Arsenal Sinks United With Two Late Strikes (Arsenal 2 - Manchester United 1)

As mentioned in the last game review, I was attending the 'wedding of the year' and caught this game at the hotel room after it was over.

Thankfully I had plenty of alcohol before watching this game. It was a scrappy affair with neither team really able to play their usual brand of exciting soccer. Baring the last couple of minutes of the first half, where Rooney and Larsson have superb chances foiled by Lehmann, the entire half was a non-event.

Early in the second half, Rooney scored his first headed goal after Evra had made a nice, determined run to cross a sweet ball to him. After the goal, I had assumed the worst result would be a draw and promptly fell asleep. As long as we made ground against our closest rivals, Chelsea, it was good enough for me.

Unfortunately my sweet dreams were dashed when the entire room of soccer fanatics I was watching with, screamed goal twice in a span of 10 minutes. Arsenal had clawed their way from behind to win with a last minute headed goal from Henry, after Van Persie had equalised earlier. I'm glad I had taken a large dose of alcohol to numb the effects of this defeat.

The only silverlining I can draw from this defeat is that we still did manage to gain ground on Chelsea by improving our goal difference. Of course getting a more concrete gain in points would have been ideal, but I'm taking this moral victory as part and parcel of supporting United.

Having lived thru the 80s, I'm just glad we're in today's position. At the same time, I pity my glory-hunting Liverpool fans who cheered so loud when Henry scored the winner. I'm sure they would love to be in our position, with a 12 point advantage over our rivals and 6 above anyone resembling a football club.

Na na na na na na, na na na na na na.

January Transfers : We Have Gone Insane

Bid for Owen Hargreaves
Yes we have indeed gone insane. United formally put in a 30 million euro bid for Owen Hargreaves. That makes out to roughly £19.7 million, slightly more than what we paid for Carrick.

Is Hargreaves really worth that much money? More importantly, is he that good? Or is it just because he is English? My head's spinning right now. To make matters worse, he's not even fit, still recovering from a broken foot. If we get him during this transfer window, it wouldn't be till somewhere in March before he regains full fitness. Then there is the problem of getting used to playing with the squad and the style. And we haven't even addressed him settling down to playing in different leagues. A fully fit Carrick certainly took his time to adapt.

What's really obvious here is that we're getting desparate as the transfer window draws to a close. I don't understand why we can't wait till the summer to get Owen. He'd have the entire pre-season to get used to playing for us. Haven't the lessons of bringing in Vidic and Evra in the January window been learnt?

Personally, if that brain dead board of ours diligently put a bid of Scott Parker, we might get him on the cheap. And I have no doubts he'd be a better player than Hargreaves. The silverlining here is that Baynern Munich hasn't barged yet. But £20 million is alot of stupid money being flashed out there and I'm sure the Bayern board is infinitely smarter than ours.

Rossi To Parma
Not quite AC Milan yet, but Rossi has been loaned to Parma till the end of the season. If one recalls, we raided Parma when they disbanded their reserve system to save money and got Rossi.

Let's hope Rossi gets the playing time he desparately needs. Whether he's willing to return after the spell remains to be seen. He has afterall expressed interest in playing in Italy, specifically mighty AC Milan.

Dong FangZhou Gets Work Permit
After spending 2.5 years in Royale Antwerp, Dong FangZhou has finally gotten a work permit to play for United. How good is the Chinese international remains to be seen. What's astounding to me is that he's scored 30 odd goals in 60 plus games for them. That's a pretty healthy goal ratio.

I'm curious to see how he pans out in the physically more intimidating EPL.

Oh, and how many extra jerserys we can sell in China.

Carrick Celebrates His First (Manchester United 3 - Aston Villa 1)

This was an utterly convincing victory. At least in the first half it was.

Right from the kickoff we stamped our authority and were all over Villa. Villa, who hasn't won in 12 outings, were shocking in defense. In the 10th minute, they twice failed to clear the ball and Park punished them with his first goal of the season.

A couple of minutes later, Park squared the ball back to Carrick at the edge of the penalty area. With no semblence of any form of defense, Carrick was left all alone and all the time in the world to control the ball and punish Villa's utterly dismal defense.

In the 34th minute, Park was yet again the torn at the Villa's defense when he stripped McCann and found Carrick with a pass. Carrick took a moment to look up and found Ronaldo at the far corner with a sublime cross, which the newly crowned player of the month of December needed no sencond invitation to head United into a 3-0 lead.

To be honest, we could and should have puniched Villa with more goals. Such was our dominance and Villa's ineptness .

Early in the second half we took both feet off the paddle and were duely punished for our complancency when Baros slashed right thru our left flank and placed a sitter for Agbonlahor to put into an empty United net.

That goal woke United up and we again pushed forward with purpose, but without reward this time, despite coming close a few times. Tactically we were also naive, trying to play the ball thru the middle after having been successful in tearing the Villa defense via the flanks in the first half. Whether this was a delibrate attempt to see if this new tactic would work or not remains a mystery to me.

Whatever the case, this was a good win against a team we had struggled to beat a week ago.

What really concerns me is that the entire midfield is very reliant on Paul Scholes. Everything in midfield goes thru him. The players don't seem to be looking for Carrick enough. I'm just concerned that when Scholes is rested (you can't expect him to play every single game), there is no one able nor experienced enough to take up his load.

Next week we face Arsenal at the Emirates. I probably wouldn't be able to catch the game, since I would be attending the 'wedding of the year'. Let's hope vengence is on the minds of the lads next Sunday. I sure would love it if we beat the gooners in their new stadium.