Closing In On The Title

Manchester United 2 - Portsmouth 0
Scorers
Manchester United: Rooney (8), Carrick (82)

Team: Van der Sar, Vidic, Evans, Neville (O'Shea 13, Rafael 53), Evra, Fletcher, Scholes, Anderson (Carrick 76), Giggs, Ronaldo, Rooney

Just in case anyone was wondering, I haven't died and disappeared from the face of the earth since the FA Cup semi-finals. I just decided to take my mum's advice: if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Well, that's not entirely true. I was very impressed with how our kids performed against the tested and tried players of Everton, but I realised I was probably going to spend the entire post slagging off Berbatov, so to save everyone from my tirade I made the executive decision not to write anything.

Which bring me to today's post, I really ought to keep my keyboard somewhere where I can't find it. With the exception of Anderson and Fletcher, we were pretty terrible.

The moment Rooney scored the early goal, we completely lost our intensity and passion for the game. In short, we settled for a 1-0 victory.

If you read the stat sheet, it's true we had an incredible amount of shots on goal, but most of it was due to the god awful job Portsmouth was doing defending. How the hell Portsmouth isn't at the bottom of the table along side West Brom is beyond me. They were giving the ball away in dangerous positions time and time again. Utterly incredibly poor finishing on our part and brilliant keeping from James kept the scoreline respectable.

Again I reiterate, other than Fletcher and Anderson, we could very well had 9 other Berbatovs on the pitch and it wouldn't have made a difference. I don't know if yesterday's results between Arsenal and Liverpool had an impact on how we played, ot simply fatigue playing into it, but our players looked disinterested. Damn, my Sunday soccer team shows more passion than them.

To add to the woes of our fans, we're actually going to increase ticket prices to droll out this kind of entertainment. I'm just glad I'm in Singapore watching the games at a minimal cost, rather than in England getting fleeced.

At least on the bright side, we really should have the title in the bag now. 6 games to go, a match in hand and a healthy 3 point lead should really do it, especially after both Liverpool and Chelsea have dropped points.

We should look better on Saturday against Spurs. I can't possibly imagine us playing any worse than we have today.

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.

God Awful Ref Robs United

Manchester United 0 - Portsmouth 1
Scorers
Portsmouth : Muntari (pen 77)

Team : Van der Sar (Kuszczak 46), Evra, Vidic, Rio, Brown, Scholes, Hargreaves (Carrick 68), Nani, Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez (Anderson 68)

So many talking points to this game and I don't even know where to start.

Let me first begin with how goddamn awful blogger.com is. If you're thinking of starting a blog, I wouldn't recommend using this platform. I couldn't log in the entire day. Hell, I couldn't even view this page until now. It's frustrating as hell, especially during Sunday soccer with the guys where everyone was wondering when the review was coming.

As it was an early Saturday kickoff, Kentona and I did the usual 'keep our partners occupied while we get our fix' routine by prawn fishing at our usual haunt.

The game started off well for us. In fact it started off very well for us. In the opening minutes, Ronaldo brightly raced into the penalty area only to be crudely barged off the ball by Distin and to everyone's amazement the referee, Martin Atkinson, for the day waved play on. Only a couple of seconds earlier, a similar body-check on the same player was deemed a foul. Having set that precedent, Kentona and I could only stare wide-eyed in astonishment at the big screen TV in front of us. That was some bloody in-consistant refereeing.

But judging the way we played, we were sure it wouldn't matter in the final reckoning. We were all over Pompey. It was only a matter of time before we would erupt.

Yet as time went by, we kept missing chance after chance. If there was one criticism of our play was that we were all hat but no cattle.

In the second half, Van der Sar was replaced by Kuszczak, which could only mean that Van der Sar must have been carrying an injury. Again at that point in time, it didn't matter. United kept up the pressure from the first half and it was just a matter of time before we murdered them.

Then in the 68th minute, it all began to fall apart, in probably the most spectacular fashion. Without a striker on the bench, Fergie brought on Carrick and Anderson in place of Hargreaves and Tevez. The substitutions had me going....WTF???

