This is officially the match where it became impossible to remain calm about what United can achieve this season, and it is only the third league game. For years now it has been a stock-in trade of United fans to mock those who over-celebrate in August, “come back in May” we always say. But after a performance such as this you can only shout from the rooftops, and shout loudly. Rooney is unplayable at the moment and that was close to a perfect performance from the number 10. He really looks like he has his head on right now and it is a pertinent reminder that even I was calling for his head just 11 months ago. Thank goodness we have a manager who takes a long term view. So do Arsenal in fact, it seems churlish to pity the man and the club who unleashed human excrement such as Martin Keown on the world, but that is what I feel today. For all his faults, Arsene Wenger is a proper football manager and Arsenal are a proper football club. They command far more of my respect than City or Chelsea and their nouveaux riches poseurs. Yet they are deeply in the mire at the moment. For all the truth in saying that we had a particularly good day at the office and they had a particularly bad one, 8-2 is a seismic result and they must overhaul now. They have no other choice. Apparently the neighbours did alright for themselves earlier in the afternoon, but I pay little attention to what the oil barons are up to when Ferguson is fielding youngsters who play like this. David De Gea has arrived as a Manchester United goalkeeper. If he continues to improve in the leaps and bounds he made between this game and the last we have very little to worry about. In my humble opinion Evra and Evans were at fault for the two we conceded, and it mattered little anyway. Wellbeck is a tough lad and is very unfortunate to have pulled his hamstring. His start to this year has been phenomenal and I wish him a speedy recovery. When Hernandez came on he looked a little off the pace, but that is probably just a match fitness issue for someone who has been injured and playing in South America all summer. Uniteds passing game already looks a lot more urgent this season, Barcelona must feel very flattered to see us so blatantly copy their style. It is not as slick as the Catalan’s yet, but it is lovely to see so much sharp interplay on the egde of the box to complement out tremendous threat from the wings. The goalscoring potential of this side is stratospheric as Arsenal found out to their horror. They have nobody else to blame for themselves for the pub team defending though. Sanctimonious as it might sound to say it, but my sympathy for them nosedives when I recall the horrible challenges from the Russian Arse-shaving. He meant to do harm on several occasions and should have been sent off or executed in the first half. At that point Arsenal were up for it, it was embarrassingly one sided thereafter as we dismembered our former rivals. Ashley Young looks like he has been playing with Evra and Rooney since pre-school and in addition to his two scorching goals his role in Rooney’s free-kicks was crucial too. I feel as though there has been a real shift in the force here, how can I not be overexcited? The sky really is the limit for this team, this year. What a joy to behold. In ten incredible minutes of first half footballl United’s new gang made a real statement. Ladies and gentlemen you are watching Manchester united. Sit back and enjoy. Follow Mark on twitter.com/markjpayne
Archive for August, 2011
More’s the Pity
Monday, August 29th, 2011Scrappy Doo
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
The best time to face a Redknapp side is generally just before the transfer window closes. This season, as usual, Harry is playing another game of brinkmanship with his chairman and as such, Modric was out of the line up for Old Trafford and the 23 stone Rafael Van der Vaart started. United are having midfield issues of their own and this entertaining game saw both sides line up in the visionary 4-0-6 formation. The way you read about the United Spurs fixture it is almost as if the Londoners needn’t turn up. With their last winner at Old Trafford coming off Gary Linekar’s boot, it is almost the only mention we get nowadays that Match of Day’s answer to Ron Burgundy actually played the game. I was there on that cold December night in 1989, when England’s second finest striker scored his only ever goal from outside the box. More for the fallibility it showed in Jim Leighton’s goalkeeping than anything else, I remember the goal well. Whilst there is much to cheer from the performances of Wellbeck and Jones in particular, not to mention the clean sheet, for the first 70 minutes of this game a nagging feeling wouldn’t leave me. We need a midfielder, a good one. This is to take nothing away from the sterling efforts of people like Tom Cleverley, but last week also saw me watch the second leg of Spain’s Supercoppa. I’m afraid, at the moment, either Real or Barca could properly murder us unless we stregthen in the middle of the park. Three late goals tend to gloss over these things and the scoreline flattered us slightly. It was noticeable that Ryan Giggs took all of two minutes to set up a goal after he came on. The guy is pure class and makes the rest of our players look like Scrappy Doo. Spurs were there to hustle us and in the first half they chased down every ball with vigour, which was admirable. However, I’m not sure there were any players at all in centre midfield for either side, everything was down the flanks. De Gea’s distribution was superb and the way we turned defence to attack for the second was entirely down to him. Tougher challenges await than this one, but all in all, United can be pretty pleased with where they are right now.
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The Young One
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011I love wingers, I love them. It was a crushing realisation when I was growing up to learn that I ran about as fast a geriatric on valium and was better suited to clogging than crossing. Due to the lack of kids with a sense of direction at our school my lot was to play up front, the glory position, and try and direct our side’s frantic clearances towards the opposition’s goal. People compared me to Mark Hughes at the time, probably because my name was Mark, I certainly didn’t have any of the Welshman’s skill, guile or toughness.
It would be pushing it to say that United invented wing play, but from Busby through Ferguson it is a position our club has cherished and honed into a much loved art. One league game in to this season and, although it may be tempting fate, I am happy to sing the praises of Ashley Young.
