You know things aren’t going your way when the crowd cry “SHOOT!” when the goalkeeper comes to collect the ball close to the half way line. It was just one of those days. It didn’t seem to matter how many chances we created, how much possession we had, or how much time we spent in Sunderland’s half, it looked as though we weren’t going to score today.
At the start of the second half I wondered just how long Sunderland could hold out with their chosen tactics. The only time the ball went in to our half was when one of their players, from defenders to strikers, hoofed the ball away from their box.
Sunderland proved they could hold out for another 45 minutes… but then they crumbled.
It was a good job Roy Keane had left the club for the sake of the players and Roy’s mental well-being. Not many teams will come to Old Trafford and prevent us from scoring for such a long time, so to concede just as the injury time was being announced would have sent Keano through the roof.
Frustration mounted in the crowd the longer Sunderland kept us out though, a feeling which clearly infiltrated in to our players, all of whom were in Sunderland’s half of the pitch as the clock ticked down.
Dimitar Berbatov had the best chance of the game with 15 minutes to play, thanks to a perfect cross from Michael Carrick. Berbatov rose higher than anyone else, yet still managed to head over the bar. With time running out, Giggsy pulled the ball back for Anderson a few yards out but his hesitation allowed the defender to get a block in.
In total, United had 23 shots, 8 of them on target, whilst Sunderland had 0 shots, on or off target. On another day, it might have 4-0, but on this day, it looked as though it was going to finish 0-0.
I already could hear the post-match analysis in Match of the Day, praising Sunderland for their resilience, talking of how they got their tactics just right, whilst also questioning United’s title challenge.
Nemanja Vidic saved us though. The fact that our centre back was on the edge of the six yard box, to tap in a shot that came back off the woodwork, suggests how desperate we were for that goal and thankfully it came.
It wasn’t the absolute thrashing a lot of people were expecting but it’s been a while since we’ve had a feel good feeling like that. With every missed chance and failed opportunity to score came great tension and frustration. To see the Sunderland keeper scrambling to get back in position from Carrick’s shot, watching Vidic approaching faster than any of the defenders, knowing he was going to put the ball in the back of the net, was a moment to behold.
To follow on from our great performance against City last weekend, it would have been brilliant to continue that form on with several goals against a despondent Sunderland team. It wasn’t to be, unfortunately, but with five minutes to go yesterday I wouldn’t have given a shit less about the amount of goals scored, as long as we picked up three points. That’s exactly what we did and we should be more than pleased with that.
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On the whole a good performance over 94 minutes. A positive to show that we can still “nick” games in the last min or injury time. 70+% of possession yet on match of the day fucking Alan Hansen said “United played very very poorly” What a twat , i don’t know which game he was watching.
Tell me about it, glad Vidic has some sense to go and play up front as there’s clearly no danger from Sunderland, it was still a fairly difficult shot for him, i’m glad he reacted and i’m glad the linesman knew he was onside otherwise there’d have been hell to pay!!
Watched goal over again. Top celebrations, good to see how much the goal meant to players especially Vid, giggs and VDS .
i fully agree! i was starting to get the feeling that it WAS one of those days
lol
in any case, im really proud of our guys, we tried everything, from wide positions, through passes, one-twos, down the middle, shots, frekicks, corners etc.
showed that we really did go through all the different ways of getting a goal. which is much more than Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. they mostly have only 1 way of getting a goal.
another thing we need to work on though, is our set plays. we showed something interesting with ronaldo and rooney routine, but we need to do more with our corners and freekicks.
all in all, good entertainment, good pressure, great spirit, and great score!
3 more points in the bag – can’t wait to meet the other 3 teams soon, to reel them all in!!
Someone is gonna get a real hiding off us soon…. the amount of chances we are creating and players misfiring…
Sooner or later, everyone will hit form at the same time and reckon we gonna score 7, 8 or 9 in a game..
Its coming and someone is gonna get wounded.
carrick is our best midfielder at the moment . he’s the best in the prem! and probably on par with xavi and iniesta when it comes to europe
Ironically,”one of those days” in the past was against Sunderland.The commentator kept mentioning the 0-0 draw at the end of the 05-06 season that cost us the title.On that day i had broken everything in the room simply because our team was better than that.5 days ago it had completely dominated Arsenal.I think this match was even more one sided than that one.To be honest i didn’t panic when Ronaldo exited the field.He was haveing his worst game in 3 years.I did panic when i saw Giggs onstead of Nani on.Two interesting tidbits about this match.1)I believe that Vidic’s defending experience helped him massively in the goal.Defenders are always alert when the ball gets past them in case it rebound of the post.So that’s why he was the first to react.Thank God he didn’t get confused and kick the ball away!2)That’s the second time this year Patrice and Wayne will be suspended for the same game.It also happened at the Manchester derby in February.Only this time we can’t afford the same result.A win would be a giant boost but a draw won’t be a disaster.We will be facing a rejuvanated Tottenham team.
