Manchester United 1-2 Crystal Palace

Well that's that then, we won't be in the league cup final, that's one Wembley trip we won't have to make, or that's one good day outwe'll miss out on, take your pick. It could have been our best chance of silverware this season, though having seen City defeat Arsenal and the dippers victory at Chelsea i'm not so sure of that.
Fergie has aplogised for the performance i see, but i'm afraid it's the selection that he should be apologising for, if there is any aplogising to be done. It was a poor selection, though if i'm honest i thought it would still be good enough to take us through to the semi's. It was a poor selection because there was no balance in either midfield or attack.
The midfield had no quality, though i would have expected better of Park, but putting him alongside Gibson just showed our lack of depth in the middle of the pitch. Macheda put in yet another totally ineffectual performance and whilst i don't rate Diouf, it wasn't fair to play him wide on the left. My main problem with the side Fergie decided on was the amount of players picked who we know have no future at United. If they were picked in the hope of putting them in the shop window and maybe attracting a decent price then that backfired pretty spectatcularly.
What did we learn from last night? nothing that we didn't already know really. Gibson who to be fair to him has only just got back from injury is not a United player, i'm actually not even sure if he is a premier league player, he is just too slow in body and mind. Diouf is another who might not even make a craeer in the premier league. Macheda needs to go out on loan in January for the sake of his career, never mind his future at United. There is talent there, but he seems to be going backwards.
Another worry has got to be the twins, i praised Fabio for his performance on Saturday, but yesterday, yet again, he broke down, with what looked like a hamstring. It's just one injury after another. And then to add insult to injury, brother Rafael limped off after he came off worse in a strong tackle. I don't see how they will ever make those full back positions their own if they can never put a run of games together.
As for the performance, it was dire, the first half was just a non event. I'm sure i saw Berbatov shaking his head at one point thinking what the fuck am i doing here. Fortunately for him he got a knock at the end of the first half and didn't reappear for the second half. That was both good and bad, the positive being we got to see Morrison get a decent run out and he was the one real plus point of the night. He is definitely going to be first team material, that was certainly shown last night, whether we'll ever get to see that who knows. He is just a footballing natural, he has great range of passing, great vision and seems to make the right decisions most of the time. The negative was that without Berbatov up front we lost the one bit of experienced quality we had there.
When they took the lead with a goal that could be a contender i honestly thought that was it, that we were so lacking in quality we wouldn't get an equaliser. I was wrong as Diouf won a penalty that Macheda tucked away and that saw us have to endure another half an hour of this pain. I haven't seen the penalty decision on TV so i'm not sure if it was the correct decision, it looked a bit soft when i saw it live is all i can say.
I wasn't confident that we would end up victors even now and the lack of confidence wasn't misplaced as Palace scored from a set piece with a pretty soft goal from a United point of view. I don't know if it was a positive that we saw Pogba or not, with the ongoing contract speculation. But he confirmed my view that he is nowhere first team potential yet, Morrison is way ahead of him. So all in all a pretty dismal night, i hope we can get a couple of nice draws in the early parts of the FA cup in the hope that we see more of Morrison and maybe a couple of the other kids will get a go. I would like to see Larnell Cole given a first team start as he looks to have something about him.

Paul Wilson asks if the real Manchester United will please turn up and wonders what the real Manchester United is at the moment. I think most of us think the last two games have been pretty good actually even if we can't seem to eradicate defensive mistakes. I expect to see the real Manchester United on Saturday, whether that means three points , who knows.

Eric Harrison salutes Ryan Giggs as he starts to approach is 900th game for the club and thinks that he can play on into his forties. On the evidence of Saturday i think he may well be right, and looking at the state of our midfield it's a good job. Scholes thinks the future for United's youngsters is bright singling Larnell Cole out for special praise.

UEFA's new Financial fair play regime is becoming more news worthy by the day. David Gill has put his head above the parapit to warn that appropriate sanctions against clubs who don't comply with the new rules, whoever could he mean.
Ian Herbert looks at the contrasting fortunes of City's ex Arsenal players and mentions that Nasri's unhappiness must be made worse knowint that United was the club he had originally wanted to go to. I'd fell sorry for him but guess what..... The irony is of course he would have walked into our midfield and would have been an automatic choice.
The news on Pogba changes by the day, the lastest club linked to him being City, well what a suprise that is! It's been rumoured or Red iss that he has been offered five times his current wages at United, well i'm not expecting him to be signing that new contracy any time soon then. As others have said, Le Harve will be laughing their socks off if he does leave for more money. In fact i'm not sure that any of the players we have poached have or look like they could make into our first team.

After the Autumn statement/mini budget announced to the world the bankruptcy of George Osborne's plan B, Rafael Behr writes that though it is George Osborne whose plan has failed, Miliband will have to move on as well. Paul Mason argues that Tuesday was a turning point in British history, it will set the political tone of the decade.
Paul Krugman looks at bleeding Britain and its disastrous experiment in austerity. Martin Wolf had argued that Osborne's strategy might come to this and thinks that we are now in the middle of a lost decade. John Cassidy joins Krugman, arguing in the New Yorker that what has happened here is a warning to the Yanks what could well happen if the Republicans seize power next November.
Robert Skidelsky who was fairly good on newsnight last night claims that Osborne's cutting fantasy is over, events are forcing him into measures which will be state interventionist, and it will happen faster than he thinks.
Steve Richards writes, close your eyes and it seems like we are back in the seventies, will we find a liberal social democrat Thatcher type figure to lead us out of it, if there is i haven't heard or seen him or her. John Harris warns that the economy needs a big push but that the coalition are prisoners of their own dogmatic stance. The only push it's getting at the moment is a push over the edge of a cliff.
Peter Oborne wanrs the tories and the country that it can't afford to have a part time chancellor and that the realtionship between Cameron and Osborne is too close. One thing i wil say after watching his performance in the commons on Tuesday is that i can't imagine ever becoming prime minister. And i had come to that conclusion even before Balls ripped him a new one.

Meanwhile back to the other disaster waiting to happen, Poland's foreign minister Radek Sikorsky warned in a speech in Berlin that he was the probably the first Pole in history to say that he feared German power less than German inactivity. Powerful stuff, but are the Germans going to take the warnings on board.

George Monibot takes aim at the common agricultural policy and the rich that are subsidised by it.

This is some rant