United Handed A Thrashing

Manchester United 1 - Manchester City 6
Scorers
Manchester United: Fletcher (80)
Manchester City: Balotelli (22, 60), Aguero (69), Dzeko (89, 90), Silva (90)


Red Card
Manchester United: Evans (47)


Team: De Gea, Rio, Evans, Smalling, Evra, Anderson (Jones 66), Fletcher, Young, Nani (Hernandez 66), Rooney, Welbeck

Ouch, this one hurts. In all honesty, we had this one coming. We've been coasting for the last few games and it's come back to bite us where it really hurts. I supposed, despite the gloom emitting from the red half of Manchester, there is a silverlining here, it was a wake up call, in the worst way possible, not only to the players, but the higher-ups as well.

We can no longer afford to sleepwalk to the title. At this early stage of the season, we're already finding ourselves in a small hole, most of it by our own doing. As I've said after the Stoke game, it was the beginning of the end if we continued to play like this.

The biggest disappointment were the goals conceeded in the last 3 minutes. Some of our players, namely Rio, just stopped playing. It allowed Shitty 3 additional goals that they did not deserve. He just stood still when Shitty broke and came at us with numbers. Rio simply didn't seem interested in playing and it was a huge letdown for the fans to see a self proclaimed 'legend' throw in the towel. It's just not the United way.

Of course the bulk of the blame will fall naturally to Evans who was red-carded right at the start of the second half when he found himself on the wrong side of Balotelli and had to pull him down.

The substitutions by Ferguson also left me scratching my head. Anderson was by no means the worst player on the pitch. In fact he was one of the few who showed a willingness to plod forward despite being two down. And taking Nani off instead of Young was another head-scratcher. Young's been playing like he's been auditioning for the Night of the Living Dead for the past month, yet he remained instead of Nani.

A combination of poor decisions and the lack of quality from the creative side of midfield spelt our demise. But what's more galling was the lack of desire from a number of players that was really a smack in the face of the fans. The honeymoon is over for this team, and the management has alot of heavy lifting to bring the spirits up and more importantly, the purse strings need to be loosened in January to bring in some help in midfield.