West Ham 4-0 Manchester United

From the sublime to the ridiculous, reality check alert. It's fairly common knowledge that our squad does not have strenght in depth, but if ever were confirmation was needed, last night proved it. The worry about last night though, was that it was the players that are be regarded as part of the pool of first team squad who gave most reason to worry.
The last thing i expected to see last night was United getting beat, never mind conceding four. I have seen the hammers a couple of times this season and have been convinced that they will be in the relegation dogfight until the last game of the season. And who knows this time they may not be good enough to escape the relegation that they have avoided twice in recent seasons.
When i saw our team, it was the usual mixture of experience and youth we have seen in this competition so far this season. It seemed strong enough and i wondered how many we would win by, not how well we would play. I was disappointed and slightly bemused to see Bebe picked again, but i presume Fergie was trying to justify the transfer fee by giving him every possible starting opportunity. If Cleverley comes back from his loan spell at Wigan and Valencia does come back before the end of the season, then Bebe won't be seeing too much first team action again this season.
For the first ten minutes United actually played pretty well, the passing was fairly crisp the movement was decent and West Ham looked like they would struggle to cope with us. Who knows if Obertan's shot had gone in or Hernandez had reached the loose ball first it might have been a totally different game. But it didn't go in and once West Ham found their feet, United never looked like winning again.
The most alarming aspect of last night's debacle was the calamitous nature of our defending. All over the pitch we were found wanting, and the back four was found most wanting of all. There wasn't a player to come out of last night with much credit, more a case of some weren't as bad as others. On a night like last night it's usually not worth bothering about singling players out, but certain players were so appalling it would be hard not too.
Jonny Evans has been a worry for quite a bit now. When he came back from Sunderland i thought we had found a centre half who would be able to replace Vidic eventually. That is looking a million years away at the moment. He has never been that great with the ball at his feet, but he is now starting to look like a nervous wreck every time the ball lands at his feet. If that continues to be the case, he can have no future at United, that's without the other faults in his game that seem to get worse game by game at the moment. Put simply, he seems to be too nice, he gets bullied by centre forwards almost every game. It wasn't just Carlton Cole last night it happens almost every game. His form is so bad at the moment i would sooner see John O'Shea at centre half against the bigger teams, that's if Wes is still in the dog house.
But what about John O'Shea himself, he didn't make any mistakes that led to goals last night, but as one of the senior players he gave no kind of example. In fact he hasn't had a "good" game all season, his poor passing and hesitancy were almost as poor as Evans last night. The other player i will single out as one to be concerned about would have to be Fletcher. He wasn't terrible last night, but once again, as at Villa, he totally failed to impose himself on the game. He started last season on fire but i thought the effects of having to play almost every game led him to burn out around the end of the season. But after a summer's rest, he has started this season in a similar vein. He just doesn't look as sharp and his passing is definitely not up to scratch. I could pick others, but those three players are the one who worry me the most at the moment.
As to the game, once West Ham had exposed out defensive deficiencies with the goal that was ruled out for offside there was no looking back for them. The first goal was soft with a defnsive mix up, the second slightly unlucky with Fabio slipping up at the crucial moment though it was too easy for West Ham to get the ball into that position .
As badly as we had played so far, i was convinced that if we could get an early goal in the second half we would go onto win the game. Looking back at the evdience of the first half, that was a bit presumptious, to say the least. United did boss the game for the first ten minutes following the resumption of the game but without ever seriously theatning the West Ham goal. And then we had to suffer Carlton Cole humiliating Evans twice to leave two West Ham players on hatricks.
The only good thing to come out of last night was that if there was one competition for this to happen in, this was it. Looking for positives, it means we are spared a two legged semi final in January and another fifty quid to shell out. And a positive if you can call it a positive, it shows that the squad is not as strong as some like to pretend. Hopefully Cleverley and Welbeck coming back next season will do something about that. I thought we might have seen Morrison on the bench last night, maybe the online rumours about him are true.

