Poor Game But United Wins

Besiktas 0 - Manchester United 1
Scorer: Scholes (77)

Team: Foster, Evans, Vidic, Evra, Neville, Carrick (Berbatov 64), Scholes, Anderson, Nani, Valencia (Park 84), Rooney (Owen 64)

This is one of those games you'd dig your eyes out if you had to sit thru another 90mins of it. Both sides were piss poor and goal scoring opportunities were almost non-existent.

We clearly came into this game with a plan, and that was to bore the stockings off the Turkish fans. To their credit, they were loud....really loud. Had a lesser team played instead of us, I'd have no doubts the crowd would have intimidated them. But we're made of sterner stuff and having the experience to cope and calm the crowd down (or bore them shitless in this case).

After doing almost absolutely nothing of note for the first 65 minutes, Ferguson finally changed the 4-5-1 formation to a more adventurous 4-4-2 by bringing Owen and Berbatov into the fray. Rooney, to his frustration, was taken off and probaby saved for the big derby at the weekend.

The game opened up abit and before long we had our first goal courtesy of Scholes. Nani's shot was blocked but fell kindly to Scholes who headed it into the net. All that was left was to bore the socks off everyone, which we did magnificiently.

In short, this was a dull, drab game, but in the end, that little bit of class showed and we scampered away with 3 valuable points. A good start to our champions league campaign under difficult conditions.