RED11.ORG

Posted by PaulJ on 2010-11-10 @ 19:10:47 +0000

I left home early on a blustery Tuesday to drive North. It may have been my
timing but there seemed fewer than the usual pilgrims on the M6, just a family
of Rangers fans at Sandbach. Tickets had been available right up to the
previous evening and those who could not make it did well. Without pursuing the
miserable job of checking I would wager that, despite the competition’s
importance, more than half of my ninety one European Cup matches have been poor
entertainment. Few have been worse than this one.

Ferguson’s usual strategy for Europe is to pick strong sides, accumulate early
points and then pick Carling Cup sides to drop points and make qualification
exciting; last year’s embarrassment against Be?ikta? a typical case. Far from
showing any evidence of any resipiscence this time around he picked his Carling
Cup side for the opening match; ten changes from Saturday. His point, that they
should have been good enough to win, was a fair one; twelve of the fourteen
players used were full internationals and we all had a right to expect better
performances from some of the more senior men. In the event, however, they were
not good enough to beat Rangers’ rational but rebarbative tactics of fielding a
team of defenders in what was basically a five five nil formation.

Tomasz Kuszczak was in goal, Wes Brown at right back, Fábio at left. Chris
Smalling made his first competitive start alongside the returning Rio Ferdinand
in the centre of defence and it was here that the night was a modest success;
Smalling looked strong for a youngster, though with things to learn, and Rio
came through his first game since re-injuring himself in the Summer with no
apparent ill-effects. The pair of them managed to thwart any risk of a sneak
away goal. In the midfield we had Darron Gibson, Darren Fletcher, Ji-Sung Park
and Antonio Valencia and up front Javier Hernández and the Prodigal Scouser.

It was not that United failed to win that was so annoying, but the manner in
which we failed. There were two hopelessly incompetent teams out on the pitch;
Manchester United Reserves and the Portuguese refereeing team in Tottenham
Hotspur kit led by Olegário Benquerença, whom we have come across before but not
with so many men. Their judgement on the legality of tackles was quite
extraordinary.

The new UEFA directive was enforced and we had referees behind the goal;
anything to avoid the use of modern technology. The poor buggers had absolutely
nothing to do all night except shiver in the intermittent Manchester downpour
and dream of their sunny homes and the fees they were picking up. Rangers did
not look too hot a team themselves, thank goodness, but they were organised and
disciplined and they succeeded in what they always now set out to do on their
travels in Europe; last year they conceded only one goal in this league and
scored none.

The first half had three interesting moments; Allan McGregor, the Rangers
goalkeeper was booked for timewasting, it began to rain and the scoreboard shut
off like the rest of us. At least for a while there was no constant reminder of
how many minutes of this stuff we still had to endure. There were also
apparently in this period our two goalbound shots (I can only remember the tame
effort by Rooney) and an accidental handball incident in the Rangers area
involving David Weir. When the referee temporarily released us all from our
misery by blowing for half time the teams went off to a stunned silence.

Half time analysis was miserable; with the exceptions at centre back there was
not a single United player doing anything of note except working hard. We were
all familiar with the weaknesses of Kuszczak and Park, and if we were not, this
annoying fellow in front of us was volubly reminding us as they demonstrated
them on this night. Neither the Brown-Valencia combination on the right wing
nor the Fábio-Park one on the left was producing any width so Hernández, who
looked classy but lightweight, and Rooney were trying to pick their way through
ten bodies close packed in the middle of the park. Rooney played like a man of
great talent whose wife had just discovered he had been sleeping with
prostitutes two at a time while she was pregnant. His first touch was
unreliable; he would do clever things but then appear not be concentrating. As
if this were not making it difficult enough Fletcher and Gibson were meanwhile
indiscriminately distributing the ball to players of either side.

The second half was marred by Valencia’s injury, which was predicated by a
similar but thankfully less disastrous moment in the first half, when Rooney
turned his ankle on the turf but ran it off. Valencia’s, acquired from a
similar trip during a tackle with Kirk Broadfoot, looked like a clean double
fracture of the leg at the ankle or a spectacular dislocation but it turns out
might be both. His foot was certainly at a most unhealthy angle before he was
stretchered off to an ovation and replaced by Ryan Giggs.

Giggs did what he could to improve a fraught situation and after the incident
the Stretford End crowd woke up for a short while and United put together a
couple of minutes of attacking. With a quarter of an hour to go Jonny Evans
came on for Fábio and Michael Owen came on for Park. It was difficult to work
out what position Park had been asked to play; he was little or no threat up the
wing and though he was industrious as ever his role had turned out to be getting
the ball and then giving it away. Owen, having presumably been weighing up the
field of play from the bench, did not bother much with getting the ball at all
and was thus one of the few players who did not give it away.

Now we had as many central defenders on the pitch as Rangers, and nearly as many
strikers (three) as they had right full backs (four), we won the first corner of
the match in the 85th minute. Giggs wasted it, but he was responsible a few
minutes later for the moment of the match, a lovely chip over the top for Darren
Fletcher, who was clear and onside but took time he had not got.

