Whilst United were not utterly convincing in their defeat of Birmingham there are a lot of positives to glean from the performance. There were many shades of last season’s impenetrable run in that we had several injuries but held firm. There was also the expected return to 4-4-2 to assess.
Little under five years ago we were chanting for this formation amd snidely mocking Queiroz for taking the flair out of our game. Now the worry is that we have returned to an archaic tactical model, the footballing equivalent of trying to rub two mobile phones together to make fire.
Valencia and Nani are both men of trickery but not necessarily by-line huggers who will put in the cross. They both played well at OT on Sunday but in this formation you need to be terrifying the full-backs you face.
In fairness, in an untried line up against a bunch of seasoned pros under the charge of a crunching Scotsman the kids did more than alright.
Evra was sensational. He is still our doodle-bug and tore forward like a man possessed, all this talk of Rooney being on the left wing last season and it may be that he was holding the Frenchman back all along.
This, of course, is fine. Rooney looks pretty happy playing through he middle and I suspect goalies don’t like it too much when he shoots the ball at them. He will be doing it a lot more this season I am afraid my glove-wearing friends.
ON the evidence of this game we can draw two solid conclusions. Those who predicted Birmingham to go down were speaking too soon and United are going to have to play considerably better against Arsenal. As usual Wenger’s men have been underestimated, and they are the first big team we face.