Birmingham city 1-1 Manchester United

Even before McLeish became the Birmingham manager we always seem to have struggled to have put on a show at St. Andrews. The games have always been tight, and though they don't beat us, we seem to come away with a point as often as we win.
So i was expecting the kind of game that we got, but just hoping that it would be one of our tight wins to give us a bit of a cushion at the top of the table as we head into the new year. When Berbatov produced the one moment of magic of the game, it looked like we were going to get the job done as the home team had threatened our rearguard less and less as the game went on. Which made the last ten minutes hard to understand, i could see certain players starting to feel the pace, but why then did we start to drop so deep and continually give the ball away.
I know their equaliser could have been disallowed for at least three different things, but it wasn't a total surprise when it came, as someone said on one of the messageborads, we had started defending like a non league team against a premier league team holding onto the one goal lead.
The game was nothing to write home about, but for all of the improvement in Anderson, we still miss Scholes on nights like last night. Even if we had just had him to come on for the last half an hour i'm sure we would have walked away with all three points last night.
Still we end the year top of the league, imagine the giddyometer at the boo camp if their brave new world had entered 2010 at the top of the table.

Fergie can't believe that the ref missed the last minute hand ball, foul and offside that led to the home teams equaliser. At least we still made a bit of history last night, becoming only the seventh side ever to enter the new year unbeaten. I can't say that is a record that does anything for me, it doesn't win you anything and it doesn't neccessarily mean you have watched great football, which by and large we haven't.

Anderson is backed to start puttiing the ball in the onion bag, well Carrick hopes that he starts to put them away anyway. He still doesn't look like a natural goalscorer to me. Roberto Martinez praises Tom Cleverley and predicts he will be a massive player at United and can go as far as he wants in the game. That's all great and i thinkhe may well be right, but are we gettin him back in the new year, last night showed me, anyway we can't have enough midfield players in the squad. He would surely start in front of Gibson, who whilst not having a bad game last night, didn't add much to our game either.

After the ashes were retained last night with England completing their Melbourne rout of the Aussies, what now for the Australian cricket authorities, and what now for Ponting.
Boycott salutes England's mental toughness and togetherness and praises the backroom staff and selctors, he is feeling generous. Mind you, Duncan Fletcher isn't there anymore.

Jackie Ashley predicts Lansley's NHS reforms will leave Cameron feeling sick if he doesn't put a halt to them.

Have the Ruskies been up to their games again as Germany launches an inquiry into the poisoning of an ex KGB agent and his wife now resident in the country. The victim doesn't seem to have much doubt, it must be serious for the Germans to take it seriously with their closeish relationship with Russia.

George Monibot describes the scandal of fuel poverty in the UK. We are all in together you know.

The great Rory Gallagher