United continued their dream run of the past few weeks; the ten days has been compared to the famous period in 1999 in this Richard Williams piece, but let’s not elevate this to those levels just yet. However, yesterday’s performance — if not the string of them over the past ten days — could perhaps be termed the watershed moment of our season, if this leads us to something of significance, come May.
Continue reading “United Thump Arsenal; Close Gap on Chelsea”
Let’s be clear here: let’s just stop making excuses for our team. We can go on about our dominant possession; throw stats out in the air on how much of pitch area our players covered. And perhaps go on a rant about sides parking their bus against us. Or, how unfair Cameron Jerome’s goal was.
But what’s the point?
Continue reading “Questions Continue to be Asked of United After Another Draw”
I was contacted by ESPN (Asia) to do a small interview with them, taking stock of the season so far. I believe it will be up on their site in a day or two. But one of the questions that had me stumped was when I was asked to name an unsung hero for us this season. I think Fletcher had been unsung in past seasons, but there have been enough noise made about his importance this season. And Park Ji Sung has been too mediocre to qualify (Maybe his cause may have been helped if his name was Park Ji-Unsung.). Anyway the main impression I got was we have blown hot and cold far too often to have any heroes, sung or unsung.
Continue reading “United End 2009 With a Flourish”
Before the Villa game, Chelsea had just drawn 3-3. There was all the motivation for the side to cut their lead from three to zero; separated on goal difference. The anticipation was also high among our lot; after all, we just beat sides by handsome margins with a joke of a defence. Surely the confidence was so high that we might have as well stuck in gardeners and the kitman at the centre of defence and yet manage to squeeze something out of the match.
Funny story: Saturday didn’t quite go to plan.
Continue reading “United blow chance to close gap”
Every once in a while you’ll get a match that lifts gloom and renews portents of doom for another day. The question of doom in essence is ridiculous, relatively speaking. After all we were, before yesterday, five points off the pace, having sold our best player and performing marginally better in comparison to last season. I mean, just talk to West Ham fans and they’ll bite anyone’s hands off to swap positions with us.
Continue reading “Irons Hammering and Chelsea Stuttering makes Jack a happy boy”
United will go into the international break ruing, what could have been, a draw (even, to the optimists, a win). Prior to the game, whilst I predicted a 1-1 draw, a nagging feeling told me a defeat to Chelsea was a perfectly possible — and in a parallel universe, even deserving, given our recent form — and I had my mind made up preparing for the worst.
What transpired actually surprised me.
Continue reading “Reaction to the Chelsea defeat”
Let’s make no pretence about this: we were beaten fair and square by Liverpool. We can talk all we want about refereeing incompetence; true there were a few errors but the crucial ones were offset on the other side too. Nothing however disguises the fact that yesterday was a defeat that was fully deserved.
This makes it a hat trick of Liverpool wins and that’s what makes it hard to stomach.
Continue reading “Liverpool outplay poor United”
I expected the Bolton match to be hard-fought, gritty, and all you could associate with a fixture played on the back of an international break. As the match started playing out, a little bit of revisionism struck and I actually felt we would walk it. But somehow, we contrived to make it harder for ourselves towards the end, and it ended as nervously as I first thought it would.
Continue reading “United survive post international break jitters; go top.”
This should quite easily be among the most breathtaking United matches in recent times. The drama, the talk going into the match, the punches being thrown pre-match between managers, fans and players alike, everything contributed into elevating the stakes to stratospheric proportions.
It was a derby after all, with three points to bag, but with so much talk, United and United fans would have absolutely hated losing this game much more than past derbies.
Continue reading “United come through its acid test unscathed”
Scott at Republik of Mancunia made a valiant effort at throwing a positive spin on Saturday’s result. Of course, it was a win after all, so, really, what can be more positive than that? And he did a good job of trying to alleviate certain shreds of negativism that may have afflicted a lot of United fans.
However, if you were to ask me what I thought of yesterday, I’d say it’s among the strangest matches I’ve ever seen against ‘big four’ opposition. (Yes, even the 1-0 at Anfield, many moons ago, felt different. In that game the win tasted sweet. Here, I really don’t know what I’m having.)
Continue reading “All three points as fortune favours United”
