United Scrambles Past Shitty

Manchester City 2 - Manchester United 3
Scorers
Manchester City: Kolarov (48), Aguero (65)
Manchester United: Rooney (10, 40), Welbeck (30)


Red Card
Manchester City: Kompany (12)


Team: Lindegaard, Rio, Smalling, Jones, Evra, Carrick, Giggs, Valencia, Nani (Scholes 59), Rooney, Welbeck (Anderson 59)

Am suffering from a terrible hangover from the game celebrations so will try to make this one really short.

Still reeling from the shock that we beat Shitty at the Etihad. The scoreline doesn't tell the story of the game. In part we were gifted the game, in part was pretty impressed with Shitty spirit. Oh and I forgot to mention that Scholes came out of retirement and played a bit part role as well.

It was a bit of a crazy opening to the game. Shitty were threatening right from the start and Lindegaard's shaky touch was nearly pounced on by Aguero. However it was Rooney who opened the scoring with a wonderfully taken header that he probably knew little about. It was against the run of play but he wheeled away in celebration clutching the United emblem on his chest and kissing the badge to reinforce his commitment to the team after a week of speculation of his departure.

Shitty's woes were compounded almost instantly when Kompany was sent off for a double legged challenge on Nani. It was a terrible decision, and this is coming from a United fan. Kompany took the ball and the challenge, though double legged, was in no way putting Nani's health in danger. I suppose the referee had to play it to the letter of the law, but a bit of common sense was needed here. What made that decision really a bad one was that moments later, I recall Evra making a similar challenge that didn't even win the ball and he didn't even get a ticking off. It was simply put, a terrible decision on hindsight. Of course as a United fan, we take what we can get during this lean times.

We went on to hammer two more goals before the break. Welbeck finished superbly on the half hour when Shitty failed to clear their lines, and Rooney was first to react to his own penalty save to give us a comfortable 3-0 lead going into the break.

We were sitting pretty and looked really like avenging the 6-1 derby demolition handed to us back in October. And it really should have been against a Shitty side that looked shell-shocked with only 10 men.

Whaever they serve at the Etihad worked well for Mancini. Instead of sitting back and preventing a rugby score, Shitty came out firing and Kolarov scored a beautiful freekick to pull one back for the skyblues. In reponse, we brought on Scholes and the first contribution of the Ginger Prince was to have a throw-in nicked off by Milner. Milner's cross cum pass was expertedly taken by Aguero but was parryed by Lindegaard and the little Argentine pounced on the loose ball to bring Shitty within striking distance.

We did have our chances, but Shitty were terrifying on the break. The gameplan by Fergie by then was to hold on the possession of the football and make the 10-men work really hard for it. Having played almost 80 minutes against 11, fatigue showed, but it wasn't without a scramble by United in the final minutes to clear the ball from their penalty area.

The referee finally blew the whistle to signal the end of the game and I breathed a sigh of relief. If we struggled so hard to contain a Shitty team playing with 10 for 80 minutes, I dread to think of the league rematch in April. We really should have put Shitty to the sword, but in the end struggled to keep them at bay, only to cross the finishing line by the skin of our teeth.

On one hand, I'm thrilled to beat the Cup holders and avenge last season's ousting, yet on the other hand, very disappointed at the mental mistakes that cost us the goals. It's fortunate we escaped today.

And for all our troubles, we get Liverpool in the next game. Some reward!