United Survives Hawthorns

WBA 1 - Manchester United 2
Scorers
WBA: Morrison (14)
Manchester United: Rooney (2), Hernandez (75)

Team: Kuszczak, Rio, Vidic, Neville (Fabio 71), Evra, Carrick, Anderson, Fletcher, Obertan (Gibson 61), Rooney, Berbatov (Hernandez 61)

Hmmm....where shall we start? First off, we were terrible...really terrible. Secondly, WBA should have won with plenty of leg space to put most first class seats in most airlines to shame.

Granted we started off early with a Rooney goal from open play to usher in the New Year, we were second best for most parts of the game. Neville, in particular, was just abysmal. I know he's been a loyal servant and a key part in alot of our past success, but the current version lacks the timing and positional sense to play the game at this level anymore. He was caught out of position time and time again and to make matters worse, he's been caught for pace and left for dead. He should have been sent off early in the game with a crude tackle in the box, but was let off when the referee waved the game on despite it being an ironclad penalty.

It's embarassing to watch a legend fall so badly. Ferguson should stop trying to shame the poor fellow and let him slowly fade into the sunset. There are options at rightback if Ferguson is willing to put away his biasness.

Obertan is the other player in red that was utterly disappointing as well. There is no doubts that he has oodles of skills, but for some reason, he just doesnt't know how to deal with it. He's decision making is some of the worst I've seen in football. Nani and Ronaldo have been guilty of making some poor choices on the pitch, but Obertan takes the cake. Some of the stuff he does )or doesn't do), just baffles the mind. Nevertheless, I'm not willing to write him off yet. If we exercised the amount of patience on both Nani and Ronaldo, then it's only fair we give Obertan the same amount of time to establish himself and learn the game properly. Yet for some reason, I feel he just might not make the grade.

As for everyone else, I suppose they did enough. We were lucky that WBA missed a penalty while they were completely dominating the game. That penalty miss deflated them and Hernandez went on the sub salt in their wounds with a game winner.

We've chalked up our second away win and have temporarily broken away from the chasing pack, albeit for a few hours.