If there was a dying need to bring someone out, it would have been Scholes. I can't recall him doing fuck all the entire game. Moreover I couldn't believe he took out Hargreaves. The moment Hargreaves was taken out, I was thinking of ways how Portsmouth could nick it from a quick release from a corner.

The rationale is simple. When we get corners, both Vidic and Rio would both move forward for headers, leaving both the full-backs to play the role of central defenders. Given that Brown also joins the two in front, Hargreaves is usually the other guy who plays the role of the defender. That's just the way we play from observation.

As for taking Tevez out, IMO, I thought if Fergie was going to sacrifice a frontman, it should have been Rooney. He's been in somewhat of a scoring funk lately. In fact, he's more prone to missing chances presented to him than to clinically finish them off.

In the 76th minute, the unthinkable happened. We were caught flat-footed when David James caught the ball from our corner kick and released it early down the flanks. Without Hargreaves in a defensive position and Evra and Scholes going awol, the defensive onus fell on Anderson and Rooney (????).

Unfortunately, Rooney can't defend if his life depended on it. Instead of following his man, Baros, he got sucked into following the ball leaving Baros totally unmarked. Kranjcar found Baros with a pretty easy pass, leaving him one on one with Kuszczak.

Baros rounded Kuszczak, and in the process ran into him. The referee gave a penalty and sent Kuszczak off. While I probably agree with the penalty decision, I thought the sending off decision was a god awful one. If I hadn't known better I would have thought that the pathetic Atkinson had a punt on Pompey.

Without a keeper, Rio took on the keeper's role and Muntari scored from the spot. A man and a goal down, it was going to be an incredibly tall task for the men in red.

The game ended 1-0 to Portsmouth, no thanks to some seriously dodgy refereeing.

While as United fans, and fans in general, we probably blame the referee, but we also need to look at ourselves. We created a boatful of chances and couldn't put one away.

Moreover, there were some weird decisions that baffle logic. In the past week, the coaching staff have been under-performing. If a casual fan like myself can see it, I don't understand how professionals can goof it up so badly.

At least there's a silverlining here, Chelsea got dumped by Barnsley.

Ronaldo's Freekick

So just how good was Ronaldo's freekick yesterday? You be the judge.

*Content removed due to copyright issues*

Edit:
That just sums it up huh? Rightly or wrongly, the Premiership claims rights to all videos, hence the video has been removed from the source. Unfortunately, in the end, the fans, people like you and me, are the ones who suffer.

2nd Edit:
Well, almost as soon as I posted the above, I received an email of a working link. Let's hope this one stays up.

Ronaldo Shines In Sparkling Performance

Manchester United 2 - Portsmouth 0
Scorers
Manchester United : Ronaldo 10, 13

Team : Van der Sar, Evra, Rio, Vidic, Brown, Scholes (Hargreaves 62), Carrick, Park, Nani, Ronaldo (Anderson 73), Rooney (Tevez 73)

24hrs after Arsenal had briefly taken top spot by beating a truely woeful Newcastle, we turned up heat by totally obliterating Portsmouth.

Due to some technical difficulties, I missed the entire first half but managed to catch the highlights. From everything I saw, hear and read, we were totally in our element in the first half.

It didn't take long for us to open the scoring. Nani fed a beautiful ball to Ronaldo and he scored 10 minutes into the game.

His second came 3 minutes later from a wonder goal via a freekick. It's probably one of the best freekicks I've seen in my entire life.

Portsmouth didn't know what hit them as we continually tore them apart. Scholes was outstanding in midfield and you probably couldn't tell that this was his first start since his injury 3 months ago. It was as if he never missed a game.

I managed to fix my computer by the start of the second half and was happily seated in my room, anticipating the excitement to continue, unfortunately, by then we had taken the foot off the pedal, possibly thinking of the next game against Spurs.

Actually it was Portsmouth which decided not to engage us at our game. Apparently Harry Redknapp had decided that if they continued in the same vein as in the first half, they would be soundly thrashed and I can't really argue with that train of thought. Based on the highlights, we were that good.

We still bossed the midfield, and while Portsmouth didn't threaten, we couldn't add to the scoreline. We created numerous chances but neither Rooney, nor substitutes Anderson and Tevez, could convert any of them.

