Lucky To Come Away With A Draw

Stoke City 1 - Manchester United 1
Scorers
Stoke City: Crouch (52)
Manchester United: Nani (27)


Team: De Gea, Rio, Jones, Valencia, Evra, Fletcher, Anderson, Nani, Young (Giggs 70), Berbatov (Welbeck 70), Hernandez (Owen 10)

As mentioned in the last post, this is the hump that we needed to get over. On paper it looked like a disappointing result, especially after we got into the lead via a magical moment from Nani. However in reality, it really wasn't close. We were hammered and battered and if not for the heroics of De Gea, we really should have lost this one.

Right from the kickoff, Stoke signalled their intent to play a physical game and lenient refereeing allowed to get away with absolute murder in the opening 10 minutes. There were a number of cringe-worthy tackles by the Stoke players on ours which resulted in Hernandez being replaced by Owen in the opening 10 minutes. It was downright dirty and disgusting.

Having rubbed it in our face with their physical presence, they went on to dominate midfield and created a good number of chances. Without Rooney on the pitch, our build ups were laboured. Berbatov took too much time on the ball and most of our attacks resulted in having to punt a hopeful ball amongst the trees for Owen to gather.

Good thing we still had Nani to rely on. He's come along way from the awkward player he was 4 years back. Now he's full of confidence in his own ability and it was that self-belief that brought us the lead quite against the run of play. He sliced and diced past the entire Stoke defence and unleashed a screamer.

Stoke almost replied immediately but De Gea's reflexes saved us, pushing Wilkinson's shot to the post. He then went on the foil Walters shot.

It seemed like we would keep a clean sheet, but right after the break, slack marking allowed Crouch to head home the equalizer. The game then went thru a period where neither side wanted to defend, but neither side were able to make the breakthru either.

In the dying minutes, Stoke were happy to share the spoils as we went forward to make an attempt to grab it all. Our efforts were not enough on the night and gave up our 100% record.

Overall it was still a good result considering how poorly we played for most of the game. There was a lack of simple, quick and incisive passing that allowed us to win the past 5 games. While I don't really want to put it on Berbatov's or Fletcher's shoulders, they were indeed very slow to release the ball. They just held on to it for a tad too long, and all the attacking impetus was lost. It became very apparent once Berbatov left the pitch, the last 20 minutes saw us passing and ball faster and making inroads into the last third. Too bad after playing 70 minutes of slow, laboured football, there just wasn't enough time to rev up the engine.

A win here would have done our confidence a world of good, considering the next 3 premiership fixtures of Norwich away and Liverpool and Shitty at home. We could just steamroll them, but with a draw here, a lingering doubt might creep into the minds of our young players.

Well, I suppose the silver lining here is that we're still top of the table, albeit by a narrow goal difference.