The Devil In Me

Well it’d be pretty tough to complain if you were a United fan right now. Being the Lord of cynicism that I am this fixture looked like it might be trouble. Villa gave Arsenal one hell of a game in December and the law of averages suggests they are due a result over us. It is something ridiculous like 27 games since they beat us. The last one I can remember is the opener of the 95/96 season when they won 3-1. Our one was scored by a floppy haired teenager called David at the death, it was an absolute screamer that nobody seems to mention anymore.

What will be mentioned in the future is Ronaldo’s opener. Judge Crinkley maintains that every time you watch him play the guy does something to make the price of the ticket worth while. That is a very difficult comment to disagree with. I thought immediately after the goal that we would have to start playing him as a striker, so of course he immediately sets up Tevez with a cross that David chap would have been more than proud of. What on earth are we going to do with him?

I do have a slight concern over his attitude at certain points. Alas, he has a habit of clutching parts of his body that weren’t touched when he goes down and I thought I saw him showing a bit of dissent to Giggs at one of the free kicks. Paranoia you might say, but you only have to annoy Ferguson the tiniest amount for him to look at Real Madrid’s 100 million pounds and think, ‘maybe’.

It was great to see Rooney score two and he could have had a hat-trick but the way the press are going to town is irksome, we have still won nothing yet.

Looking at the table our goal difference is the stuff of fiction at the moment, +53 and twenty ahead of the rest, it is surely worth a point.

On a sadder note, although two of their goals were lucky Arsenal were thoroughly good value for their victory. They never gave in, two down with ten men and it was the perfect response to Bolton’s ‘throw on the defenders’ approach, my respect has been earnt.

Bring on Roma.