Tag: Moyes

A Walk On The Wild Side – Manchester 29th of October 2013

The canaries were singing so far out of tune as to make “Metal Machine Music” by the recently departed Lou Reed sound melodic. What started out as a song turned quickly into a squawk by the time referee Kevin Friend, gave United a penalty in the 20th minute for a foul committed by Leroy Fer on Adnan Januzaj in the 20th minute. It is possibly one of the softest penalties I’ve ever seen conceded but all the same, a correct call by the referee. Why Fer felt the need to take a walk on the wild side and trip Januzaj when neither he nor the ball was going anywhere threatening to Norwich, only Fer can answer. The fact is that Fer tripped Januzaj in the box, so it’s a penalty regardless of goal threat of whether Januzaj was in control of the ball. The Norwich players and the impressively numbered travelling fans were understandably incensed by the penalty but they should have been blaming Fer for his numb headed stupidity rather than screaming blue murder to the referee. Javier Hernandez sent Norwich goalkeeper Mark Bunn the wrong way wit the resulting penalty. Up until the goal, Norwich looked as staggeringly poor as they normally do. After it, they played with all the promise of a turkey in Bernard Matthews slaughterhouse. In the second half, a headed goal from Hernandez on 55 minutes, a volley from Phil Jones on 88 minutes and a flick from the returned Fabio in injury time sealed a 4-0 win for United. A Phil Jones volley and a goal from Fabio? It was one of those nights.

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View from the C stand on a not so bootiful night (Photo courtesy of Daniel Burdett)

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Then We Have Nani – Manchester 26th of October 2013

Until today, I had never in my life seen a good game of football involving the 1992 Autoglass Trophy winners. A real see saw game saw for the third consecutive time, a farcical goal go in at the Scoreboard End. Peter Crouch forced a great save from David De Gea on 3 minutes before Jonny Evans attempted clearance deflected off Crouch’s shin and into the back of the net. When Van Persie equalised on 43 minutes, the relief around the ground could be touched. It didn’t last long. Two minutes later, Marko Arnautovic beat David De Gea on his near post from a free kick to De Gea’s right. Wayne Rooney was again immense today, he was busy and determined. Some United players didn’t have such a great game though. Jonny Evans and Phil Jones occasionally resembled Laurel and Hardy at the back, then we have Nani…(on doctors advice and some Mogadon , I’m leaving it there).

Continue reading Then We Have Nani – Manchester 26th of October 2013

Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Manchester 19th of October 2013

The weather forecast had been universally grim. It was supposed to piss down constantly throughout the weekend but that wasn’t how it ended up being. A stuttering United performance was nicely concluding into a hard fought victory when Southampton got a corner on 88 minutes. After a game of cat and mouse between referee Michael Jones and Saints midfielder James Ward-Prowse, over the pinching of inches and placing the ball out of the D of the corner flag, Ward-Prowse floated a corner in to cause a chaotic scramble in the United six yard box. This resulted in a farcical equaliser for Southampton, which was eventually accredited to Adam Lallana. Moments later, what had been an elementally very agreeable day turned very dark very quickly. It was if the goal itself had given the Lord the royal hump and he thus, Continue reading Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Manchester 19th of October 2013

Shooting Fish In A Barrel – Manchester 28th of September 2013

Today was one final blast of decent weather for this year before the light draws in and the departing masses leaving Old Trafford, begin to resemble a Lowry painting for six months. After last Sundays thrashing at City and the midweek joy of beating Liverpool, there was a lot of confidence going into Old Trafford today. Despite that defeat last week and the armageddon-esque rhetoric of forthcoming doom from some reds, United went into todays fixture trailing the league leaders by five points having now played Liverpool and City away as well as Chelsea at home. The widely agreed difficult start was out of the way and United were only five points off the pace and we all know, at this stage of the season, that’s nothing. There was only one problem with that assertion, West Brom hadn’t read the script.

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Skating On Thin Ice – Manchester 23rd of September 2013

Vincent Kompany said in his post match interview on SKY Sports that ‘maybe the game meant a little bit more to us than to them…’. If Kompany has ever uttered truer words than that then I’ve yet to read or hear them. This was as bad a United performance against City that I can ever remember. Just under two years ago, I walked away from Old Trafford having witnessed City beating United 6-1. I was consoled in the belief that even though City were deserved winners that day, 6-1 was a freak result. it was a result against a 10 man team that had gone kamikaze after they had scored a goal at 3-0 down with nine minutes to go. Yesterday was different. When Wayne Rooney scored what was arguably the goal of the match on 87 minutes, United could’ve been 7-0 down and it would’ve been a fair reflection of the game. That it was only 4-0 at the time was due to the fact that with some mercy, City took their foot off the pedal when they scored their fourth on 50 minutes with a far post volley from Samir Nasri. The last time I can remember a United performance as clueless and as spineless as this, was at the Riverside stadium, Middlesbrough in October 2005, a match that had the same result as yesterday. That match inadvertently saw the departure of Roy Keane for comments he made about the game after watching it whilst seething in a hotel bar in Dubai. With a bit of luck, yesterdays performance would have marked cards for certain players in a similar way with David Moyes. I can’t second guess the reasoning of a United manager who spurned the chance of signing Mesut Özil during a summer in which he also granted Nani a new five year contract. For all that, after what I’ve seen from both Ashley Young and Anderson in the past nine days, the only time I’d expect to see them in a United shirt again would be on Thursday nights at Moss Lane in Altrincham playing for the stiffs and even then, only in place of an injury to one of the kids. There are others, more popular terrace figures like Danny Welbeck and Antonio Valencia who must also be skating on thin ice too.

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