Bottled Violence

Just read this paragraph from today's Guardian report on our match:

Stoke performed with the kind of raw, rough commitment that someone who
had last attended a match in 1958 would have recognised, and with a few
inventive moves at free-kicks they would have found utterly baffling.
John O'Shea looked bewildered when dealing with Rory Delap's long
throws. Edwin van der Sar's concentration was not helped by the odd
beer bottle that appeared to be flung in his direction from the Stoke
fans while Jonny Evans, standing in for Rio Ferdinand, endured an
untypically poor afternoon.

Now tell me how this reference to throwing bottles at a goalkeeper can be made so casually?  Although to be fair it is the only report to bother mentioning it.  It's only Man Utd...
All the reports go on in the usual manner about Ronaldo and Rooney.  Not sure what Ronaldo did wrong at all, it certainly wasn't bookable, Rooney, maybe could have been booked, but there were far too many examples of rubbish refereeing in the game to insinuate, as Graham Poll does, that the referee favoured the "big team".  He just had a bad game, he could have sent off Fuller for dissent on numerous occassions and should have booked a lot more Stoke players for dissent than he did, and he could have given a second yellow to a player whose name escapes me off for elbowing Vidic second half in a carbon copy of an incident in the first half that did warrant a booking.
The greatest thing in the reports today is that they all go on about how great Stoke were, tenacious defending, only the sending off robbed them, brilliant, etc., and yet at least two of them give the Man of the Match to Vidic?!  They defended so well one of our defenders gets man of the match...

Procreating the Infection

Not really sure what to make of the game yesterday, it had the feeling of a friendly, even though it wasn't, and even though the game ended 5-3 it never really seemed to get going.
This, from The Guardian's report, sums it up quite well:

United's victory had more of the air of lively and spirited testimonial
than a do-or-die semi-final with six goals in the final 16 minutes
producing the spectacle Fifa and a crowd of 67,618 craved. The
spectators got the individual cameos they demanded too, with Nemanja
Vidic and Cristiano Ronaldo heading United into a comfortable interval
lead before Wayne Rooney emerged from the bench to score twice and collect the European champions' only booking of the game.

The Mail tries to make something out of Rooney's booking but even it can hardly muster much indignation:

Rooney was in delightfully belligerent form as a late substitute to
score two goals in a quite remarkable closing 18 minutes and was then
booked for what appeared an unnecessary hack at Gamba Osaka midfielder
Michihiro Yasuda.

'Well I got the ball, didn’t I?’ asked Rooney later, with one of
those don’t-mess-with-me looks that he usually reserves for match
officials and people who support Liverpool.

Indeed, he did. But
the fact that it was stuck tight to the prone Yasuda’s chest as Rooney
had a couple of digs at it earned him his yellow card.

And then the standard cliché about he must learn to control ... yawns ...
There's also reports on Ferguson's comments about Real's renewed rumour-mongering about Ronaldo.  From The Guardian:

"You don't think we'd get into a contract with that mob, do you?
Jesus Christ. I wouldn't sell them a virus. So that's a no — there is
no agreement between the clubs."

Ferguson added that it was not a
coincidence that Real should revive the Ronaldo story at a time when
they have just sacked Bernd Schuster as coach and lost to their La Liga
rivals Barcelona.

Rather bizarrely The Telegraph's headline is "Sir Alex Ferguson stokes up row with Real Madrid over Christiano Ronaldo", as if it is somehow Sir Alex's fault that this has made the news. Very snappy headline as well...

Liars A to E

Just a quick post on the releasing by the FA of the Commission's verdict on the Evra/Chelsea incident. Story here in The Times, full report here.
First off I'd like to point to this from The Times's report:

The FA has posted the commission’s full findings on its website in the interests of greater transparency in the disciplinary process, but this break from convention...

What better example of bias could there be? The "break from convention" could only be for the reason that they found against us and that they call into question Evra's character, i.e. it's a great excuse to badmouth us.
I shall just put in one quote from the commission's report to demonstrate how much they hated on us:

The DVD evidence does not itself show whether or not Mr Evra actually struck MrBethell. It is just not clear enough. Mr Evra denies it but we accept Mr Bethell’s evidence that he was struck on or near his right ear and it was clearly Mr Evra who struck him.

"We have no evidence but hey, that Evra, he looks like a right liar." That seems to be the attitude of the commission. Brilliant reasoning. The whole Evra started everything no matter what anyone says attitude that runs throughout the report also suggests that they just hated on us from day one.
Great "independent" report.

Escape Pod

I post this story with no comment:

Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo last night escaped disciplinary action from Uefa, Europe's governing body, and the Football Association for alleged violent conduct.

Actually, I have one comment: Why is the word "escaped"? Implying they were guilty despite the decision.

The news this morning is the same as yesterday s'far as I can make out: UEFA might investigate Rooney's alleged stamp. I've now seen the incident.



Wayne Rooney Antics Via Aalborg 10-dec-2008 - video powered by Metacafe
And I'm not altogether sure what the fuss is about, if anything the second incident seemed a bit worse. Yeah, his foot goes down on the guy's chest, but with no real force or intent, and the fact that it doesn't really hurt the guy can be seen by the fact that he goes down clutching his face, as if Rooney had stamped him in the face. That's cheating in my book... imagine if Ronaldo had done that...

