Swansea City 0-1 Manchester United

Not a great performance, but it was an improvement on recent showings and three points into the bargain. For once we started with a midfield pairing that on paper looked a bit more like something you would associate with Manchester United. And to my mind that was the basis of the victory.
Carrick returned to the side joined by fellow recent absentee Ryan Giggs and for the first half at least they helped to give us a dominance, extra creativity and and a shield in front of the back four that has been sorely missed this season. Giggs supplied most of the creativity whilst Carrick played his usual game of helping to keep things ticking and helping the defence by his positional sense and reading of the game.
United started the game well establishing a stranglehold on possession of the ball almost from the kick off. The home team's cautious approach helped us, but still this was the first time we have completely bossed a half for ages. Swansea tried to counter attack but everything seemed to break down for them when they got near the United area due to a lack of bodies and lack of threat up front. They had one great chance that Sinclair made a complete horlicks off but for the most part the first half was one way traffic.
The goal didn't take too long to come Hernandez finishing clinically from a Giggs cross after the Welshman had intercepted a terrible ball from Swansea defender Rangel. I was quite happy with a first half performance but the one disappointment was the failure to add to the lead whilst we were so on top. Away from home you have always got to expect the home side to have a spell in the game.
Unfortunately for all United's dominance off the ball, once again we didn't really provide enough threat from the flanks. We don't expect Park to be beating man after man on the wing but we do expect Nani to be able to take his man on and beat him at least from time to time. But once again Nani didn't really produce, he seems to be going through a really poor spell for us at the moment. Watching the superb strike for Portugal in midweek left me wondering where that came from and can we see a bit of that in a red shirt please.
You expected a bit more from the home team in the second half and they did indeed get themselves far more into the game. But our defence was strong and Carrick had the kind of game where you wonder why Fergie hasn't been playing him regularly. I still think City would never have scored six against us if he had been in the team. With Giggs and Carrick starting yesterday's game i'm a bit worried what midfield pairing we will see on Tuesday against a far better team than Swansea if as usual Fergie rotates the squad.
At least we are still picking up three points after three points whilst we are going through this poor form. I was talking to guy at the match the other week and i told him i thought it would take us until at christmas at least to get that City debacle out of our system. But if we keep picking up the three points during this recovery period i suppose we can't complain.