All in all, it was a good result and an even better performance. I just wish I could've caught the first half.

Munich Tribute
There's been plenty going around regarding the Munich tribute 50 years on. Strangely enough, alot of the debate seems to be going around the minute's silence when England plays their friendly in a week's time and our own 4 days later against City. The issue I personally have is all the noise that is being generated even before the minute's silence. For some reason, it leaves a sour taste. If there are going to be spoilers, so be it. Let's not add to the noise.

And speaking of the tribute, I received a mail earlier today and I have to take my hat off to Arsenal. In their match programme yesterday against Newcastle, they had their own special Munich tribute. You can probably view it on their website in a couple of days. For those of you who are too Red to hop over to the enemy's place, I'll post what was written there:

Today's match is the last here at the Emirates before the football world will remember the 23 people, including eight Manchester United players and nine journalists, who perished in Munich on February 6, 1958.

The Munich disaster occurred when Manchester United were refuelling on their return from a European Cup fixture against Red Star Belgrade in Yugoslavia. The final match that the legendary "Busby Babes" had played prior to their trip to Yugoslavia was at Highbury, as Sir Matt Busby's team won a thrilling encounter 5-4 in front of 63,758 on February 1, 1958.

The picture on the right shows Duncan Edwards, who was already regarded as one of the world's great players when he perished aged just 21, signing an autograph on the Highbury pitch prior to this match. Edwards went on to score in the game.

Arsenal Football Club would like to extend their sympathies to all those affected by those tragic events 50 years ago.

One of the game's darkest days - it will never be forgotten.

Football rivalries aside, this was indeed a classy move by them. I wonder if any of the other clubs did anything similar in their programmes.

United Stumble Again (Portsmouth 1 - Manchester United 1)

I missed the entire first half and a good portion of the second half as well due to 'technical' problems. Suffice to say, if I had known that a 1-1 draw was on the cards, I would have given up trying to watch the game and gone to sleep.

I caught bits and pieces of the second half and quite frankly, the only guy who impressed me in a red shirt was Nani. From my sketchy picture, the midfield was non-existent. Scholes and Carrick didn't seem able to control the midfield. Anything good coming from us were from our Portuguese wingers, Nani and Ronaldo.

Giggs and Tevez were pretty much non-existent as well. By the time I actually saw them in the game, both look winded and a step slow.

The defense was in sixes and sevens whenever Portsmouth came forward. Benjani, in particular, single-handedly seem to tear our flimsy looking back four to shreds.

To compound matters, we were reduced to 10 men when Ronaldo was sent off in the 85th minute. Portsmouth had earlier had a man sent off but like the weekend, we couldn't make our advantage count. Then again, it wasn't very much of an advantage since Ronaldo was sent off only a couple of minutes from the Portsmouth sending off.

Overall I felt that this was a pretty poor performance. Maybe the first half was a better affair. The second half was just littered with poor shots, missed chances and desperate defending at times.

We now have to go into the weekend facing Shitty, who have full points from 2 games!?!?! Well, at least, looking on the bright side.....we're still undefeated!

Curse of Late Kickoffs (Portsmouth 2 - Manchester United 1)

The cushion which we've been sitting so comfortably on has just gotten significantly harder. Chelsea beating Spurs (seriously, who couldn't see that coming!) and us losing to Portsmouth has cut our lead in the table to just 3 points with 6 games to go. It's still a commanding lead, especially when you factor in our superior goal difference.

It's just a minor road bump on our journey to wrestle the title from Chelsea. As long as there are no major road blocks in the form of late kickoffs, we should do fine. If at the start of the season, given the option to be in this position, I would gladly grab it with both hands. That's how far we've come, and I doubt neither the players, the management team nor the fans will willingly let this one go, especially not since we've worked so hard to come this far.

As for the game, all I can say is that Portsmouth played well, we looked tired and were undone by individual errors. None more glaring than from our stand-in captain Rio and our keeper Van der Sar.

