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Always wished that I had more time to record down the Man Utd matches that I watched over the years. Come to think of it, it's been ten years since i started supporting the club. Anyway while i'm usually too lazy to write, i love reading comments from other die-hard fans.

 Came across the article where there was a comparison between what Rooney in the last CL match and what JT and Alex did against Everton on Tuesday, and some of the comments were absolutely brilliant. Cannot resist the urge to note it down. Here goes.

I think most Man Utd fans would be quite disappointed with the result today. At 4-1, I was thinking to myself that it would be a perfect morale booster for us if Rooney and Ronaldo would be able to hit the century mark today. But as the match wore on, I guess I'm happy just to see the match end with 3 points in the bag.

 Though disappointed, I guess this was a good experiment for Fergie, whom in my opinion got it all wrong with his substutions. By bringing on Tevez for Nani, and Giggs for Carrick, he unbalanced the entire team. The midfield got surprisingly thin with Hull dominating the final quarter of the game. Man Utd was effectively operating 2-4-4, with four strikers, four (attacking) midfielders and 2 centre backs. The entire team was trying to get onto the score sheet, leaving rio and vidic exposed in numerous occasions, resulting in the 2 goals conceded in 2nd half.

 It's apparant that Fergie is unable to squeeze Rooney, Berba, Ronaldo and Tevez together into a team as all 4 of them are attack minded. Eventually Rooney had to provide the protection in the middle, dropping deep and left, and as time wore on he became more and more frustrated about his lack of opportunities to get forward.

 What Fergie needs to do is get Rooney playing the way, (forward, in the centre, and free-role) he had been playing before Everton, so that Berba and Rooney can resume the lethal combination which yielded 10 goals between them in 5 matches. If I'm Fergie, I would drop Rooney to the bench for the next match and start Tevez, and pray that it has the same effect as the Bolton match. Against Celtic, Rooney has every chance of scoring even if given 30 minutes.

 Btw the goal difference for Chelsea is 23 while we are at 11, and given how close the race to championship is gonna be, we better start scoring more and conceding less, esp against the lesser teams. Also, as I'm typing now, Liverpool is leading Tottenham 1-0, and started brightly in the 2nd half, looking dangerous with every attack. Darn.

68 min: Wooohoooo... Carragher just scored a great header for Spurs...

90 min: Pavlyuchenko scored a tap-in right at the end. Bentley did extremely well to provide the opportunity. Man... Redknapp's value just tripled....

After all the excitement of Liverpool dropping points, as we have come to expect over the years, is it me or is there a damn scary resemblance between this match and the match we lost against Liverpool? Both teams scored away within the first 3 minutes. Both team conceded an equaliser thru an own goal from a defender, and finally both teams lost.... what comes around goes around. anyway i'm happy. cheers.

We were too good.

Rooney and Ronaldo were simply too hot for a terrible Newcastle team. Somehow after the 2nd goal, I was starting to feel sorry for Newcastle and their fans.

Why is Rooney so unselfish??? and what a great player he is.

The fourth goal that he scored was absolutely brilliant and with the game dead and buried, he continued to create chances for his team mates when he could have easily gotten the hat-trick.

Meanwhile, we are again in touching distance (3 points) with Arsenal after they dropped another 2 points. Well the signs are good for us, as it is obvious that their team is really wearing thin and that their young players are starting to run out of steam. Clichy's injury time mistake is simply a lack of concentration and there is no way that the team can continue their winning ways. Anyway even though this is probably going to benefit Man U, it was such a sorry injury to Eduardo. Nearly identical to Alan Smith's injury two seasons ago. Let's hope he recovers soon. And, oh... the next nearest victim is probably Adebayor, who is stuck with Bendtner for the rest of the season.

What can I say? We totally blew Arsenal away.

 Somehow, while watching the match, I happened to stumble upon this article . I think Gallas spoke too fast and might grow to regret shooting his mouth off at will. Do Man U think that they are too good? I don't think so. If you look at the work rate and attitude of the Man U's players, at any single match, you can see how hard they work. But trouncing Arsenal 4-0, who can fault us for thinking that way?? Right now I think that it is Arsenal that is going to find it hard to win anything this season. Frankly, I think it is still the mystery of the season how they manage to stay on top. Only their starting 11 is good enough to challenge for the title realistically. Furthermore their players seem to lack the sort of team spirit that is so often seen with the Man U players. This is so apparent when Adebayor headbutted Bendtner after the former told the latter that he is shite. Also, the only contributions that Gallas seem to do as captain is to bark at his team mates and scoring own goals. Now, he should start learning how to keep his mouth shut. 

