Second Best By A Huge Margin

Barcelona 2 - Manchester United 0
Scorers
Barcelona: E'to (10), Messi (70)

Team: Van der Sar, Rio, Vidic, Evra, O'Shea, Carrick, Anderson (Tevez 46), Giggs (Scholes 75), Park (Berbatov 66), Rooney, Ronaldo

We lost to a better team, that's the long and short of it.

For a good 10 minutes, Ronaldo threatened to run riot in the Barcelona defense, then a total collapse at the back allowed E'to in to score the opener against the run of play. From then on, it was one-way tragic. Our players simply lost it and were never really in the game. All the poor games we've played the entire season came back to haunt us. This was not Bolton or Boro, but the mighty Barcelona.

Too many players went missing at the same time, but to be really honest, nothing would have changed even if they came back. Barcelona are simply the best team in the world, if not the universe.

The only thing that could have evened the balance out was to have Fletcher back, even then it would be a stretch to match the effectiveness of a very fluid Barcelona attack. By some fluke we survived their onslaught last season in the semis. But this season is different. Their midfield was powered by two pocket dynamos in Ineista and Xavi, not to mention the mother of all pocket dynamos in little Messi in attack. We just didn't have an answer to combat such an awesome force on display.

Anderson, Carrick and Giggs were simply not in the game. In fact it would have been better playing with 8 men. Addition by subtraction might well have worked out better for us.

Rooney probably had his worst game in a United shirt. I could have sworn he was wearing a Barcelona jersey under the white of United. Even single pass he made went to a claret and blue.

The least said about Evra the better. He went missing for the first goal, and went missing again for the second goal. He probably also went missing in the 5th, 6th and 7th goals that Barcelona should have scored but didn't.

We were bamboozled. The gulf between what the best in the world had to offer and what we presented was huge. And it's not something that can be rectified in the transfer market either. There is an air that oozles in the way Barcelona plays their brand of football, and it's called class. Something that we failed to show when Scholes, Rooney, Ronaldo and Vidic tackled recklessly as the game drew to an end. They need to learn to accept defeat to a better team. They need to learn how to retain their dignity in the face of defeat.

It's back to the drawing board for Ferguson and his team of coaches. And congratulations to Barcelona for winning their own version of the treble and showing us how the beautiful game should be played.

Edit: 4 hrs after the game and I still can't get any sleep, so this is a call out to all the @#$% who I caught the game with:

I'm going to put my foot down on this matter, or down your throats. If we ever.....EVER make it to the finals again, we watch it at MY kopitiam. Period. No more accommodating to you pussies. I don't care if any of you drop dead at your meetings in the morning.

Kids End Season On A High

Hull City 0 - Manchester United 1
Scorer: Gibson (24)

Team: Kuszczak, Neville, Brown, Rafael (Eckersley 60), De Laet (Possebon 79), Fletcher, Gibson, Nani, Martin, Welbeck (Tosic 88), Macheda

Really nothing much to write about. We played like a bunch of kids who are playing for the first time together. What a minute, we were a bunch of kids playing together for the first time. We were disjointed, at times selfish, but that's completely understandable.

Gibson scored a screamer and really his goal was the only bit of excitement throughout the entire game. No one really stood out. No one was expected to stand out anyway. Still it was a very credible result considering that Hull was up against the wall and fighting for their very existence.

You just feel that if Hull go down, we'd probably not see them back up in our lifetime. They only managed to stay up by the skin of their teeth thru a very good couple of months in the Premiership, where they got their result running on pure adrenalin. After December, they were utterly crap. If nothing changes, there's absolutely no way this bunch will repeat the feat again.

As for us, all that matters is Wednesday. Big game against a big team.

The Celebrations Really Start Next Week

Manchester United 0 - Arsenal 0

Team: Van der Sar, Vidic, Evans, O'Shea, Evra, Carrick, Fletcher, Giggs, Ronaldo, Rooney (Anderson 90), Tevez (Park 67)

It's amazing just how far we've come. Back in the distant 80s, we were pretty much a midtable club, occasionally giving Liverpuss fits when we played them. Unfortunately, our seasons then were really made of those two home-away fixtures year in year out. We never never able to sustain the momentum for any stretch. The only thing that kept it from being as poor a decade as the 70s were the FA Cup triumphs. For a good long stretch in time, it looked like we were forever mired in mediocracy until Ferguson happened.

Even under him, we were pretty crap for the first few lean years. In fact, as far as rumours go, he was reportedly on the chopping block until a FA Cup win saved his career and set us on a giddy journey of utterly and almost complete dominance. Our run has been so good that we've now drawn level on titles with Liverpuss, a scenerio even the best fantasy writers would have found far-fetched. Yet we created fantasy.

I sincerely hope that, now we're sharing that perch with Liverpuss, I would be writing about how we shoved/bullied/kicked them off that perch this time next year.

As for the title clinching game against Arsenal, there's really nothing much to write about. We were clearly playing not to lose and so were Arsenal. As boring as the game was, the result suited both sides. Arsenal were out to prove that they were not that far inferior to us, while we simply needed the point to seal the deal. It worked out well for both managers and both sets of players, without the need to embarrass anyone.

In a discussion with Michael this morning during my weekly football game, we concluded that the celebrations really should start next week when we put out a shadow team and gift the game to Hull City. Besides defending the Champions League, sending the Barcodes down would really sum up an incredibly good season. Ideally, Liverpuss or Spurs going down would be my dream come true, but having us lend a hand to help shove Newcastle down would be just as sweet.

Last but not least, I leave you with a really good article I read in the Independent on Tevez. I felt it's a pretty good take on the way things have come to being.