Quick Observations From Villa Draw

1. We deserved absolutely nothing from today’s game. Fancy playing that badly and in such a disorganised fashion just days after having almost complete control at Wastelands.
2. Our midfield is desperately poor. Whilst we don’t enjoy seeing it padded out the way it was at Wastelands, at least then we have control of the game. With just two central midfielders, whoever they may be, United really struggle to take a grip of the game. If the midfield is being by-passed, that puts extra pressure on the defence and makes the job of the strikers needlessly difficult. You can’t win the title if your midfield don’t show up and that is our biggest problem right now. That’s not to say our attack and defence is faultless but if our midfield was doing the business, the rest would slot in to place.
3. They put something in Nani’s Lucozade at Villa Park to make him barmy. His stupidity cost us the win there last season and today he was all over the place. Going to ground too easily, elbowing people in the face and just generally not showing up.
4. Saying that, Nani got his 9th league assist of the season, proving himself yet again to be our most important player this season.
5. After another poor display from United, the obvious conclusion from too many reds is that it’s all Dimitar Berbatov’s fault. He didn’t have a great game but played better than most players. Wes Brown gives away a pen, Patrice Evra is caught napping again as we go 2-0 down, yet because Berbatov didn’t score the one chance his team mates managed to create for him in 75 minutes, it’s all doom and gloom for him. We all want him to score more goals but this scapegoating is embarrassing. Ingerlernd, Ingerlernd, Ingerlernd!
6. Inspired substitutions to the rescue? Hardly. It was Federico Macheda who carelessly lost the ball which lead to the Villa break to make it 2-0. He made up for that with a brilliant strike. As for Obertan and Smalling? Did they turn the game around? It was 2-0 and finally United decided to play with some urgency. When United are playing like that, I’d far rather Chicharito and Berbatov on the park than Macheda and Obertan. In the last ten minutes, we created double the chances we had before that.
7. Full credit to Nemanja Vidic popping up with the goods. It was his hard work at City that ensured we left with at least a point midweek and his hard work up front that did the same today. Great effort to get his head on the end of that ball.
8. We’re still unbeaten… and? I’m no Arsenal fan. The point of football is to win, not to prevent losing, so an unbeaten run makes no difference to me if we’re dropping points every week. If Chelsea win tomorrow, we’re 6 points behind. If Arsenal win, they’re a point ahead of us and we’re down to 3rd.
9. For all the criticism, the players have to get some credit from coming back from 2 goals behind. After throwing away games at the end too many times this season, it was nice to see it reversed. It was 0-0 with 70 minutes played, 2-0 with 76 minutes played, 2-2 with 85 minutes played. The type of mentality you have to possess not to let your heads drop when you concede two goals in such quick succession at that time in the game is commendable. Well done lads. But we should never have put ourselves in a situation where that mentality was needed.