Fletcher Wins It For United

Portsmouth 0 - Manchester United 1
Scorer
Manchester United: Fletcher (32)

Team: Van der Sar, Rio, Vidic, Brown, Evra, Scholes, O'Shea, Anderson (Possebon 77), Fletcher, Rooney, Tevez

Who needs Ronaldo? In a game that was really going nowhere, Fletcher stamped his mark on the game, scoring in the 32nd minute, meeting Evra's low cross at the near post. It's the second time in successive games that he's stepped up when the team needed a scorer most.

We injury list grows as we missed Giggs and Carrick, both injured in the last fixture. We had to draft Anderson into the starting lineup due to a severe lack of personnel in midfield. Portsmouth too missed Kranjcar, but it was equalized with us playing O'Shea in midfield.

The opening exchanges were fast and furious, but neither team created any noteworthy chances. It wasn't until Fletcher's goal that we begun to dominate possession. In fact for the rest of the game, we held on to possession well but simply were not able to breech the Pompey defense...or rather, we simply didn't have the necessary firepower to put the game away.

It got particularly worrying when Pompey had a few long range efforts that troubled Van der Sar and threatened to undo all our good work. But in the end, they too lacked the necessary oomph upfront.

In other news, apparently Manucho has gotten his work permit settled. Unfortunately, he's got a broken foot and unavailable for sometime. Apparently it's the dreaded metatarsal. We've also less than a week before we know for sure if we'd be getting Mr Sourpuss, Berbatov. I'm not too keen on this locker room cancer, but at this point, we so desperately need help up front that I wouldn't mind dealing with devil himself.

In 4 days time, we'd be playing in the UEFA Super Cup against Zenit St Petersburg and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Fletcher pulls another one out of the hat.

Silvestre Leaves For Arsenal

That's right, Silves has signed for Arsenal. It comes as abit of a surprise to me since the tops clubs usually do no sell to domestic rivals, unless you're Spurs....and even they have started to regard themselves as a top club.

I'm surprised Fergie let Silves go to another rival, especially one with as bad a history as Wenger. He must either think very little of Silves or very little of the current Arsenal squad. One thing's for sure, the majority of the United fans must be cheering wildly.

As for me, I'd just like to thank Silvestre for 9 years of good, honest work done in a red jersey, although it doesn't always bring back good memories.

Champions Disappoint In Opener

Manchester United 1 - Newcastle 1
Scorers
Manchester United: Flectcher (24)
Newcastle: Martins (22)

Team: Van der Sar, Rio, Vidic, Brown, Evra, Scholes, Giggs (Possebon 63), Carrick (O'Shea 25), Fletcher, Rooney, Campbell (Rafael 80)

Very disappointing game but it wasn't unexpected. We peppered the Newcastle goal with shots in the first 15 to 20 minutes, but gradually faded away badly as the game wore on. In the end, a draw was probably the fairest result, given our lack of finishing.

Today's game exposed all our frailties, from our long standing inability to defend from set pieces to the current problem of turning our possession into goals.

We threatened to run riot from the kickoff, but our lack of experienced goal scorers showed. Campbell had a glorious chance to put us in front, but somehow he headed Rooney's wonderful cross right onto Given's head with the entire goal in front of him. It was a badly missed opportunity. Given then made a double save moments later to deny us.

From the early exchanges, it was obvious that it just wasn't going to be our day. And it was made worse in the 22nd minute. Martins was left unmarked as he rose to meet the corner and powered it into the net given Newcastle a shock lead at Old Trafford.

The lead didn't last long though. While Newcastle were still celebrating, Fletcher stretched to first reach Gigg's cross and equalized before Newcastle knew what hit them. It seems the only way we would score would be to sucker punch the opponents. As the rest of the game would show, when Newcastle were on their toes, we simply didn't have the firepower to penetrate their defenses.

There were moments in the game where we looked more likely to concede than score a winner. It hardly helped matters that we were only able to bring on Rafael, a left-back, in place of the ineffective Campbell upfront.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, this is going to be one helluva long season unless something dramatic happens. The only consolation I can use is that all the other teams looks absolutely crap with the sole exception of Chelsea. At least there is still second place to fight for.