United Lets Arsenal Off Easy

Manchester United 1 - Arsenal 0
Scorer
Manchester United: O'Shea (17)

Team: Van der Sar, Rio (Evans 88), Vidic, Evra, O'Shea, Fletcher, Carrick, Anderson (Giggs 67), Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez (Berbatov 67)

I'm kinda surprised just how little time I have since recovering from my bout of flu. A ton of work and readings left piled up while I was down and out. Since recovering, I've hardly had a good night's sleep not to mention half of that time taken up by entertaining friends over this long weekend. Nonetheless, I'll try to sum up my thoughts for the game in double quick time here, before this evening's game against Boro.

We started off the game with a bang, taking off from the way we ended the last one against Spurs. The pace was incredibly high octaned and Arsenal was immediately put on the backfoot, unable to cope with our speed and power. Before O'Shea's goal, we could very well have been 3-4 goals up. That was just how dominate we are.

Almunia played an absolute blinder. He single-handedly kept Arsenal in the tie. He made so many point-blank saves that I doubt any keeper in the Premiership even did in the entire season.

That said, we should have put Arsenal away. We played incredibly well and should have really buried the Londoners. We won every battle on the pitch and our midfield trio of Fletcher, Carrick and Anderson, especially Anderson, were simply outstanding.

Still we carry an advantage over to the second leg. It's a little disappointing to be only up one after such a complete display of football. At least we know in the second leg, Arsenal will be advanturous and come knocking on our door. It will leave plenty of space for our attackers to exploit. Hopefully Ferguson sticks to the plan and continues to stick with this lineup from the start. I cannot imagine Berbatov being effective on the counter.