Well, not the ultimate, but if you want an objective snapshot of how well United are doing this season without bothering for all the analysis and gibberish that yours truly spouts forth in this site, look no further.
We have launched our brand new Stats and Match reports page dedicated to Manchester United. We feature the fixture list with the result and our match reports for the respective games. We also link to highlights to those games, which are of course hosted in some third party website. So in case they are broken, do not blame us. (Although, you could let us know.)
We also have an injury table, goal scorers/assists and a mini league table that will show 2 teams above and two below us. Although, honestly, we fervently hope we do not have to display any club above us, come the end of the season!
So go ahead and visit the page. We also greatly welcome suggestions to help improve the stats page to make it more comprehensive and at the same time, not too overwhelming.
Let us know what you think in the comments or via the Contact Form.
Watch this space for updates as we get match news.
Update: Nani scores. A scrappy win. But was it a pleasant sight! Anyway, still plenty of cracks to paper over. All in the report tomorrow. Sorry for not updating as promised, but I will get out a decent enough match report to make up for it.
United face Spurs in what has now been widely regarded by fans as a crunch game. In fact it the game is considered equally important for Spurs fans, who despite having won the last game, have gone over board in their reactions towards Tottenham and Martin Jol, in particular.
United on the other hand have yet to win a game this season and are already playing catch up. As mentioned countless times here, in this site, and many other sites, the team has been playing well. It’s only the final third where they are not being able to get anything decisive done. Or are they plain unlucky?
SAF has said that Hargreaves, Anderson and Saha are fit. Even EVDS is deemed fit to play. Gary Neville has overdone his training and ended up aggravating his injury, thus keeping him out for another 2 weeks. While Hargreaves will start, there is this feeling that Fergie might persist with his 4-3-3 formation. Despite Saha training for the last two weeks without any hiccups, it is more likely that he will start on the bench. So will Anderson.
Martin Jol’s defence is shaky, with Ledley King a long time absentee. None of the defenders are Micah Richards, so we should be able to beat them comfortably. But stranger things have happened. The ‘crisis’ at Spurs might just spur (no pun intended) the players on to a blinder of a performance, and we just hope that doesn’t happen. Berbatov is fit and is expected to start.
Prediction: 2-0 to United (Tevez, Nani to score.)
In the summer of 2008 two fullbacks will be headed to Old Trafford from Fluminese. Of course, both of them are Brazilian. One plays at right back and the other, on the left. Close observers of United would have realized by now that we are talking about Fabio and Rafael.
They are identical twins and will be 18 when they arrive at OT next year. There is a good chance that they are the real reasons behind United not aggressively pursuing long term replacements for Gary Neville. Both are right now playing for the Brazil U-17 team in the U-17 World Cup in South Korea. FIFA.com runs an interview with the identical twins, who are really hard to tell apart.
Fabio is touted to be the more promising of the two - he also is the captain of the side. The interview is pretty good and also goes to show how attractive OT is now for Brazilians due to the already strong Portuguese speaking presence there.
The U-17 World cup is in full swing and Fabio has scored three goals in two games. Brazil thrashed New Zealand and Korea 7-0 and 6-0 respectively. To see the twins in action I found only clips from the New Zealand game, go ahead and click here to go to the FIFA website for the highlights of the NZ game. I know it’s only New Zealand, but they remind me of Daniel Alves when running all over the park.
Oh well, they still have a long way to go, but they also sure look promising.
This is Sailesh Ganesh from Dallas, USA. I am a new contributor to Red Rants, hoping to keep up with the great quality of the site.
With introductions out of the way, let me talk a bit about our recent results. You might be thinking that this has already been beaten to death, but suffice it to say that we have not seen a period of results like this in the recent past, and it deserves our attention. A few of these points have already been made here, so bear with me with what seems like a repetition, but I feel its worth another look at.
Continue reading “There’s More to United’s Season”
(Ed: I was about to do a round-up for the week, because, admittedly, quite a bit happened that got drowned in ‘bigger news’ items. But Ollie had already done the job - thanks mate. So I got the easy way out and did some editing and addition of some extra bits of news that got left out. So read on, if you’ve been sleeping all week.)
The week started exceptionally bad for United supporters, with a derby day loss, leaving us with only 2 points from our first 3 matches. And I won’t even mention the injury to Rooney and suspension of Ronaldo. Ronaldo has also said that he feels the three match ban he received for his sending off, as ‘unjust’. Admittedly our Premiership title defence hasn’t started as we would have liked. But perhaps one positive to take out of the match with Citeh was the great debut of Owen Hargreaves.
Continue reading “The Week So Far: Benitez, Heinze, Strikers, Nani, EVDS, Ferdinand, Gibson, Saha and Spurs”
Here are the black away kits and their official pictures. There is also the official poster containing the release date, which is the 13th of September. I wonder why it’s taking so long.
The black kit, however, is ace and I would love to get my hands on it. Even the stripe at the back is pretty good although it would look good with a number in between.
Kit pics after the fold.
Continue reading “Kit Update: Official Man Utd 07/08 Black Away Kit Pics”
I’ve always wondered, long before this site ever existed, how it would be to say goodbye to a player who’s served your club so admirably. The feeling of parting would be one thing that’s not totally alien. But expressing all those feelings that come rushing into your head, all at once, in some concrete form, is a different challenge.
So in this way, I wondered how difficult it might have been to say goodbye to such players - more prominently, names like Beckham, Ruud, Keano, even Stam and Phil Neville, come to mind. I’ve also wondered in the past about how tough it might be to write a fitting farewell to current players like Rooney, Ronaldo, Giggs, Scholes and so on. Needless to say, they are all extremely difficult if you plan to write a farewell that does justice to their contributions.
Apart from those names I mentioned above, I did also wonder about Gabriel Heinze.
Continue reading “So Long Heinze, And Thanks For The 8 Million!”
Another bit of good news filtered down to the papers all over town yesterday. Real Madrid, now officially known as UUPOAH (Unhappy United Players’ Old Age Home), have come and done United a big, big favour: they bought Heinze, and, wait for it… for £8 million!
Now this, I must say, made me feel pleasantly surprised. Real Madrid have always underpaid for our players. Beckham was a snip at £25 million - a sum they were reported to have recovered in three months! Ruud once again was bought for a ridiculously low fee, given his goal return, and the fee paid by Chelsea for Shevchenko.
Continue reading “Real Cough Up Money for Wheinze | Benitez Moans and Whines”
Watching Manchester United over the past 2 weeks has been frustrating yet at the same time highly exhilarating. Indeed our great club may have not got the start we wanted.
Two draws and a defeat. But who would have thought we would be defeated while playing with such style?
There have been reasons bandied about as to why United has started poorly. The clueless critics say it’s because the entire team has no depth. Others claim it was because of the so called “poor pre-season” (i.e the trip to Asia). Some have put it merely down to our injuries. But in truth there have only been 2 reasons.
Continue reading “United On The Brink Of Greatness, Again”
