Manchester United 2-1 Manchester City

Not the most convincing of diplays but i thought overall we just about deserved the victory. City fans and pundits seem to be making a lot out of the amount of possession that they had. They did have more possession than they usually enjoy at our place but they didn't do too much with it. Silva was dangerous but he didn't have much support. Whilst when United finally got Nani and Giggs into the game they were a constant threat to the City reargurd who never really got to grips with either.
As ever though this season our achilles heel was the middle of the park. I had presumed we would play a 4-3-3 and had expected Carrick to partner Scholes and Fletcher, but Fergie went with Anderson. It didn't work for me, Scholes was easily the pick of the three, as usual, Flecther was alright without getting anywhere last years form and i'm afraid Anderson was absolutely annonymous. I had a hunch that Fergie would go with Rooney up front and at the end of the day he didn't let him down. That's not to say he had a great game, he didn't but one piece of magic more than made up for the rest of the ninety minutes.
I wasn't thrilled that he chose O'Shea in front of Rafael, though i could understand it. As the game went on the better the Irishman's display got to the point where Fergie's decision was vindicated. It would have been interesting to have seen Nani and Rafael attacking down the right together though as City couldn't handle Nani on his own. How they would have coped with Rafael overlapping would have been interesting to say the least.
The big plus of the day for United besides the three points and hopefully the snuffing out of City's title challenge was the assured display of Chris Smalling. He has always looked like he had the potential to be Ferdinand's long term successor but we hadn't seen him put in the pressure situation of an encounter with one of the top four. He passed the test with flying colours with a defensive display that even eclipsed Vidic alongside him. The £9 million or whatever it was we played Fulham all of a sudden looks like a great piece of business, value in the market indeed.
I have to admit i was worried about our chances watching the first twenty five minutes or so when City seemed to have slightly more possession than us and definitely passed it better than us. But apart from the one two that completely sliced us open in the first five minutes that Silva failed to tuck away they didn't really threaten to open us up. Bu we weren't passin it well, couldn't get Nani into the game and looked as unlikely to score as they did.
For some reason United seemed to click into another gear in the final quarter of an hour of the first half as we started to get Nani more involved. With Giggs and Evra on one flank and Nani on the other we started to threaten the City rearguard at last. The opening goal saw Rooney head on to Giggs who put a great ball through to Nani whose first touch was excellent and second touch was even better to beat Hart in the City goal. It was a pity we scored so late in the half becasue City seemed to collapse after the goal and i'm sure if that half had gone on a further five minutes we would have got another.
The half time break allowed them to steady the ship but their equaliser came out of nowehere when substitute Dzeko who on this evidence looked vastly overpriced saw his shot take a big deflection of Silva to leave Van Der Sar wrong footed and put City all level.
It was nice to see the positive response from Ferguson who put Berbatov on as we reverted to a 4-4-2 formation. It made the game a more open affair but made us more dangerous going forward. And what a winner Rooney's strike was, from our angle it was like watching in slow motion as he took off and when he met it you just knew it was going in he hit it so cleanly. Fergie said it was of the best goals he has ever seen and i can only agree, it's hard to think of one better.
A goal fit to win any game has hopefully regalvanised out title challengebut there is still a long way to go. Those three trips to Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea are going to have a big say in the where the title ends up and with the state of our away form it's hard to get too carried away just yet.

Rooney believes yesterday's goal was the best of his career and it was the fans deserved after a disappointing season so far. Joe Royle thinks Chris Smalling showed that he has what it takes to fill Rio Ferdinand's shoes. I suppose what we need to see now is Smalling get a consistent tun of games somewhere down the line. If he proves successful it won't be long before Capello comes calling and an England debut will beckon.

United continue to be linked with a summer move for Ashley Young of Aston Villa, if this proves to be correct i will be interested to see where Fegie intends to play him, especially with Welbeck to come back.

The sun is the latest recipient of the Met's investigation of the phone hacking activities of News international.
Peter Wilby describes Rupert Murdoch's recent travails as the sun king's long goodbye, whilst last weeks Private Eye had a phone-hackwatch special.

Simon Tidsall senses a new foreign policy doctrine may have been born under Obama's watch after the fall of Mubarak, i think it's far too early to say that though i hope he is right. Tariq Ramadan took a look at the Muslim brotherhood in the new statesman in last week's edition before Mubarak was finall forced to stand down. Robert Fisk looks ahead now Mubarak has gone and is wary of the role the army will now assume during the supposed transition to democracy .
Tariq Ali is more optimistic and believes that the age of political reason is returining to Egypt and the Arab world .

Simon Jenkins is less than impressed with Silvio Berlusconi and the fact that he is part of the Europe that we supposedly proud to hold up as an example to the world.

johann Hari asks when David Cameron's souffle of spin will collapse as he says one thing and does the complete opposite. Bennedict Brogan writes how tories judge Gordon Brown a failure and yet his success haunts the coalition. I have always presumed the whole thrust of the tories strategy was to use the cuts as an attack on the labour voting public service.

Simon Tidsall is unimpressed with Putin's strongman act as the caucases has turned from a local insurgency into a Caucasian jihad. BP's Russian venture is already proving trickier than envisaged as Russian politics or what passes for politics in that gangster state get tricky.
The 21st century version of the great game in central Asia between Russia and China replacing the 19th century British continues apace with Chinese gaining influence but not many friends by the looks of things. They like Chinese money but don't like the Chinese.

I hadn't read that Jo Wiley was leaving radio 1 for radio 2, this Guardian article takes a look at the state of radio 1 and is less than impressed. I can't say i was ever that big a fan of hers, she never really sounded for real, then again i have always preferred presenters to have an accent not the kind of voice which leaves you with absolutely no idea where the presenter is actually from.
Less than a month to go to the release of the new Elbow album and Guy Garvey tells Quietus of the inspiration behind the forthcoming release.

A blast of seventies heavy rock featuring UFO with Michael Schenker