Fergie was shocked at last nights performance, weren't we all, but says you won't win anything if you concede soft goals.  This piece from yesterday's MEN looks less prescient after that performance. Goal look at the differing ways United and Arsenal nurture their young players. It looks increasingly like loans are going to be the way to go. But that will be a science in itself, knowing when and where to send players. Rossi's loan to Newcastle was a disaster. He may have not made the grade at United, but he was never really given the chance. Bu then you look at Cleverley and Welbeck and loans look like being the making of them.

I suppose what made last night even worse to take was the fact that the season seemed to have finally taken off on Saturday as we finally saw the kind of free flowing imaginative football that makes us love United. And then on Monday night i watched Barca give Real Madrid a masterclass with a hammering that even put the 6-2 of a couple of seasons ago in the shade.
It did show for all Jose's good work so far, he hasn't touched the clubs achilles heel, its lack of quality defenders. I'll take Pepe out of that i thought he had a fair game, but the rest of them are pretty sub standard.
It was interesting to see Mourinho accept the defeat in the right way, as he admits they were hammered by a brilliant team but rue the goals they gave away.

James Lawton interviews Elton John who still loves the game but worries about the direction it's headed in at the moment. He also lets slip that his favourite player is Paul Scholes, i always knew he was a man of taste, ahem.

Paul Hayward asks if we really want to want to pay this price just to hold the rights to stage the 2018 world cup. It truly does my head in when i hear people slagging off Panorama for exposing corruption so we can give these people an easy ride jst for the supposed glory of staging a competition we somehow think we it's our turn to host. Give me a free press that holds truth to power, i wish it did it more, any day of the year.
David Goldblatt argues FIFA must be reformed, not whilst Blatter is still in charge.


Bank of England governor Mervyn King is in the headlines again, this time in more contreversy after the wiki leaks show he had great concern about the competence of Cameron and Osborne before the election. He was also exposed as meddling in the countries economic strategy post election. As David Blanchflower says that isn't in his remit, and Blanchflower thinks he should do the honourable thing and resign. Polly Toynbee points out that his record is more than a little mixed to say the least. Of course all of that may well be true, he certainly did not have a "good" crunch, but there is no way he is going to resign.

Jeremy Warner warns that Osborne's strategy for the economic rescue of the economy may well be out of his hands if the revival in the Eurozone is hit by the turbulence that is engulfing the Euro. Larry Elliott thinks the only thing keeping the economy going is the end of the last governments economic growth policies and the bank of England's quatitive easing. The next twelve months are going to test that theory alright, we will have a good idea one way or the other whether Elliott is right. I think he will be proved right regardless of Eurozone travails, although obviously if the shit really does hit the fan in Spain, we will probably be back to 2008 globally, and we will have Osborne in charge, frightning.
Tracey Corrigan agrees that you can look at the OBR's forecasts from two viewpoints and have stats confirming both points of view, but she thinks the government got things right with it's announcement of drastic cuts to placate the markets. Whilst the Economists blighty column looks the OBR itself and argues in a years time we will begin to be able to judge this new organisation's worth.
Stephen King looks at the future of the Euro and argues that meaningful reform has to come or the uncertainty in the markets will contine. One reason to hope the Euro does get through this, is because the last thing we need is for the markets to win. As much as a mess the Euro is, at some stage we are going to need democratic institutions strong enough to tackle and drastically reform markets to work bulk of the global populace not the interests of the financial elite. Luckas Vander Taelen looks at Belguim and worries for the future of their economy if it can't begin to solve it's political problems
Joseph Stiglitz looks at what the future could hold as he looks at the decline of the dollar from its place as the global reserve currency and ponders what could or should replace it. Daniel Ben Ami is less than impressed by Anatole Kaletsky's version of the economic path to be taken in the future in his new book.

Simon Jenkins lays out the defence for the latest bout of Wikleaks revelations. It's for governments to keep their secrets sercte, not the press, as long no one is put in jeopardy, which they weren't and so far haven't been in any of the previous batch. John Kampfner points out that the leaks put our media's docility at the hands of authority into sharp focus. This Economist columnist applauds the wikileaks organisation but has concerns of the lack of accountabilty in it's editorial process.
Bennedict Brogan points out that whilst these leaks have certainly been embarrassing, nothing too serious has yet been uncovered.