing at midweek.

And our different run up to the game showed. Spurs were sharper, hungrier and quicker to the ball, while United were busy thinking of the sun and the sand in Saudi. Evra, in particular, was horribly exposed time and time again by Lennon. Without Vidic to support him, Lennon game him a torrid time and it wasn't surprising that Lennon supplied the cross that resulted in the game's opening goal.

Lennon whisked past Evra and hit a grounder across the face of goal. Brown and, in particular, Rio were caught napping, allowing Keane a simple tap in. Suddenly we realise just how important Vidic is. Without him in the centre, everyone gets exposed for just how horrible they are at doing their job. And this happened throughout the entire game. It was just due to unlucky finishing, that we survived by the skin of our teeth.

United pressed forward in search of the equalizer but Spurs dealt with everything we threw at them rather comfortably. In the 37th minute, we did get a breakthru. The makeshift Spurs defense made their first mistake by not clearing the ball and Giggs held off his defender, giving enough time for Tevez to smash the ball into the net.

The scores were level but Spurs still had the better exchanges. Just before half time and just after the break, Spurs could've and should've gone in front when on both occasions, Jenas was one on one with Van der Sar. Thankfully both chances fell to Jenas who scuffed them both. Had it been for someone with more composure, we would have been staring defeat in the face.

The game was balanced on a knife's edge. We poured forward looking for the winner while Spurs looked terribly dangerous on the counter. Given the way we have been defending on the day, you could almost see Spurs hitting us with a counter punch. On the other side of the ground, we simply couldn't deliver the final pass.

Yet despite all that, we went in front. Dawson inexplicably handled the ball in the penalty area. The referee had no choice but to send him off and award United a penalty. Ronaldo took it and put United in front. It was definitely not deserved, but I'll take any crumbs that fall my way.

The sending off seemed to have galvanized Spurs. For the rest of the game, they were the much better side. They controlled the pace and tempo, stringing passes together and almost drawing level five minutes from time when Berbatov's effort came off the post.

That effort probably took the sting away from Spurs and minutes later, Ronaldo was given the room to roam and his strike somehow wiggled it's way under Cerny and into the goal. 3-1 up and it was game, set and match.

We were pretty terrible for most of the game but managed to wake up at crucial moments. Fergie and his coaching staff have plenty of work to do as the games are coming in thick and fast.

We would be facing Pompey in midweek and on paper should be an easy home game, considering almost half of their first teamers are away in Africa. But we're United, and for some reason this season, we tend to make things difficult for ourselves.