If you want some

Didn't see the game last night, have seen the goals (a couple of great passes for a couple of great strikes), but not longer highlights so I'm not sure how much I can jump to the defence of Rooney.  However, from here it seems like the media are always after Ronaldo or Rooney and, as Ronaldo has had a bit of stick recently and wasn't playing last night, it's now obviously Rooney's turn.  I really love the way all the papers start talking about a UEFA investigation.  Any other team/player(with the exception of Ronaldo I guess...) and the whole incident would rate barely a mention.  Two sentences I'm going to quote from reports today, this from The Guardian:

It is never an encouraging sight for United when Rooney has worked
himself into a temper and for the rest of the match he seemed to be
picking fights with his opponents. Nobody could accuse him, however, of
distracting himself from the match. He was United's best player and,
six minutes into the second half, lifted the sense of shock that was
enveloping the stadium. Anderson's through-ball was beautifully
weighted, bisecting the Aalborg defence with one elegant swish of his
left boot. Rooney had the time to compose himself before finishing the
move with a precise shot from just inside the penalty area.

Acknowledgement of Rooney's temperment without making a mountain out of it before moving onto the football.  That's how it should be done.
And one sentence from the Mail's report:

But the United and England forward did seem to push his boot into Risgard's chest, albeit with questionable force

I would now really like to see the incident...

Rainy Dayz

This isn't strictly speaking a post that belongs here, but it is slightly fitting. It is about Roy Keane.
Paul Ince recently suggested that people were out to get him and Keane because they used to play for Manchester United, “They look at Keane and I in our Manchester United days and see us as snarling old people, but we are not like that". Which seemed an odd thing to say, coming from ex-Liverpool Ince. In the case of Keane though there may well be an element of truth to it. Looking through the many words printed since he left Sunderland there seems very much to be a sense of "told you so", journalists who have been waiting for a long time for Keane to fail finally having their moment. Of course we have the usual lip serivce to what a great player he was, like this, from Hugh McIlvanney, "Roy Keane is a figure of undoubted greatness in British football and the devoutest admirers of his achievements (among whom I would always wish to be numbered)", before the criticisms, but between the lines is pleasure in his "failure".
Of course it being considered a failure at all is a sign that the writers are against him in the first place. This article from The Sunday Times, which was a lot longer in the physical paper and some of the stuff I'll quote from it isn't in this internet version, contains the interesting fact that Roy Keane, despite being advised to sign his lucrative new contract while it was still on offer, refused to sign because he didn't think he'd done enough to merit it. He could have signed the contract and waited around to be sacked and looked forward to a pay off, but he didn't. The article also makes the point about how Keane didn't get on with the "modern footballer":

he railed against the sense of entitlement of the modern professional. Some of his players wore gloves, bobble hats and even scarves at training, another would walk onto the training ground with ear-phones in place and Keane wondered what football was coming to.

The bigger version of the article makes more of a point of players being concerned more with money than with winning and it is this that was presumably most hurtful to Keane. Simon Barnes suggests that, "The errors Keane made as Sunderland manager can be reduced to an inability to appreciate the biodiversity of footballing types". It seems to be less a case of this than that he refused to accept that anyone else could accept second best.

He left Sunderland before the crisis got too bad. He left before signing a new contract. This shouldn't be seen as a failure but as a refusal to accept second best. When I was thinking about this I remembered the image of Steve Mclaren under his umbrella, isolated on the touchline against Croatia, and I thought is that Roy Keane? Isolated and alone? And maybe it was but from the opposite perspective. Isolated because he refused failure, unlike Mclaren, isolated in his embracing of failure, of a willingness to accept an England that wasn't going to a major final.

Diva Operation Sex Nox

I'm beginning to think that The Independent has some sort of vendetta against us (something more than the usual bias that is)... This from James Lawton's match report:

Sunderland's defensive organisation was a tribute to the man attempting to rescue something from the wreckage of Keane's defection, assistant manager Ricky Sbragia, but as an example of a performance pitched at anything more than the most desperate survival it was pitiful.

So, too, was the way Cristiano Ronaldo represented himself as the newly crowned European Footballer of the Year.

This was whelping self-indulgence that outstripped even the exacting standards he has set for himself.

At least we've escaped from the myth of the plucky defeat, even if it's only to slag off Ronaldo (for a change, cutting edge football writing here...). He even goes back to the myth of him being on the pitch for 15 minutes, maybe he read The Times yesterday, rather than read his own paper - or actually pay attention during the game I guess...

The body language of his eventual departure, after 15 minutes of discomfort following a blow in the ribs from Andy Reid, could only be described as unprecedented as a statement of disregard for the immediate needs of his team.