We were so poor that even a team of fullbacks had worked out at the end that it
might be worth trying to sneak a goal; some would say that Smalling’s earlier
tackle on Broadfoot in the corner of the area might have resulted in a penalty
for the visitors. When the referee added six minutes there was some danger that
Rangers might break away and score; we were certainly not going to even if they
played all night.

It being the Champions League, we had not even been allowed a drink at the bar.
The ground emptied in silence and I drove home unimpeded by anything other than
the weather and got there in near record time by two in the morning with a mind
numbed of memories of the match and imagining I might find suitable quotations
from Yeats’ little known poem “Five Hundred Miles for a Crock-o-Shite”. I know
you can’t have top class entertainment every time but I had been to quench my
spiritual thirst from the cup and found it dry as a bone.

Paul James

Posted by Bill on 2010-09-15 @ 1:06:07 +0000

Sir Alex Ferguson's Champions League gamble backfired badly as not even the returning Wayne Rooney could conjure up a goal against Rangers.

In truth, it was less of a battle, more a stout rearguard action on Rangers' behalf, which was fully deserving of a point at Old Trafford, if only for their strict adherence to Walter Smith's limited game plan.

A bad night for United was made even worse by a serious injury to Antonio Valencia, who suffered a broken bone around the ankle that will doubtless rule him out for several months.

Let loose again after the maelstrom that has engulfed his private life, Rooney barely got a decent sight of the Rangers goal, let alone come close to finding it.

Darron Gibson did threaten with an array of pot shots but a much-changed team had run out of ideas long before the six minutes of injury time Valencia's horrific misfortune forced.

Rooney's name was one of 10 changes to the United team that faced Everton. Rio Ferdinand's was another.

It was a staggering number for the first game of club football's most prestigious competition.

Ferguson has made similar mass alterations before but he usually reserves it for the last couple of games in the group phase, usually when qualification is already assured.

For all the United manager's talk of a Rangers history he grew up on during those childhood days in Govan, it is a measure of how far Scottish football has fallen that he felt able to take on the challenge of beginning another European season with a win by placing his trust in Champions League rookies Javier Hernandez and Chris Smalling.

It is a measure of Ferguson's old club's obduracy that the move backfired so spectacularly.

From the first whistle, United met two lines of blue; the first of four, the one behind of five, that offered precious little room to breathe.

Gibson's trusty right boot can usually be relied upon for a pot-shot or two and the midfielder did go close on a couple of occasions.

United also had a penalty claim for handball against David Weir turned down, Rooney smart enough to vent his frustration at the goal-line official who will become a familiar presence as the tournament progresses.

Yet it summed up the hosts difficulties that Rooney should be racing back into his own half trying to retrieve possession when he turned his left ankle.

As he hopped away from the innocuous incident, Old Trafford, except the 3,000 or so Rangers fans who had travelled south of the border, held its breath.

Ferdinand provided the instant diagnosis. Not sure. Then came the thumbs-up sign that meant Ferguson could breathe again.

Rooney had mustered just one shot at the Rangers goal, which Allan McGregor dealt with easily enough.

It seemed the visitors had parked all those buses that had taken them from their Wigan holding base bang in front of the goal.

Kenny Miller put in an industrious shift as a lone forward but there was never any pretence at trying to offer him any proper support.

The monotonous flow of the game continued after the interval, with Gibson flashing a volley wide after he had latched onto Madjid Bougherra's clearing header.

Yet its inexorable one-way route was halted by Valencia's departure.

It took medical staff almost five minutes to treat the South American, who left the field with an oxygen mask round his mouth, the distress of Kirk Broadfoot obvious, even though no blame could be attached to the Rangers man.

The only positive from United's perspective was that Valencia's replacement was Ryan Giggs. Long-term the consequences could be serious.

Bobby Zamora has just been ruled out for four months after suffering a similar injury on Fulham duty at the weekend and with the transfer window closed, United will now have to rely on Giggs, Nani and Gabriel Obertan for pace out wide.

The introduction of Michael Owen had a touch of desperation about it at a time when Rangers were starting to make a nuisance of themselves, even to the extent of having more shots on goal than their hosts.

Not that the statistic translated into a meaningful save for Tomasz Kuszczak, who was watching from the other end of the field when Gibson sent another long-range effort fizzing over.

The first corner of the entire contest came thanks to a deflected Gibson shot six minutes from time. United wasted it.

Teams

Man Utd Kuszczak, Brown, Ferdinand, Smalling, Fabio Da Silva (Jonathan Evans 75), Valencia (Giggs 63), Fletcher, Gibson, Park (Owen 75), Rooney, Hernandez.

Subs Not Used: Van der Sar, Anderson, O'Shea, Macheda.

Booked: Giggs.

Rangers McGregor, Broadfoot, Weir, Bougherra, Papac, Whittaker, Davis, McCulloch, Edu, Naismith, Miller (Lafferty 81).

Subs Not Used: Alexander, Foster, Beattie, Weiss, Little, Hutton.

Booked: McGregor, McCulloch.

Att: 74,408

Ref: Olegario Benquerenca (Portugal).

sportinglife.com