Rangers 0-1 Manchester United

This wasn't a great performance, but it did show some promise, most of it being down to Rooney looking something more like his old self. He is not there yet, but that was the most energetic and up for it, he has looked to me this season so far. Other highlights were one of the best performances that Fabio has so far produced for United and Smalling once again coming into the team and looking right at home. If Smalling fulfills his potential he is going to turn out to be a fantastic bit of business by Ferguson.
The way that the home team set themselves up was no great suprise, but i was bemused by the way they seemed to settle for a draw late in the second half, even though that meant they would be consigned to the Europa cup. Not really knowing their squad that well, i don't know how badly Rangers injury problems affected their line up, but i know i would not have been happy to see United not even try to win. Let's face it, their first choice eleven is no great shakes what was the harm.
All we can hope is their approach which led to almost constant United possession apart from the odd spell of pressure from the home team may have helped United's form and confidence return in the month to come. United should have had a penalty in the first couple of minutes when Berbatov was blatantly brought down, yet the officials somehow conspired to turn it down. If that had been given, and of course if we had converted it, the game would have been a totally different proposition.
As it was Rangers continued to get everybody bar Miller back behind the ball with a five man defence making it very difficult for a United side not really firing on all cylinders to break down. The best chance and the nearest that we came was when Rooney headed Fabio's great cross onto the top of the Rangers bar. Fabio had an excellent first half combining well with Giggs and he put in a number of fine crosses, which was just as well as we lacked the same threat with O'Shea at right back who, let's face it, will never be an overlapping full back.
Rangers had a couple of decent chances, Miller heading wide from a set piece but later shooting straight at Van Der Sar when he should have pulled it back to Weiss. Both attempts came out of the blue as United monopolised possession but United found it hard to break the home side down.
The second half became a liitle bit more open the longer the second half progressed as the home team actually got two or three bodies up to support the lone front man Miller occasionally. The hope was that this would leave United a little more room to create things. But we never really managed to carve a real opening until the best move of the match saw Rooney and Berbatov combine to free Carrick in the box, but the goalie comfortably managed to save his lacklustre finish.
Scholes and later Berbatov came off to be replaced first Anderson and then Hernandez but it seemed we were destined for a goal less draw. Until Naismith's head high challenge on Fabio which was rightly deemed to be a penalty. Rooney stepped up and made no mistake with the finish and celebrated like last month had never happened, leading me at least, to believe that he is in it for the long haul.
It will be interesting to see who gets a game in the last match now we are through but still needing the one point to top the group. We have still to see that performance and result where we can finally say that the season is up and running. Ideally i would like to see that happen before the back to back games against the Arse and the rent boys, there are four games to try and produce it and put us in an even more confident frame of mind before those games.

Rooney wanted to celebrate his goal in front of the United fans, did he pay that lad to come on the pitch, just a thought. As i said before yesterday's game i'm not interested in hearing him making an apology, i want him to do the business on the pitch. Who knows one day we may be thanking him for what happened, we still don't know the truth of what went on that week.
Fergie praises his courage for taking the penalty, then says he needs more ninety minutes and promises us he is going to get them. He also admitted to rotating the strikers a bit too much this season. That could be bad news for Owen and Macheda, because that surely means Rooney, Berbatov and Hernandez will be the three he picks from. He admits that we have not played that well in the last two games but promises that United are trying to find a rhythm.
Carrick hails United's patience, experience has taught them that they will always get that chance however long it takes. I have to admit i couldn't see that late goal coming last night, and i'm not sure it would have but for Naismith's desperate challenge on Fabio.

David McDonnell wonders whether Berbatov's time is up at United after another unconvincing display. As i said yesterday i think he will be offski in the summer and welbeck wil return from Sunderland to claim his place in the squad and team. Even if he returned to the kind of form he started the season in, i still think he will be unloaded. Sunderland's young new England star Jordan Henderson claims Welbeck will be one of the next generation of English youngsters to make the step up from under 21's to the full England team. The displays we have seen in the last two matches are what the Sunderland players have been seeing in training every day.

United youngster Cameron Stewart will be going to Hull city on loan until January in a suprise loan move. The suprise being he didn't pull any trees up in his time at Yeovil. He is never going to be a United player, in fact i don't know what his level will be, he is quick and has skill but his decision making isn't the best. If he has a career in football, i can't really see it being above league's one or two.

Timothy Garton Ash explains why the Euro crisis now revolves around Germany not the so called peripheral nations. Does the German nation and it's political establishment want to save the Euro and if so what kind of Eurozone does it want to save. I'm afraid to say the muddled actions we have seen from Merkel and her government lead me to believe they don't know the answer to either of those questions. Of course i could be totally wrong and it's all part of a "cunning plan", but it would be unblievably well disguised if that were reallt the case.
David Prosser belives the biggest threat to the Euro is that the Germans simply give up on the economic experiment in which it has invested so much. Ambrose Evnas-Pritchard claims some observers think Merkel doesn't know the differnce between different ype of bond holders, the hedge funds betting on sovereign defaults and the pension funds who bought government bonds in good faith. I'm afraid i can actually believe that, i suppose because the Germans have had a continual surplus through their faith in manufactuting and exports they don't pay that much attention the way other countries have managed to be able to buy those exports.
As the crisis lurches from one country to the next David Blanchflower worries that Spain could be next, and wonders why ordinary Irish, and for that matter British when the cuts start to bite, should bear the brunt of the austerity installed onto us by our rotten finacial and political elite. Faisal Islam warns that there is real anger on the steets in Ireland that the people who were responsible for this mess have had no reckoning come to them as yet. He thinks there is a fair chance that the bailout will not even be accepted. I know if i was Irish and would want the country to default rather than endure this austerity whilst the people responsible retire into their gated mansions. At least some of the culprits would share a little of the pain in that way.
Robert Peston reports on how the financial banking elite are still getting away with it. This is the point, there is no other way to dress that up, than it's just totally wrong. Marx did write that capitalism would destroy itself, is it in the process of doing just that, in the west anyway.

Steve richards advises Ed Miliband to do it his way, take the risk, forget focus groups, forget tacking to the centre or the right and do and say what you believe. Iain Martin thinks that history or following the approach of Blair and Cameron in opposition will not guide Miliband through the next four years . But he thinks his approach so far isn't working. Dan Hodges describes Labour as being in an unhappy and uncertain place just now. Factions splintering, factions not knowing who to follow any more and no sense of where it is heading. Well it took how long for the tory party to get Thatcherite factionalism out of it's system, if it even has even now that is. Is it going to take the Labur party as long to bury the Blaitite-Bronite factionalism out of it's system.
If the Lib dems return to the back benches after the next election there is going to be one hell of a ding dong battel over the soul of that party between the social democrat left and neo-liberal orange bookers. Our politics seems to be in a Trotskyite permanent revolution.

David Marquand describes why all those that though that the events of 2008 would usher in a social democrat centre left moment ( that's me ) have got it wrong as Europe and it's people, for the moment, have swung sharply to the right. This hasn't worked itself out yet is the obvious answer to that, although the worry must be that countries and electorate's will take an even sharper turn to the right and populist, even fascist ideas.
Benedict Brogan argues that Cameron seems to be very assured that his radical reforming government is on the right path, i get the feeling he means almost complascent. It's all very well to have radical idea's, getting them through parliament and making the reforms work is something altogether different. If any of these goes badly wrong, never mind Osborne's economic policy going tit's up they may well be in trouble.

Crap sound, but classic Chuck Berry