The Devil In Me

Regular readers of this column will know all about the Crinkleys. They are a group of curmudgeonly old United fans made up of my Dad and his school mates who I often attend home matches with. One of their catchphrases, no doubt chiselled from decades of watching the team, is “they make us suffer”. My goodness they did that tonight at Old Trafford.

Kai Wayne could have defended better than we did against CSKA and I’m tempted to draft him into the team for Sunday. There is a reason why you rebuild teams, a reason why you bring in new faces and, I suspect, it is the same reason that no team has won more than three league titles on the trot. Desire.

We lost to Liverpool, who are utterly woeful at the moment, because they wanted it more. Looking at the match against the Russians I felt that we looked complacent for large periods. It is telling that Valencia and Owen, the only two guys who haven’t been part of a championship winning squad yet, did some of our best running.

My finger is not pointing at anybody particularly for the opener. CSKA worked their goal well and the finish was pretty Roy of the Rovers. Fair play. Owen’s goal was the product of him continually finding the right positions. It is not quite as if he only needs one chance to score but he’ll be around when goals are about.

Short lived that turned out to be though. Krasic is obviously a fairly decent player but he is no Maradona. To score that goal with Brown, Evans and Fletcher looking admiringly on must have made him feel like el Diego though. I can only assume that they were mesmerised by how his hair danced in the wind. Either that, or they were having a “who can defend the crappest competition”. The result was a tie.

I am deeply ashamed that we conceded the third to a free-kick I was taught when I was nine. United have produced less clean sheets this season than a YMCA in Detroit. On this evidence, it is easy to see why. Tactically we are lacking something huge at the moment. Like a plan of some kind. At all.

United escaped but we certainly didn’t trip the light fantastic. Being able to pull out a draw from that position shows the team has character. It just needs to show it an awful lot more at the weekend. When we played in the last ten minutes we showed great ability and slick movement. This year we do not have a defensive side and need to really go for it in all games.

There were some positives to take from the game, Gary Neville can still cross a ball, Macheda has the kind of skill that tells me he will become a seriously top player and for the first quarter of the match Valencia looked like a very comfortable Champions League winger. But the United verdict after tonight is quite simply, ‘must try harder’. Drogba must be licking his lips.