Monday, March 12, 2012

Manchester United 2-0 West Bromwich Albion

A pretty hum drum game and performance, but no him drum afternoon as City's slip up pushed United to the top of the table as we are about to enter squeaky bum time. It looks like City have skid marks already, i have to say i fancied Swansea to do us a favour, but i didn't expect them to outplay the berties. It was slightly surreal for me to see us go top on a day of another fairly pedestrian performance. We haven't really played well for a bit now and yet we are top, that title challenging know how doesn't half count it would seem.
As expected West Brom were well organised and hard to penetrate but United didn't really help their own course with the slowness and lack of purpose in their approach play. Our best player during the first twenty minutes was Danny Welbeck who whilst starting on the right hand side seemed to have licence to roam and made some great weaving runs that never quite led to anything. After slagging Young off after the last game, praise where it's due to the former Villa winger who had his best game for a while and who took his man on and got to the byeline helping earn us the second half penalty that clinched the game. More consistent performances like that please, he will have to anyway with Valencia waiting in the wings and Nani still to come back.
We had a spell of games just before christmas where we were making really good starts to games and cashing in with early goals. After five minutes yetserday you knew this would be no romp. You couldn't really see a goal coming, and when it did it came after Rooney re-directed Hernandez's shot past Foster. The goal saw out first real piece of sustained pressure, but we couldn't get the second which would have killed them just before half time.
It was one of those days for Hernandez in fornt of goal as he hit the post early in the second half and on another day he could have bagged a hatrick. When Olsson picked up his second yellow the game became a bit of a stroll as United picked the ten men apart. The penalty won by Young was converted by Rooney who is one of his goal glut's at the moment. That should really have been the start of a rush of goals but United had left the goal scoring boots in the changing room as the conspired to miss chance after chance.
It was nice to see Clevrley come on and look a bit sharper than he has on his previous re-appearances and i'd like to say it was nice to see Pogba take the field, but i don't really know what to make of that. Their were rumours that he was in the squad for the game on Saturday night and hopes that maybe he had signed a new contract after all, but all Fergie would say after the game was that the boy was undecided.
Still when the cheers went round after news filtered through of Swansea taking the lead, all was misses were forgiven. I could be being a bit previous, but it's hard not to think that yesterday was the day the title swung decisively in our favour.

Fergie tells the press that United will hold their nerve and that we are over our injury crisis, well the way this season has gone it fingers crossed on that last part. Mancini thinks that the derby will be a title decider, he hopes more is more like it, there are a few tricky matches for them before Monday April 30, that could even be the game where we are actually crowned champions if they collapse. Fergie also said he had set Rooney a target of 40 goals for the season, he should be careful the last time he did that he did his ankle at Bayern and we all know what happened then.
Ashley Young states the obvious claiming the pressure is on City, also less obviously he claims United's home form will be the key to making it title number 20.

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