After the mickeys disastrous defeat last night, I'm looking forward to West Brom on Saturday, let's hope it's Van Persie replacing Rooney and not Falcao.


Music

Guano Padano - Americana: A decent album, that gets better by the listen, but still doesn't quite live up to their last couple of albums. Despite being their most "American" album yet, their schtick seems to becoming a bit samey.

Joey Bada$$ - B4.DA.$$: A pretty good debut album from the New York hip hop man, a couple of tracks veered being a bit too chart worthy, meant in a bad way, but for the most part it's hard hitting.

Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper: I've not really been as enthusiastic about the Animal Collective man's solo outings, but his latest album really grew on me, pretty good stuff indeed.

Pink Floyd - The Endless River: Hard to really review this, as to what it actually was, a set of tracks deemed not really good enough for for one of their main albums, it showed how talented they really were. But it was billed as " the last proper Pink Floyd album" and this wouldn't really be the way you'd want to go out. A lot of decent, almost good tracks, but only two or three to my ears, that I really wanted to hear again.

Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 2: The second album from the US hip hop duo hits the spot, excellent stuff.

Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love: The return album from the US Washington state based female indie rock trio is an absolute corker. I have to admit for such an acclaimed act, I've barely heard any of their old stuff. Though i did really like Wild Flag, a side act of two of the band from a couple of years back. A delve through the back catalogue looks to be on the cards.

Swearing At Motorists - While Laughing the Joker Tells the Truth: Another US indie rock band to emerge from the 90's that I haven't really listened to before. An album I had to grow into, but it was worth it, a bit Mark Lannegan, if a two man band could be such a thing.

The Heliocentrics & Melvin Van Peebles – The Last Transmission: I wanted to listen to this, more from a Heliocentrics basis than Mario Van Peebles, and whilst i enjoyed the main album, I enjoyed the instrumental bonus album just as much. I love the spaced out groove, jazz, dun whatever the hell it is, I lovee it.

Everton 3-0 Manchester United

It's a weird old season, whilst i wasn't over confident ahead of the match, I certainly didn't foresee us getting beat by three goals. As poor as we were during the second half, that three goal margin was harsh. But if you let in three goals as defensively poor as we did yesterday, you're always going to be struggling.
For the first five to ten minutes United had to fight to establish dominance of the possession, but just as they were about to establish it, we were caught on the counter attack and some poor defending from Blind and a very soft attempt at a clearance from McNair led to McCarthy waltzing through our back line to give the home team the lead.
United then started to get into a groove and whilst you wouldn't say we were knocking at the door, we did look as if we might have a goal in us. But it was all a bit like last week, oodles of possession, but not any where near end product. In fact United's best chance of the first half and indeed probably the match came from Fellaini pinching the ball of the Everton back four only to blast the ball over the bar. Who knows how the game would have panned out if Fellaini had showed more composure. It wasn't the big Belgian's day. He was booked for a clumsy challenge early on, Everton's midfield managed to keep him quiet for the most part and was replaced at half time.
Before that though Everton got a second goal that was as poor defensively from United as the first goal had been. United had two corners where Everton basically kept trying to hit their man on the near post. On the third attempt John Stones managed to leave Valencia for dead and powered home a fine header. United looked rattled by the second and were never really in the game after that.
For all United's and Van Gaal's improvement over the last month or so, the one aspect of his management that leaves me more and more non plussed is the Dutchman's use of substitutions in an attempt to change a game. As soon as brought Falcao on for Fellaini i basically gave up hope of us getting anything from the game. His first action of the game was to have the ball nicked from his feet from behind and it hardly got any better. The days of seeing United coming back from the dead and laying siege to the opposition goal are not going to happen under Van Gaal's philosophy, so far as we have seen this season. How on Earth was Falcao going to change anything?
The third goal was as comical as the first two goals, yes Mirallis was probably offside, but the whole back four just stopped dead, until in their horror they realised the flag hadn't gone up and the whistle hadn't gone. From that point on, I think I was just happy to see us leave there with no more goal in the deficit column.
So where does that leave the season and where does it leave our so called renaissance. Answers on a postcard, because I'm fucked if I know. After the City game I had though the top four was signed, sealed and delivered. Who knows now, it was vital for us that the dippers didn't get anything out of that trip to the Hawthorns. Looking at our games remaining and Liverpool's, I think we're just about in a good enough position. I can't see them getting anything at Stamford bridge and Stoke away is usually a tricky affair for them. We need to win next week to get things back on track though.

