Draw Opens The Title Race Wide Open

Manchester United 4 - Everton 4
Scorers
Manchester United: Rooney (41, 69), Welbeck (57), Nani (60)
Everton: Jelavic (33, 83), Fellaini (67), Pienaar (85)


Team: De Gea, Rio, Evans, Rafael, Evra, Carrick, Scholes (Jones 86), Nani, Valencia (Hernandez 89), Rooney, Welbeck

What a game and what a truly terrible result. Suddenly the title race is blown wide open. Unless Shitty somehow screws up against bottom of table Wolves in an hours time, this title race is going down the wire.

We couldn't have asked for a worst opponent. Everton came to Old Trafford, licking their wounds off a terrible result over the previous weekend, and as Ferguson mentioned pre-match, were a wounded animal. True to his words, they opened the scoring with a superb goal by Jelavic. The goal set up a truly exciting encounter filled with superb goals.

We bit back with Rooney's header as the game drew into the half.

The game opened up in the second half and for good periods of time we were playing as well as Barcelona. Welbeck's wonder individual goal took us into the lead and moment's later, his individual effort was topped by a cutting edge team effort. We tore the Everton defense to shreds with some sublimed passing, with Nani finishing off the move with a goal, flicked over the on rushing Howard.

3-1 up and the points seemed wrapped up. Everton, however, never laid down. They came with renewed vigour and Fellaini volleyed home a superb effort to bring the scores closer.

Over on the other end, Rooney and Welbeck combined to produce another good finish that should have really been the nail to Everton's little revival. Yet somehow Phil Neville rallied the troops and Everton came forward again, this time Jelavic and Pienaar scored twice within 3 minutes to level the score against everyone's expectations.

In the last ten minutes, including a generous amount of injury time, we threw the kitchen sink at Everton, but between their defenders and Howard, they held firm and both teams had to share the points.

Despite an overall exciting game, especially in the second half, it was a disappointing result for us. We saw a couple of two goal leads slip, and more importantly, we saw the title slowly but surely slipping from our finger tips. This game possibly epitomises our entire season. We started off on the backfoot and slowly clawed our way into the game, and towards the end, we let slip generous cushions and ultimately had to share the spoils. Only in this case, sharing the spoils works in our disadvantage due to an inferior goal difference.

In the words of Kentona, who I had the misfortune of watching the game with, either way, it works for us. If we win the title, it's a bonus after all the trials and tribulations we've been thru this season. And if we don't, it's finally time for the higher management to finally realise that we've been pretty much crap, and hopefully, if the purse-strings allow, will usher in a new era of players.

In any case, attacking like Barcelona and defending like Wolves is simply not going to win us the title. On to the title defense next Monday against Shitty.