A game of two halves, as they say. We should have been leading 2-0 or 3-0 at half time, and would have been but for referee Wiley's refusal to give a penalty. He refused us two more good penalty appeals in the second half but there's no point in blaming him. We were poor in the second half.
Ruud had a gilt-edged chance to make it 2-0 on 55 minutes when 1 on 1 but he hesitated on the ball instead of instinctively putting it away. Otherwise, I thought RVN played superbly, holding the ball up well and always a threat. Keano too deserved all 3 points for his performance and so did the defence until they cocked it up with about 5 minutes left. There were plenty of star performances in that first 45 minutes: Scholesie, Giggs, Rio and Wes were excellent in addition to Ruud, Keano and Becks. But the city goal had been coming all through that second half and they might even have won it when they hit the crossbar in injury time and Goater then put the ball in the net but the goal was disallowed because Anelka had handled. With United looking less effective in the second half, I think Fergie was wrong to put Butty on for Veron. JSV had not had a particularly good game but surely the better option would have been to put Ole on and revert to 4-4-2 to put some more pressure on the city goal. Butty is not fully match fit and it was a risk to expect him to shore up the midfield with the game so precariously balanced. A word about Carroll. He made one good save but he looked very suspect in the second half with his kicking (that poor left-footed clearance), his positional play (way off the goal line when a simple chip would have beaten him), and in his handling (when he spilled a couple). He's dropped a notch in my estimation but he's still learning. He'll need to improve to knock Fabien off his perch. So is this the defining moment? A great chance to go level on points with Arsenal has been lost and, almost as bad, we've lost 5 valuable points against city this season (precisely the same number that would have now seen us joint top). At least United fans outsang the Bitters till those last 10 minutes. But there's not much consolation in that. Dammit!!! Subscription info WWW http://red11.org/list Reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] = subscribe to the list. [EMAIL PROTECTED] = unsubscribe from the list. Post message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