Black Rivers - Black Rivers: I don't know whether Doves have permanently split up, or whether they are on a sabattical. But Jimi Goodwin's sol album was a pretty decent affair and this effort from the bassist and sticksman brothers is if anything even better.

Blues Pills - Blues Pills: A decent blues rock album from this Scandi outfit

Gaz Coombes - Matador:This got a 5 star rating in Mojo, it's a very good album, but I don't think it's that good. It's funny that he seems to have eschewed the heavier stuff from his Supergrass days, I hope that that's just temporary.

Paul Smith & Peter Brewis - Frozen By Sight: I wasn't sure what to expect from this no rock/pop collaboration from the two natives of the north east. But it sounded an interesting album and it is indeed a pretty good album.

Quincy Jones - The Quintessence: Whilst I like Quincy Jones late 60's early 70's material, I've never really been that much of a fan of Big band Jazz. After listening to this I might have to revise my idea's because this is a stupendously good album.

St Vincent - St Vincent: This got some great reviews last year and it's easy to see why, it doesn't fit any neat genre boxes, it's just an album full of some great tunes from the US artist Annie Clark.

The Coral - The Curse of Love: I knew this wasn't a new album, but didn't know it was a bunch of songs from 2006 that had been scrapped. It's a decent affair if that's the case, I hope we will get some new stuff eventually because I think they're a cracking band.

Chelsea 1-0 Manchester United

After our recent run of fixtures I was quite confident going into this game, but when I heard of the amount of players missing on Friday, especially the loss of Carrick, that confidence subsided somewhat. It dipped further on learning of the inclusion of Falcao. Yet the thought remained that Mourinho might be quite happy with a point.
Lo and behold Mourinho set his team up as if they were away to Barcelona, meaning that United completely dominated possession. Whilst it was good to watch, we never really did quite enough with it. We only really created one clear cut chance, the cut back from Shaw that Rooney curled just wide of the post. Still they hardly created a thing either, so I was reasonably happy with our display. It's really something the way United are playing at the moment, when you compare our performance level with where it was less than a couple of months ago, it's almost like watching a different team.
The one big criticism I still have of Van Gaal is still his use of substitutions, they were bizarre, once more. Bringing on the hardly used Januzaj to go head to head with Ivanovitch, who is one of the best defenders around didn't help our cause. I'm a big fan of the young Belgian, but he seems like a lost boy at the moment. It will be interesting to see what happens to him in the summer. Taking off Shaw who had his best game for United and replacing him with Blackett was equally baffling, as Blackett was reluctant to overlap just when that was what we needed to do. I couldn't believe he didn't bring Van Persie on, he's on my summer clearout list but I would have brought him on for Falcao.
It was a sloppy goal that we gave away, disappointing given that we had defended reasonably well for the most part. So the game goes on the long list of games we didn't deserve to lose at Stamford bridge but somehow managed to come away with no points.

