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Club Focus – Manchester Untied – Red Devils look to bounce back from injury time nightmare
Tuesday 14 September 2010
Discussion in social spots on a Saturday night is often focused around how the local team fared in their encounter that afternoon, but this weekend there was one primary burning topic of conversation for fans up and down the country – what on earth happened at Goodison Park?
After a seemingly comfortable win over West Ham two weeks ago, and stars like Wayne Rooney back among the goals and Paul Scholes nicely refreshed following the international break, United fans could be forgiven for feeling a little optimistic upon their Saturday morning rise. With Sir Alex Ferguson’s decision to omit Rooney amid personal issues, perhaps one or two eyebrows were raised, but surely nothing too major. Goals from Darren Fletcher, Nemanja Vidic and Dimitar Berbatov had erased the tension of Steven Pienaar’s 39th minute opener. Even with three minutes of the match left, and sitting pretty at 3-1 to the good, things seemed to be going swimmingly on the blue half of Merseyside. Then, however, disaster struck for the Red Devils, leaving some 36,556 fans in attendance absolutely stunned – some euphoric, some simply perplexed.
In the space of less than 120 seconds, Everton not only offered United a supersized portion of nerves, they made sure to feed on these nerves themselves to snatch not one, but two injury time goals to leave manager, players, fans and officials alike scratching their heads wondering exactly what they had just witnessed. Tim Cahill had put bums to the edge of seats with a 91st minute strike, and when Mikel Arteta hit home the 92nd minute equaliser the cheer could probably have been heard for miles.
Ferguson had predicted a nightmare before the match – he was originally referring to the atmosphere at Goodison, but up until the last things had played out like a dream. Even the master mind-gamer must have been a tad surprised at how prophetic his statement would end up being by 5pm. Some may have argued that Rooney’s omission could be interpreted as a rare sign of weaknesses at Old Trafford, though others could just as easily say that in footballing terms Rooney’s quality and form in the last few matches meant he perhaps should have been included on his old stomping ground in the first place. While his absence was not responsible for the late goals by any stretch of the imagination, perhaps his grit and steel could have kept United’s heads held high for those final two minutes.
It is wrong to blame someone who wasn’t even playing of course. Vidic had already hit back at claims in some branches of the media that the 11-time Premier League winners have already lost the initiative in this year’s title race when they only managed a draw with Fulham, but was the late collapse a fluke, or a sign of masked strains which need addressing? Certainly, the vast majority of the match had seen the former champions take control and seemingly play out a routine afternoon at one of the country’s oldest grounds, in which case the two late goals were surely a sign of United’s heads dropping from conceding a late “consolation” (as was thought at the time) and Everton riding high on the adrenaline that they could perhaps take something away from the game after all. Certainly, when Cahill’s effort hit the back of the net the prospect of such a miracle suddenly seemed possible, if not probable, for the Evertonians.
Rooney looks set to return to the side for tonight’s Champions League opener with Scottish champions Rangers, with Sir Alex saying that he has no regrets over leaving the former Everton star out of Saturday’s match so as not to subject him to “nonsense from that ground.” Back on domestic duty on Saturday, United face Everton’s arch rivals Liverpool at Old Trafford, and the Kop currently have striker issues of their own due to fears over Fernando Torres’ recent form. Ferguson and the rest of the United team, however, will surely be praying they can avoid a second consecutive disappointment to Merseyside opposition in the meeting of the two most successful English clubs of all time. United won that fixture 2-1 last year, avenging the embarrassing 4-1 defeat to the Kop at Old Trafford in 2009 – United’s heaviest home defeat since New Years’ Day 1992 against Queen’s Park Rangers – before the Premier League began in August of that year.
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