Birmingham city 0-1 Mnachester United

Yet another lacklustre 1-0 win, and another disjointed frustrating performance. Full marks to Birmingham for being brave enough to have a real go at us, especially in the first half, if we keep on playing like this if teams are prepared to be brave against us, somebody is going to get their just rewards,if they are similarly brave.
It's broken record time again i am afraid, all our problems, lack of form, lack of creativity and the sparse amount of chances we are creating is down to the lack of a proper centre forward. Rooney and Tevez were tripping up over each other for the first seventy minutes until Saha came on and stretched the play out for us. I believe that Rooney and Tevez can possibly play in the same team, but definitely not when they are they are both playing the central forward positions. There was one occasion in the second half that sums up what is happening when they play together, they both ended up around the centre circle and played a nice one two, the only problem being, the Birmingham centre halves were stood at the edge of their own penalty box, and when carrick or scholes then received it, there was no one up front to pass to so the ball just got passed sideways yet again. When there is a lack of chances you generally look to your central midfield to make things happen, but when there is no one up front, and no one running into the channels to make room for midfielders to run into the gap left in the middle, it's hard to blame Carrick or Scholes. Even though Scholes didn't have a great game yesterday his form has been pretty good generally, but Carrick has been a a fair way off the pace so far this season. But i would say he is suffering more than most, whilst we play without a recognised centre forward. His game last season was about making probing balls through the middle for players running from deep or long raking balls either to the wings or over the top for Saha or Rooney to run onto. With the formations we are playing, it's not giving him much outlet for his passing skills, the same goes for Scholes but it has affected Carrick more.
Our defence has been much lauded of late, but it has to be said they have had mostly pretty easy rides this season. When Birmingham had a real go at us in the first half, it didn't look quite as impressive. I wouldn't say we were found wanting but we were definitely a bit too complacent in the first half, let's hope that was a wake up call for the games ahead. Yesterday was a game where it would have been nice to have had Hargreaves available. It will be very handy to have him and Gary Neville back, whenever that is, it seems to have gone very quiet about Gary Neville returning now.
I know Ronaldo scored yesterday, but i still am not seeing the player that we saw last season, and the absence of Gary Neville is, i am sure one of the reasons. How we and Ronaldo are missing those trademark overlapping runs, they give ronaldo far more options and are a major headaches for defences as they then find it hard to double mark Ronaldo out of the game. We keep hearing Ferguson and the players saying that it is only a matter of time before we find our form, and then watch us fly, but with the players available at the moment and the tactics we are employing i can't see that being any day soon. I hate writing this, but i watched City stuff the geordies in the morning, and they played miles more exciting football than we have seen all season so far. If you would have told me i would be saying that, before the season started, i would have laughed you out of town.
As for the goal what a mistake, i couldn't believe it when i was watching it, it was schoolboy stuff. But for that i think a point would have been all we would have come away with yesterday.

More about the Coventry match, and the automatic cup ticket scheme
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport/story/0,,2180180,00.html
Whilst Will Hutton writes about the greed in football
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2180337,00.html
Interesting French interview with Wenger
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2180175,00.html

An honest piece about Burma, you hear politicians calling for sanctions, and calling for a peaceful solution to be found to the problem. But in these situations history shows the reality is people have to be brave enough and want freedom enough to risk their own lives in order to secure the right result for their country. And at the end of the day, none of us in our comfortable western lifestyles, politicians can tell people to go and die for this cause, it has to come from within them. It is a brutal world at times.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3889/