Again, the need for “AnAlternative” forward was evident – thankfully, Nemanja Vidic answered that call ! Amazingly, he answered with his feet and not his head.
The cross from Carrick to Berbatov was not “perfect” – it was just slightly behind Dimi and caused him to arch backwards to get his head on it. Thus, he could only head it upwards rather than downwards. It was one of those little things that just wasn’t quite right and it sure looked like it was, indeed, going to be “one of those days” when the opposition parked the bus in the penalty area and made things so crowded that there would be no way through. In the end, it required a mis-direction from Carrick’s strike to bamboozle their keeper and, after rebounding free, to provide an inviting prospect for Vidic to slot away wlth aplomb.
On a couple of slightly different topics:
Why did Giggs try to volley that cross rather than heading it ? and,
Wasn’t Raphael exceptional in his marauding offensive “wing play” ?
With Evra and Raphael on the flanks, UTD”s “formation” was mostly a 2-5-3. Ironically, it was one of the “2″ that got the goal.
what happened with ronaldo and his injury?
i expected to read today about scans or x-rays, something serious to justify his walking off the pitch like that.
fergie has to get ronaldo sorted – happy to play for United, or else ship him out somewhere – and preferably not to those francoists at Real
denton davey, dont u think it was much like 1-5-4, the defenders practically had nothing to do. infact it should have been 0-5-5. because even when vidic left ferdinand at the back, he still had nothing to do there. fergie has said they had to tell vida to move forward because he was not doing anything at the back. that was wise of the master. another valuable three points in the bag.
it really was shocking how sunderland were just content with containing united, they showed no hunger to attack and merely hoofed the ball into touch. i know we have a lot of teams come to OT for a draw but most of them also send a few players to attack, sunderland seemed happy to fustrate us and really lacked ambition – just shows why they are struggling to say up while we are pushing for honours
What really annoys me is when I watch my recording of Match of the Day on Sunday and see the”experts” praising a team who didn’t have a single shot all fucking game!!
denton davey, agreed pal thought Raphael was excellent yesterday.
Costas, don’t think Pat and Rooney will both miss spurs game together as Pat’s ban as far as I know does not kick in till 22 December?
He picked up a 5th yellow against City.But once you get the ban,there needs to be a 7 day gap before it kicks in.That’s why he was available yesterday.Pat in reality has a 5 match ban.I really hope he takes him in Japan since he won’t play much football until the match with Chelsea.And i really hope John O’Shea rediscovers his 02-03 form.
utd being unable to score is happening too many times this season i think.please people don’t think that we are playing great because of all the possesion we have in all these games.the reason we are able to keep so much possesion i think is that the other teams are letting us.they know that if they stay firm defensively all this possesion isn’t going to matter.we need a stroke of genius to breakdown these situations and that’s probably why we bought berba.frankly he dosen’t seem to be delivering at all for me.he has missed to many good chances in almost all the games.he doen’t have any excuses for his lack of goals now surely.i know he has great touch and passing range but that’s not what he bought him for really.maybe its time to rest him and play tevez.i mean which striker is benched after scoring 4 in the previous game.i really thought if he was on from the start we’d have seen a better result.
Aalborg,Celtic,West Brom and Stoke are the only teams our £30 million pound striker Dimitar Berbatov has scored against. A paltry 6 goals most of which were tap ins . Now I know there’s an argument going around that he does much more for the team and sets up others to score. To me thats bollocks. If we wanted a player like that then Tevez should be playing more often. Funny thing is Carlos has played less and yet scored more. There’s another fallacy going around that we play better with Berbatov and Rooney upfront. I disagree totally and my proof is last year when Ronnie,Wayne and Carlos all featured together we looked unplayable. So much so that those three were comapared to the holy trinity of Best,Law and Charlton. Why hasn’t there been more outcry about Berbatov’s performances ? well he’s still new the club will more than likely be the answer and give him time will be the other. But hang on isn’t he 28 years old surely he’s supposed to be in his prime and the transition from spurs to us shouldn’t of really affected him negatively considering how desperate he was to join us. I’m dying to see more from him infront of goal and become as greedy as Ronnie and really ignite our campaign. As fans we should not settle for second best either and if he does go on bag a couple against Aalborg even if they’re really good strikes lets not go nuts and allow him to play shite for the next ten games till we play another poor defensive team. Next Saturday Dimitar your seasons begins against your former employers and go there, be brave and try and the reds in the stadium will back you up to the hilt. But if you don’t and play like you have been playing don’t be surprised if our travelling support isn’t rushing forward to defend you.