That really was a terrific league debut, it is a shame that the ping-pong nature of our flukey winner at the Hawthorns denied Young the goal his performance deserved. Flukey as the winner was, the result was certainly justified and the fact that it was in question until the last ten minutes is slightly worrying. Our opponents over the next month will be tougher fare that West Brom.
Baggies manager Hodgson looked twitchy and worried this time last year in Scouse-land, on Sunday he seemed enormously peeved throughout. His anger is nothing compared to what you would usually expect from Fergie at De Gea’s Bobbins impression for the equaliser.
We need to give this guy time, he has produced enough excellent saves in the past two matches to confirm his talent. However, teams like Arsenal, Chelsea and lob-it-in-the-box Stoke, all of whom we face in the near future, will be aware of the Spaniard’s tendency to lapse. Fergie has decisions to make.
None of this is unexpected. My forecast for the season sees United conceding more goals than usual, scoring themselves out of trouble and swashbuckling their way through. With Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool starting their campiagns in whimpering fashion we have little to complain about. What’s more, all of United’s football in pre-season, and again this weekend, has been pretty darn entertaining. In Rooney’s opener we have scored yet another beauty too. ‘Bring on Arsenal, Chelsea and Stoke’ I say, ‘lob as many crosses into the box as you like’. We look like we can score against anybody at the moment.
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Team Spirit 3 – 2 Mercenaries
Monday, August 8th, 2011
It makes me feel slightly ill to see Brian Kidd sat on the Manchester City bench, but it was probably him who felt sickest at the end of this match. Although this was certainly not a performance without flaws from United, there was plenty on display to be pleased about. Not to mention of course, that scoring the winner ten seconds from the end is just about the best way you can beat your closest rivals. The unforgiving vice that is David de Gea’s existence looked to be tightening fatally at half-time. We will all do well to remember that Jaap Stam was made to look like a builder’s skip on his debut in the 1998 Charity Shield and he turned out okay. Although the Spaniard looked like he could have done better with the second Fergie has been saying all along we need to give the guy time to settle. The fact that he is twenty boggles the mind and two of his saves in the second half were highly impressive. I also liked the look of his quick, Schmeical like distribution of the ball. He has plenty of people up front to aim his kicks at anyway. Nani in particular is starting to edge towards awesomeness. Let’s hear it for that second goal of United’s, an absolute beauty and dare I say it, Barcelona-esque. Could this be the culmination of an enormous amount of training pitch work over the summer? I bloody hope so. The fact that Nani et al were able to pass it around despite the bludgeoning of some of City’s tackling is even more remarkable. Micah Richards is some player, his ability to not get sent off when clearly deserving of a red reminds me of Alan Shearer. I hope they win the same amount of medals. Smalling and Cleverly were both also excellent but before we get lost in hyperbole let’s try to look realistically at why we conceded twice at the end of a first half we dominated. Frankly, Rio and Evra looked a little of the pace. James Milner made mincemeat of the man United fans call Postman Patrice and it may well be time to install a da Silva at left back more permanently. It is also hard to escape the feeling that one of the biggest factors behind the victory, yet again, is the indestructible quality of our manager. Fergie can obviously still deliver a team talk even if most of his players are younger than most of his suits. With so much youth on display lapses in concentration would be understandable, but not on the Scotsman’s watch. United have shown this weekend we have a side which won’t even peak for a couple of years. And they did it by dominating the most expensive team in history. The squad isn’t pefect, but if they can continue to deliver entertainment like then so what? We’re Man United, we do what we like.
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This is how it feels to be small
Sunday, August 7th, 2011
Pre-season used to be a quiet time of kickabouts behind closed doors whilst the lads got off the beer and the physio glued Bryan Robson’s leg back together. 2011 has been rather different, as United have met a show-reel that Jason and the Argonauts would be jealous of. Colossus after Colossus has passed through our viewer in recent weeks as the side have met Canotona, Pele, Beckham, Barcelona and of course, Gary Neville too.
Whether this was a ruse to make the Community Shield match against City look like small fry we will never know, but it would never have worked anyway. The neighbours are definitely on the map.
Although the team returns to Wembley with victories over European Champions Barcelona and opponents directed by God himself (Cantona), it is hard to forget that the last time we were at the national stadium we lost, and to the same opponents.
United have scored more than Errol Flynn in pre-season and there are goals in this team. There may well need to be on the back of a great goalkeeper’s retirement. Naturally, the jury is out on young De Gea. One only hopes he can survive the hysterical scrutiny he will now be under. The closure of the News of the World will hopefully lessen this, but he is bound to get a tough time from the press regardless.
For a discussion about United’s midfield type the word ‘Sneijder’ into Google and take your pick from any one of a million articles. My personal feeling is that this is a very big year for Senor Anderson. How he starts the campaign may well determine whether or not we do any more spending. Fletcher looks skeletal and the idea appears that whatever his illness is may be rather serious. Again, I suspect United will have to score themselves out of trouble a lot this campaign.
Frankly though, thank God the wait is over. I extend my thanks to Joey Barton for keeping the last week of the summer interesting but it is great that the games are back now. With fingers crossed, I am hoping that United can keep Norwich off the top spot for as long as possible.
Go Delia.
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