Another Semi-Final On The Way!

With five minutes to go, knowing a goal from the opposition will see you out of the competition, you’re always going to be shitting yourself, but when you look at the game as a whole, it’s nice when you think your keeper didn’t really have a save to make.

The one heart in mouth moment was when Edwin Van der Sar came out for a cross and then gave up half way, meaning he didn’t get anything on the ball and they had a chance to head in to his open net. Fortunately, our defence covered it, which was the general theme for the evening. Even John O’Shea played well!

Other than that, the scariest moment was when Rooney was hopping around on one leg. I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word “metatarsal” as I watched him limp around! Thankfully he was fine and I didn’t have to envisage the rest of our campaign without him.

Not a classic performance from our lads but it was certainly better than what we’ve seen. Our passing was generally a lot better and our defenders weren’t suicidal. Brilliant.

Ronaldo’s goal was a dream. What a fantastic strike. For all the brilliant goals he’s scored for us, that was up there as one of the best. The distance the ball travelled, with the power behind it, was simply brilliant. Good on him for having the confidence to strike it and good on him for having the ability to pull it off.

The best chances of the game fell to United, with Nemanja Vidic getting away with missing that sitter just before half time. Ronaldo and Rooney held their head in their hands as Vidic somehow managed to lift the ball over the bar from a few yards out. Defensively though, there wasn’t much wrong with his game, with the addition of Rio to our back four obviously having a positive effect.

By and large, our players were on good form tonight. Anderson and Evra were a lot better than they have been, Carrick looked more assured, Ronaldo worked harder and O’Shea looked competent.

To win away at Porto, something no English team has before managed, is achievement enough as far as I’m concerned. When you consider how strong Porto looked at Old Trafford, the result is even more impressive.

There’s still a long way to go but this was a performance we could take some pride in, which makes it the exception to the performances we’ve put out for the past month or so. When you think we’ve already won two trophies, got two semi-finals to come, and we’re still top of the league, we don’t have an awful lot to complain about! Let’s take confidence from this performance and take it a level higher against Everton!