I know berbatov wil play better against spurs cuz he will b playing alongside tevez since wazza is not playing we will win @ spurs, liverpool to draw against arsenal.
The thing is with Berbatov he brings a touch of class to our game, although i dont like to use ‘settling in’ as an excuse for players the constant changing of Rooney/ Tevez is making it harder for him to gel with the team.
He isnt as lazy as i thought he would be, when Fergie knows how he wants to play our strikers Berbatov will come good.
I hate it when our own fans really slate our own players, at the end of the day we had Diego (wooahh) Forlan as our striker at one point and we stood by him. so get off his back for fucks sake!
Oh and i can predict the future and Berbatov will score a perfect hatrick against spurs then celebrate wildly by giving us a smile
I am in agreement with those of you who feel that promoting Berbatov – and thereby downgrading Tevez – has had negative impact on the team’s play so far this year. From what I have seen so far this year, bringing in Berbatov has been a kind of subtraction-by-addition.
When Carlitos, TheBoyWonder, and CR7 were doing their “whirligig” thing last year, the team’s attack was more varied and its defence was stronger because Tevez and Rooney both defend from the front which is crucial because we got the best out of Ronaldo when he was allowed to roam and ignore defensive play – of course, Ronaldo is always likely to ignore defensive responsibilities so that this was a necessity-being-the-mother-of-invention situation.
I would like to think that SAF is defining these guys’ roles by working on some sort of “diamond system” so that he can play Tevez behind Rooney, Ronaldo, and Berbatov. This was the role that Paul Scholes played when his legs allowed for it and I think that Tevez could do that job as well – or maybe even better – than the GingerNinja did it. That’s saying a lot but I just don’t understand why ThreeLungPark or Nani or – gasp ! – the aging-legend Ryan Giggs get first-team opportunities ahead of playing this foursome together. These four guys are much, much better players than the three ‘reserves’ so it is only reasonable to find some way to get them on the field together.
A victory for football not just man utd.You cant tell me any team that does what sunderland did deserves anything.
Red Manc, Your forgetting Forlan was a complete unknown and new to the country and his effort when was unquestionable from day 1 at old trafford and he repaid our faith with big goals in that 02/03 season. Berbatov has come to United for a much larger transfer (4 x’s as much as we paid for Diego) and is most certainly is on higher wages. The transfer fee brings with it a high expectation but the fact he’s proven he can score in the league makes me question his current form. Usually with big signings they hit the ground running and the ones that don’t well thats another story. We need goals on a consistent level like Cole, Yorke and even Brian McClair gave us. Maybe he’ll kick on I only hope
Berbatov didn’t have a pre-season, so it’s unfair to expect him to hit the ground running.
If you consider the 12 games he’s had since he first scored (to allow for the fact he wasn’t match fit for the first few games), that’s 6 goals he’s scored. In Dwight Yorke’s first 12 games he scored 7 goals.
Give him a break.
It’s a good thing SAF decides to throw Vidic up as another centre forward and left Rio to play one on one with Kenwyne Jones.
No one else seems to be running in to the penalty box for those sort of tap in that we were so used to seeing back in 95 – 99. This season only Fletcher has made those sorts of run into the penalty box. We seem to like to hang about outside; prodding and flicking the ball trying to find the perfect goal… are we turning into the gooners??!! i hope not. I would love for us to be ruthless once more.
I personally LOVE Berbatov’s game and since his arrival; have swooned and marvelled at his wonderful touch and skill. But for the love of god, you’re a god damn striker! Stop post-playing all the time and start aiming for the freaking goal with your headers! The amount of time he tried to post-play with his header only to find the ball hoofed away by a Sunderland player was exasperating!
aah this is one of those games where u miss the genius of scholes. He would’ve been able to open them up. Carrick is getting there though. He was easily man of the match the past two matches. Just playing effortlessly, almost like a berbatov but in midfield.
Scott the red:you are saying berba didn’t have a pre season.but mate we are in december right now with almost nearing half season mark.surely that is enough time for anyone to settle in.last season tevez played straightaway after returning from copa and didn’t have any rest but by december he was integral part of the team and played way better than dimi.
remember none of the fans are against berbatov.we will always support him but we surely are a little dissapointed.nobody doubts his skill and ability.