The game was played at a franatical pace right at kickoff and neither side really got a hold of the game in the first half. This, of course, didn't help our cause since we never got into our rhythm. Both teams were guilty of giving away possession under pressure from the opposite side, but Portsmouth made theirs count. On the half hour, Richardson conceded possession and Benjani took a pot shot at goal. Van der Sar parried the ball straight in front of him and Matthew Taylor, my favourite Portsmouth player, got in front of Rio and knocked in the rebound.

Kinda hard to find fault when 3 of our players were involved in the boo-boo. They were:
1. Richardson for gaving away possession in a dangerous area.
2. VDS for parrying the ball in front of him. I'm sure in goalkeeping 101, you're taught to parry the ball to the side if you can't hold it.
3. Rio for standing rooted to the ground and allowing Taylor to get in front of him to score.

We were poor and rattled by the goal. In the second half, we were significantly better and piled up the pressure on the Portsmouth goal. Unfortunately, the final ball was always found wanting. When we did get it right, David James was in outstanding form. A couple of saves he made were simply marvelous, leaving Kentona and I rooted to our seats wondering in amazement how he kept them out.

With 2 minutes left to go in regulation time, our stand-in captain decided to make our task doubly difficult. In a moment of sheer madness and lack of communication between defender and keeper, Rio and EVS somehow made a goal out of a seemingly innoculous backpass. It was an epic comedy of errors, which no United fan could find joy in. It was horrible defending and equally horrible goalkeeping. I couldn't believe how Rio could make a backpass like that without even looking up to see where his keeper was. I was equally shocked at EVS for coming off his line when there was absolutely no reason to.

Credit to the lads, they never once held their heads down and carried on plugging away. Although time was running down, they did manage to pull one back, albeit too little too late. Ole's shot was spilled by James and O'Shea was on hand to poke in the rebound.

As Kentona noted to me, Rooney was particularly disappointing. In the run up to our injury time goal, Rooney ran up to the referee to complain about something when he should be focusing on the game. It's a part of his game he must get rid off. The constant whining when decision do not go his way must stop. Ronaldo has learnt it, and now Rooney must learn it if he's going to be of any use, especially when the chips are down. If he cannot concentrate for the good of the team, then he's useless to us in such circumstances, no matter what a brilliant player he is.

Oh, and last but not least, PLEASE NO MORE CAPTAIN'S ARMBAND FOR RIO EVER!!!!!

Why Late Kickoffs Scare Me

As for tonight's game, I don't really have a good feeling about it. I've just checked the achives and all the games which we've dropped points have come from late kickoffs.

1-0 Loss to Arsenal on 17th Sept (Sun) 1600 kickoff
1-1 Draw to Reading on 23rd Sept (Sat) 1715 kickoff
1-1 Draw to Chelsea on 26th Nov (Sun) 1600 kickoff
1-0 Loss to West Ham on 17th Dec (Sun) 1600 kickoff
2-2 Draw to Newcastle on 1st Jan (Mon) 1715 kickoff (New Years Day)
2-1 Loss to Arsenal on 21st Jan (Sun) 1600 kickoff

As you can see, every single one of those 6 games which we have dropped points this season has come from late kickoffs. I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, since I didn't check the time of every single fixture. We could've pulled off some wins from late kickoffs, but given the damning statistics, I'm not too sure about tonight's games. FWIW, I'm keeping my fingers crossed tonight when I'm at Cow's place watching the game.

Roma Aftermath II

So many reports out there in the past 2 days. I'm only going to put up those that are interesting to me.

Times - United Left in State of Shock by Praise for Rome Police
Times - United Fans Pay in Blood for Italy's 'Loose Dogs'
SportingLife - UEFA Expected to Take Toughline
Mirror - Ex-Liverpool Sta's Take on Violence in Rome
Telegraph - Police Exposed as Guilty Party
Telegraph - UEFA Plans 'Sports Police'

Meanwhile in the EPL:

Fergie Rages over Chelsea's Early kickoff - I'm kinda surprised Spurs get so little time off, but I'm not surprised by the decision. Wasn't it just last week that Moanrinho complained about playing catch up to United cause they always played catch up after United has played? Looks like the FA not only gave in to his request, but added a little something by presenting a tired Spurs side.