Sunderland 0-0 Manchester United

Now this is getting worrying, not the result, but the performance, yet again. The worst thing for me yesterday is when i saw the team Fergie had selected i knew exactly what we were going to get and that was that dire first 45 minutes. There are differing opinions on the highpoint of the last 5 years, i go for the 2006-7 season whilst other go for the season after when we did league and champions league double. What is undeniable is that since we lifted the chmpions league trophy that night in Moscow we have been in decline, slowly at first, more noticeable last season and now accelerating alarmingly. We have less realy special players than we have had since the 2003-2006 barren spell and the reliance on Giggs and Scholes to create is now really starting to worry me.
We have far too many ordinary players all over the park for me to be very confident about the future. The lack of signings and our supposed transfer strategy of only buying players of a certain age is starting to drag us down. I hadn't seriously thought City could challenge us this season. But the more i watch us this season, the more horribly realistic that now seems. We have laughed at Liverpool over the last couple of seasons, but it's been a nervous laughter, because we have known what has happened over there could all so easily be what is in store for us. No money to buy the top players needed to compete for the league title and the possibility of seeing your best players leave to go to clubs that will compete.
That £50 million or whatever it is now that goes out of this club every year to pay the debt the Glazers have saddled the club with, that in a pre-Glazer world would have been used to identify and sign Giggs and Scholes successors is now starting to seriously impact the club on the field. Fergie goes on about youngsters being the fiuture of the club but hardly ever picks them. I know we have some talented youngsters on the books but only Cleverley and Welbeck look like they have first team squad written on them for sure and they are both on out on loan for the season. I agreed with the Welbeck loan move but at the risk of sounding like a broken record i am still totally bemused by the decision to send Cleverley out. The way we are playing at the moment, given an injury free spell, he could well have established himslef as one of our main players.
As to yesterday's game, once again he picked a totally unbalanced front three and once again we got the performance that the selection deserved. I don't know whthere you would call yesterday 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 because i haven't a clue who was supposed to be playing on the left. I am not going to bang on about Owen, he isn't a United player full stop, and we gave the kind of performance that i and anybody with half a brain should have expected Owen to give in that formation. When he was at his peak, and he wasn't all he was cracked up to be even then, he was the type of centre forward who relies totally on service from midfiled and the flanks. There is absolutely nothing else to his game, so what Fergie expects to get from him in a fluid front three i am totally at a loss to see.
I'm not sure what to make of Macheda as a United prospect, he would be behind Welbeck and King, that's for sure. But i have to feel sorry for him having to have to come into a struggling side without it's best forwards and then to be shunted out onto the left  and then play up front with Owen with no recognisable left winger or even left sided midfielder. He is another out and out centre forward who needs to play in a proper 4-4-2 at this stage of his career. Of the front three selected to start yesterday there was only Nani playing in a position comfortable to him, and though he has had a decent season so far he still blows hot and cold far too much for the team to rely on him to be the man to deliver the creativity we need. His play acting yesterday was beyond embarrassing as well, really fucking cringeworthy.
Anderson came in for his first league start of the season and reminded me why i would have been happy to have seen him leave the club in the summer. Coming back from injury is no excuse for constantly giving the ball away which was his contribution to yesterdays proceedings. Somebody should check his birth certificate, is he really a Brazillian because he is one of the least skillful players in our squad and that's saying something at the moment. Fletcher hasn't made a great start to the season and i fear the amount of games he is going to be asked to play he will probably not get anywhere near the form he showed in the first half of last season before his heavy workload afected him in the closing stages. If Hargreaves is really going to figure in first team plans the sooner he comes back to relieve the strain on Flecther and Scholes the better. Scholes had one of his quieter games yesterday but we can't expect him to be the man to the main man every week. And the way Anderson performed Scholes and Fletcher were a man light in central midfield. I have said it before but we rely to an embarrassing degree on our two elderly statesmen to produce the creativity needed to lift you above the ordinary.
At least with the introduction of Berbatov for Owen at half time the front line started to look at least a little like a Manchester United forward line up should. It became a more open game at times and we did have a couple of chances to snatch an undeserved win. But unlike in Spain this time we had no last minute heroics.
I don't know whether this a good time to be having a two week break or not, but Fergie has lot of thinking to do over that two weeks.

Michael Carrick does not want to leave United. As bad as his form was during the climax to last season and his gradual decline over the last two seasons, the lack of alternatives leads me to think Fergie should give him another chance. Even when not at his best, he is still a better player than Anderson and Scholes and Fletcher need to be rested every so often to get the best out of them. We badly need more bodies in central midfield.
The Mail report that Hargreaves has been pencilled in for a return in the carling cup tie at home to Wolves in three weeks time. I still can't help but be sceptical over this.

Rooney wants to play his way out of his slump in form, i have said it before, when we play 4-3-3, as long as he is willing, and even if he isn't, he should be the man used on the left. We can hardly do any worse than play him at the moment anyway, we need all the top players we can get into that strting eleven.
He says he need sto play to get through this, "he is only a human being".

Yet another interview with Ryan Giggs, this time in yesterday's Guardian.

Lee Dixon doesn't want to point out the flaw in Wengers current Arsenal side, but he does anyway.

Mike Gonzalez discussess what is really going on in Ecuador after last weeks police revolt against Rafael Correa. I would have though Obama was the man to stop the ultimately self defeating US meddling in Latin American affairs, but it seems not. China will pick up the pieces.

John Rentoul seems to have changed his views on Ed Miliband remarkably quickly. Whilst Ken Clarke gives us a realitic interview in which he admits a double dip recession is a distinct possibility. 
Andrew Rawnsley argues that Cameron has still not healed the rupture with the right wing of the tory party and that it could busrt out into the open at any time.

Tricky is back with a new album, now based in Paris he thinks this country has lost his individuality. I am looking forward to hearing it, i though his last album was pretty good.