 Back to the match. Once again Rooney proved why he is THE player of Man U and why we never lost with him in the team. Rooney kept me excited for the entire first half as he tormented Gallas and Gilberto. His superb energy level just gelled the other players together, bringing the best out of Park, Fletcher, Nani, Anderson and Carrick, as well as continuously causing Lehman to miskick. Interestingly, this is the best i've seen Rooney played this season and from my point of view, it is largely due to the absence of Ronaldo. Hopefully while watching in the stands, Ronaldo have learnt how teamwork, slick passing and being unselfish can allow Man U to tear any team apart. I think there is a marked improvement in Rooney's game today and that might be pretty much due to him staying up in the opposition's end. His flirting with the offside trap had brought so much confusion to Arsenal's defence today and gave the midfielders something to aim for. Let's hope that our key man can continue playing like that till the end of the season.

The first half has been one of the best I have seen in many years. From the 16th minute header by Rooney, the football has been flowing and pleasing to the eye. Credit to Nani and Fletcher who really worked their socks off, esp Nani who did particularly well in getting himself involved in all the goal actions. That little juggle he did in 2nd half epitomised the humiliation that we delivered to Arsenal today. 

Well, I guess much will be said today about how well we did, but the key point should be how Rooney came back and proved that he is truly world class. 

MOTM: a close fight between Rooney, Nani and Fletcher, but I must say Nani, for all the goals that he has created and that little juggle he did. (How the hell are the MOTM awards being judged? If you noticed, most of the time, the award is simply given to the player who scored first...)  

Missed the entire first half due to some chinatown shopping with Eunice. However did managed to catch the highlights replay during the half time break. 

As soon as I saw Spurs trashing Arsenal 5-1 mid week in the League Cup Semis, I thought this was always going to be a tough game for United. Not sure whose brilliant idea it was, but instead of resting the players and preparing them properly for today's and next Wednesday's match, our players have to fly to the other side of the world to play an absolutely useless match. I did managed to catch the Saudi Arabia match on channel 107, though I didn't really think much of it, except that it will probably wear some of the players out.

Back to today's game. I thought our defence was very shaky. What happened to Vidic? Didn't really catch any news about him. I certainly hope he is not injured or anything, cause today's game just proved his importance in our defence. Evra was teased by Lennon throughout the game, which is not an usual sight, while brown was everywhere. Though none of the players really played badly, but the shape of the back end just didn't look right. Of course, we are facing one of the league's most potent strike force, not forgetting they put 5 past Arsenal on Wednesday.

It was nerve-racking stuff all the way till the final goal scored by ronaldo. Credit to Spurs for putting up a fine display, even after going a man down. It's puzzling why we were unable to capitalize on the numerical advantage and even have to ride our luck abit when Berbatov should have put Spurs level in the final few minutes before the Ronaldo's goal. I thought some of the movements and build-ups in the 2nd half were good but the leaky Spurs defence were equal to our attacking forces. However, I'm not so sure why Ramos choose to take off Lee, their right-back when he is playing very well throughout the game. The penalty was spot-on, and I did notice that the advertising boards were not moving before and during Ronaldo's kick. Lol. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/sport/football.html?in_page_id=1779&in_article_id=509773

  Penalty!

Yes, we can say that these are signs of champions, not putting in the best performance, not playing the flowing football, yet grinding out the results. However, I think with the players that we've got, we should not be grinding out results. We must win with style and confidence. With 15 games remaining in the league and hopefully many more Cup ties, we cannot afford to ease the gas pedal. Apart from the not-too-convincing win, I think we should all be happy with the return of Scholes. His return lifted the team abit when he came on, and he did deliver some nice passes. It'll be interesting to see a midfield with Scholes, Anderson and OH, with Tevez, Giggs, Ronaldo, Rooney (rotate any three) in front. 

 Ok... That's it. To reiterate, I think this is still not a convincing win, and I hope we can play more flowing football thru the middle of the field, against Portsmouth, which is obviously weakened by the African Cup. Baros is joining them... hmm... 

Motm: Tevez. He was the only one that was playing well before the penalty. Caused problems to Spurs defense. and did get the all-important equalizer before the break. and... where's the pacifier?