United Continues To Suffer From Poor Starts

CFR Cluj 1 - Manchester United 2
Scorers
CFR Cluj: Kapetanos (14)
Manchester United: Van Persie (29, 49)

Team: De Gea, Rio, Evans (Wootton 79), Rafael, Evra, Fletchers, Anderson, Cleverley, Rooney, Van Persie, Hernandez (Welbeck 83)

It took a last gasp save from De Gea for United to come away with a victory in Romania. Like most of the games this season, we got off to another slow start and nearly paid the price.

Cluj were defensively tight and were advertised to be the experts at the counter-attack. Well, it was supposed to be common knowledge, except that Evra obviously missed out on the scouting report. Sougou, the two goal hero at Braga, found himself with so much property that if he were in Singapore, he would be the richest land owner. He eluded Evra on the left and found Kapetanos with a sweet cross and all he had to do was to put it past De Gea.

In the words of Ferguson at a half time interview....'it was shocking!'.

The only saving grace is that Cluj is a pretty terrible team and we practically dominated the entire game. With Carrick, Giggs and Scholes all left at home, we started with a midfield consisting of Fletcher, Cleverley, Anderson and Rooney supporting the two frontmen.

The midfield battle was comfortably won as we imposed our will on the game. It wasn't a surprise that Van Persie equalized. Rooney's freekick from the left was looped over the keeper with a lucky bounce on Van Persie's shoulder.

Van Persie got the winner early in the second half with Rooney providing once again. Rooney seems to be thriving in the supporting midfield role with most of everything good United did coming from him. On this occasion, his long raking ball released Van Persie who took a delightful touch to direct it past the on rushing keeper.

With the lead and the momentum on our side, you would think we would have gone on to really plaster the Romanian goal, yet the opposite happened. We shifted a couple of gears down and just stopped playing football. There was a whole lot of nonchalant passing the ball all around midfield. The good thing is that Cluj is built around the counter-attacking game and it kinda put them off their game plan.

That said, without a two goal cushion, there was always an element of luck, and that nearly came for Cluj in the dying seconds in injury time. De Gea made a superb save right at the death to preserve the lead and the points.

Once again, we were our worst enemy. I suppose at least the midfield looks much better today than it has in a long long while, but I suspect a huge portion of that is down to the quality of the opponents. Sadly I think we're going to see Carrick and Scholes back on Sunday at St James. Ben Arfa is going to have a field day with that pairing.