No Pleasing Some People – Manchester 22nd November 2014

This was a great win for United. Lucky, very lucky but a great win, and the luck has been overdue this season. Arsenal can (and knowing them, will) moan endlessly about the referee, Mike Dean, missing Marouane Fellaini’s push on Kieran Gibbs. This in turn led to United’s first goal, and then to Wojciech Szczesny’s rib injury. They will, like Match of the Day, conveniently ignore Jack Wilshere sticking his beak into Fellaini in the 30th minute. This was twelve minutes after Wilshere had sniffed at a chance of putting the home side in front when one-on-one with David de Gea.

United fans celebrating outside the stadium after the match

The longer Arsenal went without scoring, the more the anxiety rose within their team and supporters. United, with an inexperienced and makeshift defence, were in a state of siege in the first half. David de Gea was again outstanding. When United went in front with a Kieran Gibbs own goal in the 56th minute, the home side and fans visibly lost heart. The goal, which came from an Antonio Valencia ball which he just clobbered across the Arsenal box, was as comical Continue reading No Pleasing Some People – Manchester 22nd November 2014

Getting Fleeced In Greece – Manchester 25th of February 2014

This was so bad as to be comical in the Karaiskakis Stadium tonight in Piraeus. Throughout the team is a recurring theme of a bad dream. There’s no heart, no fight, no desire and no apparent idea. Excellent has-beens like Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra are beginning to become ruthlessly exposed to being on the wrong side of the proverbial hill. Never-will-be’s like Tom Cleverley, Ashley Young and Chris Smalling are being shown up even worse, through not having the quality around them that they have had in the last couple of years. This is through to the obvious decline brought on by Old Father Time of the aforementioned trio.

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View for United fans in Karaiskakis Stadium tonight (photo courtesy of Lee Thomas)

Continue reading Getting Fleeced In Greece – Manchester 25th of February 2014

Always Hurting The One He Loves – Old Trafford November 10th 2013

I sometimes think that the London press faint in orgasmic hypnosis to the words of Arsene Wenger. If you believe the press, you could easily imagine Wenger at nightime sitting serenely in his personal oak panelled library at his house in Totteridge, digesting Richard Feynman’s thesis on Quantum Physics with a background ambience of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5, whilst sagely sipping a glass of 2006 Bourgogne Chardonnay. Wenger is calm personified, an economics graduate from Strasbourg University and a man who invented modern urbanity. He also, for an educated man, talks an awful lot of bollocks. Continue reading Always Hurting The One He Loves – Old Trafford November 10th 2013