United Thru To The Quarters

Manchester United 1- Lyon 0
Scorers
Manchester United : Ronaldo (40)

Team : Van der Sar, Evra, Vidic, Rio, Brown, Fletcher, Carrick, Nani, Anderson (Tevez 70), Ronaldo (Hargreaves 90), Rooney

We're never going to win the Champions League. There, I said it.

Despite having, perhaps, the best squad to compete for the holy grail, we're going to be let down by a brain dead coaching staff. For some inexplicable reason we went to a 4-5-1 formation while playing at home. Suffice to say, we were simply wretched. Had Lyon played anywhere near the potential they were able to, we would have been duely punished.

Well, at least there is a silverlining here. Whichever team we face in the quarters is going to be infinitely better than the French. I would love to see the bewildered looks on both Fergie and Queiroz when we underachieve in Europe yet again.

There's nothing very much to say about the game itself. Putting out a 4-5-1 simply sucked the entertainment out of the game. Ronaldo scored a scrappy goal at the end of the first half to give us the lead. Given how we played, I'm not even sure we deserved a goal.

After holding out a very inept Lyon frontline, we switched to a 4-4-2, by introducing Tevez in place of Anderson. Immediately the game opened up. We began to exploit the space in front of us but our finishing let us down, leaving a nervous end to the game.

The difference was huge between the 2 formations. If Fergie and company cannot see it, then they must be blind. I can barely understand playing a 4-5-1 in an away fixture, but to play it in a home leg is simply unacceptable. This is the leg we are supposed to put our opponents away.

Without sounding like a broken record, I'm just going to part with this saying 'Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.'