Everton 3-1 Mancheter United

I was expecting a hard game and i certainly wasn't expecting an Arsenal away type peformance. But i didn't really expect what we got yesterday. But then again if we keep defending like we have in the last two games there will be a few more defeats left during this season. Fergie has come out and said we left our legs in Milan and tiredness must have played it's part in contributing to yesterday's second half no show. I accept that, and i accept that you can't play well every game. The problem for me yesterday was yet again we saw a really terrible defensive diplay. They were missing two of their best players in Cahill and Fellaini and without being that great themselves they still probably just about deserved to win. It's the unforced errors are the back that are killing us. The sooner that Ferdinand and Vidic are back the better because Brown and Evans in particulare are going through a woeful spell of form.
The difference between this season and the last few seasons is that our defence is costing us games where in seasons past, we would have come out with a point or maybe a tight 1-0 win. Injuries has played a big part obviously and i suspect we have missed John O'Shea almost as much as Rio and Vidic with his ability to play anywhere along the back line. Even Evra seems to have hit a trough in his form of late.
We started reasonably well with the returning Berbatov and Vaelncia the pick of the players. Rooney started off a touch rustily and as the game went on he looked like one of the players who had left his legs back in Milan. When the goal came it courtesy of the two men in form as Valencia crossed and Berbatov controlled it superbly before unleashing a strike that gave Howard no chance. Crucially for Everton they weren't behind for long as Evans poor challenge in the air saw the ball fall to Bilyaledtinov who's first time shot hit the back of the net with Van Der Sar stuck to the spot. United's weak defence was opened up alarmingly easy once again moments later but the Russian couldn't keep the bouncing ball down this time. Rooney was quiet but Berbatov's fine piece of vision put him through on goal but Phil Neville managed to get back and poke the ball away from him after he had gone round the goalie.
The second half seemed to be meandering away to a draw when Fergie decided to change things by bringing Scholes and Obertan on for Park and Berbatov on the hour . I couldn't really believe the substitutions at all yesterday although Berbatov wasn't playing as well he had in the first half he wasn't the obvious choice to go off for me. Once Valencia went off for Owen with ten minutes to go we stopped creating anything worthy of the name. Once again Park ran around a lot and created fuck all as far as i could see. I appreciate you have to have some willing workers in the team but they surely have to contribute more offensively to a team at United's level than Park does to ours.
With fifteen minutes to go Gosling poked home Pienaar's cross to put Everton in front. The way we had played it was hard to see us coming back from that. And in fact the one chance that we did have after that came from a dead ball as Rooney's free kick got just enough of a deflection off the wall to divert over the bar. Supposed United target Rodwell's last minute goal put the icing on the cake for the blue half of Merseyside and topped off a miserable afternoon for United.

Fergie blames tiredness and says we will bounce back.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8526221.stm

The Observer interview with Fergie finds him saying he understands United's fans right to protest but he doesn't have any concerns about the Glazer's. No real suprises there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/21/sir-alex-ferguson-manchester-united-interview

Fergie is not in favour of "hare brained" fourth champions laeahue play off place.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/manutd/7280857/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-dismisses-hare-brained-play-off-plan.html

Every paper seems to have a piece celebrating a hundred years of old traford, here is the independent's effort.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/old-trafford-centenary-10-games-that-define-theatre-of-dreams-1904283.html

Football's top star to try and dodge new 50% tax rate. This is the type of thing that does my head in.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/article6395778.ece

An interesting analysis of the tories failiure to exploit the government's woes by Michael Portillo despite the surely discredited free market economic analysis.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7034925.ece

Will Hutton on the real economic battle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/will-hutton-economics-recession

Time everyone ( meaning the rich as well) paid their fair share of tax rightly argues Ruth Sutherland of the Obsever
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/21/tax-avoidance-comment

A touch of US indie with Nada Surf and Blankest year