Away Struggles Continue

Sunderland 0 - Manchester United 0

Team: Van der Sar, Rio, Vidic, Rafael, O'Shea, Scholes, Fletcher, Anderson (Bebe 80), Nani, Macheda (Hernandez 65), Owen (Berbatov 46)

Still can't seem to find an away win. Ferguson shuffled the starting lineups again, this time probably to 'reward' the excellent victory at midweek without taking into consideration how poorly we actually performed. And it backfired spectacularly in our faces to leave us waiting for another away fixture to take all 3 points.

And if we're really honest with ourselves, we didn't even deserve one this week. For the entire first half, we were second best. Owen and Macheda were given rare starts and neither did anything worthwhile. So sad was Owen's start that he was replaced by Berbatov by the start of the second. Berbatov has been bringing in the bacon in the Premiership so far this season and I found it strange he was left on the bench for this game. It's not like he's going to be involved with the Bulgarian national team thus would be resting for the next couple of weeks anyway. If anything, we should have milked him while we can in the absence of Rooney.

Scholes was also a surprised inclusion despite reports of an injury which should have taken him out for this game, and Bebe made an absolutely forgettable debut.

After a first half where Sunderland completely dominated, we made inroads in the second with the introduction of Berbatov. Hernandez also replaced the ineffective Anderson later in the game and made solid contributions but to no avail. The game was dominated by both sets of defenders. Having Rio back clearly shored up our leaky defence. Having said that, we still look incredibly vulnerable to crosses.

As the game wore on, we started to get a better feel of Sunderland, but there was too little time to make it count. Had the game gone on for another 15 or so minutes, we could have nicked a winner, but it was not to be. Given just how brutal things were for us in the beginning, I suppose we ought to consider ourselves lucky to come away with a point. It should have been game over even before we started playing significantly better.

We take another international break and hopefully our players will return healthy from their endeavours on the 16th against a relatively easy opponent on paper back at our fortress. I, for one, am not holding my breath.