Young Saves United Blushes

Manchester United 3 - Basel 3
Scorers
Manchester United: Welbeck (16,17), Young (90)
Basel: F. Frei (58), A. Frei (60, pen 76)


Team: De Gea, Rio, Jones, Fabio (Nani 70), Evra, Carrick, Anderson (Berbatov 82), Giggs (Park 61), Valencia, Young, Welbeck

What a game. As a football fan, this was an absolute beauty to watch, however, I'm a United fan as well, and it's seriously been a bloody rollercoaster ride. I can't even decide right now if I should be happy with the result, whether we dodged a bullet or missed the heart.

All credit to Basel for making this a fantastic game. They played without fear, creeping into the lion's den and walking tall from it with a prized tooth.

We, on the other hand, have been just pathetic behind. Ever since the Chelsea game, our injury hit backline has been allowing opponents too many chances and it's come back to bite us in the last couple of games.

The game started off exactly that way. Basel came close on a couple of occasions but it seemed that they had left their scoring boots back in Switzerland. We took full advantage of their misses and fired two good goals from Danny Welbeck. Despite going two down, Basel continued to create chances after chances but were not able to trouble De Gea in any shape, way or form. It looked pretty going into the half. All we needed to do was to keep the backline strong and the points would have been in the bag.

Again I'm just going to say, all credit to Basel. They just came at us in the second half and were duely rewarded with two quick-fire goals of their own. We were the architects of our own demise. We kept giving the ball away cheaply and our back four looked terribly hesitant. The support from midfield went the way of the dinosaurs.

Then in the 76th minute, we once more fell victim to some terrible defending and gave away a penalty. Alexander Frei added his second and Basel's third, and we were staring at a shock humiliation...at Old Trafford!

We poured forward in numbers and in typical United-style, scored in the 90th minute to level the scores. Despite a generous amount of injury time, we were unable to conjure a winner, but then again, that would have been terribly cruel to Basel's valiant effort. Even then, Berbatov could have produced something but he saw glory and hit his shot into the side-netting when Nani was in a better position for a tap-in.

This was a superb game to watch, non-stop attacking from both sides. We need to really tighten our defence in the worst way possible. It's shambolic and we're putting alot of pressure from our front men to keep up. As brilliant as Rooney, Hernandez and Welbeck have been, they are only human.