United Survives Another Crap First Half

Manchester United 2 - Sunderland 2
Scorers
Manchester United: Berbatov (51), Ferdinand (og 90)
Sunderland: Bent (7), Jones (58)

Red Card
Sunderland: Richardson (85)

Team: Foster, Evans, Vidic, O'Shea, Evra, Fletcher (Carrick 72), Scholes (Anderson 45), Nani, Welbeck (Valencia 72), Berbatov, Rooney

At home against a perceivably poorer opponent. These are the types of games you need to win if you want to win the damn league. Unfortunately we didn't turn up today. Actually we were pretty damn awful.

Sunderland took an early lead thru red-hot Darren Bent, a shot which I felt Foster could have done better. But as we all know by now, he's really a pretty poor keeper and as a result we went one down. If that wasn't bad enough, our first half display was possibly one of the worst....ever. Not only were we terribly disjointed, we didn't even have a single shot on goal throughout the entire first half. Credit to the crowd who kept on egging the lads on, but from where I was seated (in front of my tele), someone should be hurling their prawn sandwich at Scholes. It looked obvious he's skipped lunch. He's passes were under hit. In fact the entire team was guilty of misplaced passes and giving it away cheaply.

Fergie must have kicked up a storm at half time because an entirely different team came out in the second half. Well, we were still crap but at least this time we played with a lot more desire. There was much more pressure applied to the Sunderland goalmouth and alot more urgency shown.

It wasn't long before Berbatov equalized with a delightful bicycle kick. It was an outstanding goal that the Sunderland coudn't save.

Attack attack attack chanted the crowd, but 7 minutes later they were shocked to silence. Some putrid defending allowed Kenwyne Jones the time to leap for the ball. Foster pulled a shocker coming for the ball but got outmuscled and the ball was headed into the net. So according to Ferguson, this is the best keeper England has to offer? No wonder England constantly wins fuck all. And if Ferguson persists on using him, so will we.

For the rest of the game, we threw everything but the kitchen sink at Sunderland, but credit to Steve Bruce's team, they are a resolute bunch and dangerous on the counter. We didn't really look like coming back into the game until old boy Richardson was sent off in the 85th minute. It was a silly silly second yellow card he collected. With the 3 points practically in the bag, he stupidly kicked the ball away.

Sunderland's loss was our gain. They ceased to give us trouble on the counter and we poured forward with everyone. And with 2 of the 4 minutes gone in injury time, Evra's shot was deflected into the net by Rio's younger brother. By some fluke, we came away from this disaster with a draw.

What I found utterly amazing was that Ferguson spent all the time complaining about the referee and the lack of added time instead of focusing on just how crap we were, or even his own stupidity of not having Giggs on the bench. After all the heroics of the past weeks, you would assume Giggs would have a place on the bench to provide a telling cross or make a cruscial pass in case it was needed, which we did today in the worst way possible.

Maybe he's just doing what all good managers do, and that is to protect his players from being crucified by the media by deflecting the attention away. Let's just hope for our sanity it's the latter.

Last but fucking not least....please for the love of football, drop Foster!