Macheda - The New Ole

Sunderland 1 - Manchester United 2
Scorers
Sunderland: Jones (55)
Manchester United: Scholes (19), Macheda (76)

Team: Foster, Vidic, Evans, Neville, O'Shea, Carrick, Scholes, Park (70), Rooney, Berbatov (Macheda 75), Tevez (Anderson 82)

He's only 17 but if we win the title this season, he's name will live on in the minds of United fans around the world. In a space of 7 days, the Italian has emerged as an unlikely hero.

United were unbelievably poor in defense, yet again and should have been punished harder. Thankfully their counter-parts on the opposite side of the pitch were equally poor.

United started the brighter of the 2 sides with Scholes scoring in the 18th minute from a Rooney cross. It looked like a routine day at the office and a customary routing of another opponent. But our midfield and defense had other ideas.

We started to lose possession with increasing frequency and we were leaving gaps all over the place for the Sunderland attackers to exploit. Lucky for us, they had their tactics all wrong. The were so afraid of the counter-attack that they refused to commit men forward when attacking. Had they done so, we would have been staring at a defeat.

As it were, only Cisse and Jones were left to fend for themselves upfront. Still they made life extremely difficult and we barely coped with their strength and pace.

We've been playing some shitty football in the first half of games and have been able to turn it around in the latter halves. Unfortunately, today we decided to be utterly crap for the full 90 minutes.

Sundeland found the equalizer in the second half when the defense collapsed and Foster was left flapping in the box when Jones poked it home.

We tried to regain the lead but our front guys were either misfiring or simply missing. It didn't help that there was no support from midfield. We were definitely dropping the points. Even the presence of Ronaldo, who came on for Park, didn't help the situation. Instead of providing the killer punch, Ronaldo was more interested in his stepovers and basically clowning around.

As an almost last resort, Ferguson sent on Macheda. Barely seconds after his introduction, Macheda redirected a Carrick shot into the net. He single-handedly changed the complexion of the game. We've found our supersub, we've found our Ole.

We held on to the final whistle and gathered a much needed 3 points to leapfrog Liverpool in the standings. It was definitely not deserved but we'll take what Macheda gives us.

I'm not as confident as before that we'd win the title, although we'd still probably will. Liverpool's form is incredible. Pound for pound, I believe their starting 11 is way better than ours. And they definitely are showing much more desire right now.

We have no midfielders and our defense is in shambles. Even our front guys are looking shaky. Only Rooney is performing up to par. Tevez can't hit the side of the barn and Berbatov looks like a terrible waste of money. Ditto Carrick.

The only things that set us apart from Liverpool is that we have the experience of performing under pressure and we have a deeper squad. That said, if we continually use players like O'Shea week in week out, our squad depth's pretty shitty too. Least we have the new Ole to count on.