Scunthorpe United 2-5 Manchester United

The scoreline may have been 5-2 but it was a scorline that flattered United, in fact i felt a bit sorry for the home team who kept going forward to the last. I didn't like the team selected or should i say i didn't like the formation. To play 4-3-3 you have to have forwards capable and willing to play it. A forward line consisting of Owen, Macheda and Hernandez wasn't equipped to bring the best out of that formation.
I suppose the scoreline would suggest i was wrong, but i don't think i am. The ratio of efforts on goal which was about three to one in their favour tells a different story. In fact we scored with almost every chance we had, which, let's face it is pretty unusual for United. Fortunately for us almost all their shots were straight at Kuszczak, for all the praise that ex United failiure Birtles gave him, the PIG didn't make a save that was out of this world, you would have expected him to make every save that he made.
When they took the attack to us straight from the start and almost totally controlled the first fifteen minutes i wasn't as surprised as i should have been given the line up. United were truly woeful in that period hardly ever keeping the ball and mostly resorting to long balls. It was no surprise when the home team took the lead, but the quality of the goal was, it was a great shot. United equalised almost immediately from, ironically enough, a long ball from Smalling that Gibson tucked away. It was a soft goal for them to concede really, a sucker punch.
United started to get into the game a bit more now without really showing any fluency and ten minutes before half time United took the lead when Park crossed to the near post and Smalling got into the box to sweetly volley the cross into the back of the net. Smalling was the big plus of the night, not for the goal, that was a nice bonus, but for his all round play. His reading of the game and his distribution was superb all night. If he can step that up to the premier league then we may just have found our replacement for Rio, that's still a big if though. As for Ferdinand, i'm afraid that after me saying i thought it may have been a recurrence of his back problems forcing him out of the squad against Liverpool, after seeing him yesterday, i think i was wrong, it look like Fergie didn't think he would be ready for a game of that magnitude. I'm afraid it seems more certain than ever that we have seen the best of Ferdinand. His loss of pace was more obvious than ever last night, he isn't ready for a premier league return yet.
The second half was pretty similar to the last twenty minutes of the first half with the game going end to end. United's finshing was again clinical with Owen getting two and Park scoring the other. As good as their play going forward was they weren't the best at the back. To be fair to them, the just went for it, they could have sat back and sat everybody behind the ball and got beat one or two nil but they preferred to score a couple and concede more and gives the watching public some good entertainment.  The goal in the last minute was the least they deserved.
As i have said Smalling was the one player to stand out. Gibson was nothing special again, despite his goal, Anderson, similar but i'll give him the benefit of the doubt as he continues his comeback from his knee injury and Park was Park.
Up top Owen floated around ineffectally until he got in the box as usual and then against lower level opposition came alive when he got in there, what that tells us that we didn't already know, your guess is as good as mine. I would have preferred to see 4-4-2 with Hernandez and Macheda paired together. Neither of those two looked comfortable in the formation unsurprisingly, but i suppose Hernandez did marginally better with two good crosses that should have led to at least one goal from Macheda. Macheda had a poor night, almost invariably taking the wrong option, the run and pass for the third goal apart.
So next round here we come, and with Chelsea, Liverpool, City and Spurs out it looks like there will be a fair chance that we may well get to that third final in a row. Away draw next please.

Mike Phelan defends the absence of Alex Ferguson who chose to miss the game at Scunthorpe to go to Spain to check up on our next opponents in the Champions league Valencia. I suppose that's a fair enough answer, it's hard to know how tough an opponent Valencia will actually be. As everybody must know they are not in a good way finacially and had to sell their best two players in the summer Villa and Silva. But they had won all their league games before last night, a better than expected start. Maybe the 1-1 draw with Athleico Madrid is a more realistic pointer to where they will end up the season.
In an interview with CNN ferguson hints that United's games against Chelsea could be the games that decide the title. It's a bit early to be saying that and i'm not sure it will be true anyway.
Ferdinand was pleased to have got another game under his belt.

Liverpool's managing director Christian Purslow has told angry fand that the club is highly profitable but that the problem is that almost all of that profit is being used to service the debt loaded onto the club by Hicks and Gillett. In fact so much so that he also admitted that the club can only just manage to pay them. Well i wonder where else that may apply. Gill and co must think we are fucking stupid.

Jonathan Freedland reminds the labour party and the new leader elect that mocking Nick Clegg and the lib dems may be easy but the real target is still the tories and the easy laughs would be playing into Cameron and Osborne's hands.
Rod Liddle's Spectator column asks what exactly was wrong Vince Cable's conference speech reminding us that the bankers and financiers are the people who got us into this mess. Whilst James Forsyth sees Cable starting to position the party before the next election with the news that Cable wants to go back to the days of Lloyd George and introduce a land tax.

Bennedict Brogan fears the future will not be a sunny place for the lib dems despite the feeling that they have had a good conference.

Simon Jenkins sees another middle class escape tunnel in Michael Gove's free school plan that isn't needed and the country shouldn't want.

Roy Hattersley's new biography of David Lloyd George is released shortly and the reviews have been reasonably good so far.It was interesting to read that Roy Jenkins told him to write it, because he couldn't because he couldn't stand the man. Paul Johnson was never really going to be an admirer and so whilst he gives him the credit of being the finest political talent of the 20th century his review is as much about the women and the sex as it is about the politics. It has to be said though, he obviously could not have been a politician it todays age.
Andrew Adonis who was quite close to Roy Jenkins i think, focuses on Lloyd George's political achievements rather more whilst noting his lack of a political base and his career long hankering after coalition's. The Guardian got Geoffrey Wheatcroft to review it and predictably he isn't an admirer of the goat comparing him to Tony Blair. I can't go along with that, Lloyd George actually got things done.
Roland Quinalt reviews it for history today and focuses on totalitarian dictators admiration for him, and him for them. That i can see, he would have probably been at home in the french revolution, but would he have been Danton or Robespierre.



Is the Irwell and the Ship canal going to see the introduction of water taxi's. I hope it does, but i'm not sure how commercially viable it would be. The spinningfields stop makes sense though being half way between tram stops. Fifteen to twenty minutes seems a reasonable travel tim set against tram times.

The Who