Manchester United 4-2 Manchester City

It looks like we have finally turned the corner, the old Manchester United is back. Yesterday was a beast of a performance with every player was at the top of his game. City may not be the team they were, but how many teams have took them apart like we did yesterday.
Kudos to the manager, it's took longer than we hoped or expected to get the team playing to the standard we have seen over the last few weeks, but hopefully it's here to stay. Whether he found the right team and formation by accident or design, doesn't really matter any more. I'm not and never will be a big fan of Felaini, but the problems he has caused teams over recent weeks means he has become almost undroppable. In his head to head with Toure there was only one wiiner, Toure hardly caused us any problems whilst the Belgian was all over City like a rash.
Valencia had easily his best game at right back, it was by far and away his best game defensively, he seemed to read danger in a way that we have never really seen before. There were a couple of worring situations that he nipped in the bud in the nick of time. I think yesterday was probably Herrera's best game in a red shirt as well, his link up play with Mata and Valenica which has been so central to our revival was matched with good link up play all over the pitch. I could say the same thing about almost every player, it was one of those rare days where every player turned up and all the individual battles were won by players in red shirts.
And yet those first five to ten minutes were so different, City bossed the game and it was us that were second to everything and us unsure in everything we did. I think Van Gaal was spot on about the equaliser being so important, from there on tables were reversed and it was United running the show. They really couldn't get to grips with us at all, it really was glorious stuff.
And we even had a proper atmosphere, which wasn't just created by the result and performance, everybody seemed well up for this game ahead of the kick off. Roll on Chelsea!

Manchester United 3-1 Aston Villa

Van Gaal stuck to the same team, minus the ill Smalling who was replaced by Rojo and stuck to the same tactical approach. It worked reasonably well for the first 15 minutes or so as United made another good start. But it all seemed to fizzle out pretty much after that. So much that when we did finally open the scoring just before the break, my first thought was that the goal would be a bit of a killer for Villa after almost getting to the break on equal terms.
But the second half never really happened, I know we had some good situations, but we rarely looked as as if we were going to score. When the second did come it came almost out of nothing as Rooney controlled a difficult ball and lashed it into the back of the net. The goal seems to have conveniently erased the rest of Rooney's afternoon which was pretty ordinary to be honest. The same could be said for the other goalscorer Herrera. Yes he scored two decent goals and was involved in some decent combination play with Mata and Valencia, but he didn't give a performance worthy of some the plaudits that came his way after the game from the majority of reds.
I was less impressed with all those combinations and triangles on the right than the most other reds as well. Yes it was a vast improvement on last season, but it was all so mechanical, dull even. I'm afraid I like to see players being taken on, and that isn't really going to be on the agenda with Van Gaal from what I can see. Why did Fellaini have to start against Villa at home, he didn't contribute anything at all. I'm still at a loss how we ended up fighting to save the three points over the last ten minutes or so, it was a pretty soft goal we gave away.
Still for all my whinging, at this stage of the season, it's points that count, not performance's and it was an all important three points ahead of what could turn out to be a much more even derby than we would have expected a few weeks ago.

Music

Alex G - DSU: My first listen to this US indie pop act and I like what I hear. Pretty good stuff, not earth shattering but never boring.

Black Submarine - New Shores: I knew ex members of the Verve were a part of this UK indie/rock act, but not the Portishead part. Anyway it more than lives up to the sum of its parts, bit of a belter on the quiet.

Liars - Mess: I've enjoyed their last couple of albums and this is another decent effort, not sure I'd ever describe what they do as part pop as I've read some reviews describe them as.

Lily & Madeleine - Fumes: A reasonable follow up to their excellent debut album, US indie/folk sisters can deliver a tune.

Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass: This got some brilliant reviews, on my first few listens, I've got to say I didn't really get it. It's partly brilliant, but there are a couple of tracks that i just can't stand, the set closer especially. Take them out of it and i may have gone along with the hype.

Ole Borud - Stepping Up: This got good reviews, but was another i took time to warm to. There are tracks that remind me very much of Steely Dan and that's very good. But I'd taken this to be a soul album, and that part's a bit more hit and miss, some good, some a bit too 80's over production for my taste.

Wu-Tang-Clan - A Better Tomorrow: I have to admit I've only really started to listen to hip hop over the last few years, but this lot are one hip hop band I've always liked, their latest is well up to scratch.