He goes on in this vain for so long that it certainly feels something like 15 minutes of my life wasted - so really, don't bother with it.,
Flounce is a very popular word at The Independent, Sam Wallace uses it as well and again I wouldn't bother reading it, I think James Lawton and Sam must have wrote their pieces together over breakfast and a copy of The Sunday Times.
The Mail surprisingly don't have a bad report, looking at the fixture problems the World Club Championship is giving us:

With United flying to Japan for FIFA's self-indulgent World Club
Championship on Sunday, manager Ferguson knows he could celebrate
Christmas with his players anointed as the best on the planet.
But, more importantly, if United do not win at Tottenham, United could
also return from the Far East with an enormous job on their hands when
it comes to the far more important task of retaining their Premier
League title.

Daniel Taylor's match report in The Guardian is the best by far though, starting with a nice Roy Keane anecdote:

Everyone has a favourite Roy Keane story and they don't come much better than the time Phil Taylor came across him on a tour of Manchester United's
training ground. This was 2003, the one year out of 11 when the PDC
world championship trophy was not on Taylor's mantelpiece and he was
introduced to the players as world darts champion. Keane was injured,
in one of his coalmine-black moods, pounding away on an exercise bike.
He lifted his eyes for only a second. "Ex-champion," he replied, then
started pedalling again.

Nicely fitting this story into the context of the match:

So what would Keane, as a man whose managerial status now also
includes the prefix "ex-", have made of a match in which his old side
managed zero efforts at goal compared with 23 for the opposition? The
answer will probably never be known as Keane embarks on one of his
Trappist-like periods of silence, but it is fair to say he would not
have fallen into the trap of thinking Sunderland
played with distinction. Competitive courage, yes. But distinction? Not
in a game in which, attacking-wise, they contributed absolutely nothing.

In
football, the injury-time winner is about as brutal as it gets. It
leaves nothing but a sense of helplessness and, having already lost
their manager, it would take a stone-cold heart not to understand
Sunderland's suffering. But it is a strange set of circumstances when a
team can be so utterly dominated yet somehow feel so pleased with
themselves.

Finally someone just comes out and says it, Sunderland really deserved nothing. I take a bit of an issue with this bit though:

Perhaps the real issue is the imbalance of talent in England's top
division. Sunderland, after all, were just doing what they thought was
right to keep the game scoreless. It was an exercise in damage
limitation. Or to put it another way, they were trying to avoid a good
old-fashioned hiding.

This season is the closest the Premiership has been for seasons, both at the top and bottom, even West Brom showed more ambition than Sunderland, they got well beat, yes, but they came out with distinction and if you look at some of the good away results some of the lower teams have been getting, having a go is definately the way forward - indeed it could be argued that this is why the league is close this season, teams aren't being satisfied with points or being beaten before a ball has been kicked.

And Ronaldo? What does this report say of Ronaldo:

Wayne Rooney's fifth booking of the season means he will miss the trip
to White Hart Lane, while Patrice Evra is banned for the next five
domestic matches and Cristiano Ronaldo injured his hip on Saturday. But
it could have been much worse for the champions. Instead, they were
left to wonder whether, come next May, they will think of what happened
in the 91st minute as one of the season's decisive moments.

Perspective? In a Man Utd match report? Amazing!

One final story from The Mail (could have been The Mail on Sunday, just noticed it this morning) - Ronaldo marriage wrecker - how much more evil can one man be...

Yesterday Mr Haynes branded Ronaldo a ‘slimy toe-rag’ ...

The cleaning firm boss said: ‘I am a husband who has been deceived and cheated. I am filing for divorce.’

However friends of Alyona say the couple had already split up and were living apart when she met Ronaldo.

Her
friend said: 'It's not a full-blown love affair yet but it certainly
seems to be moving in that direction and they plan to meet up again.

'She's furious with John for accusing Ronaldo of breaking up their marriage because it was already on the rocks when they met.'

Mr Haynes said: ‘When I found a telephone at home I saw it wasn’t one of my contract phones that she normally uses.

‘Then I saw it was bleeping and I picked it up and went through the messages.

‘There
were a total of 300 messages from each of them over a two-week period.
I saw 49 messages coming in from him with his number saved as Ronaldo.

‘The text messages looked like they had been written by a seven-year-old it was dreadful English and they mentioned Portugal.

Siege of the Twilight Loon

Certain papers make a huge deal out of Ronaldo being injured and going off the pitch during the game yesterday.  The usual agenda.  Read the headline of this from The Telegraph (which is fast replacing The Mail as stupidest paper: "Christiano Ronaldo's bizarre Old Trafford substitution leaves Alex Ferguson bemused".  How do The Telegraph know he was bemused?  Let us see:

Sir Alex Ferguson watched bemused from the directors' box - the Scot is
serving a two-match touchline ban - and was quickly on the phone as Ronaldo
headed off the pitch.

"He got real kick on the hip-joint, just like Wayne Rooney did last year
when he was in pain for a while and missed a couple of games," said
Ferguson.

"There was no need for him to come to the bench, though. The best thing
is to get treatment straightaway. It was the sensible thing to do.

"We will see what he is like, although I was going to make changes for
the Champions League game against Aalborg on Wednesday anyway."

I didn't see this "bemused" look, whether I blinked or whether The Telegraph are capable of reading more into Sir Alex's looks than me I'm not sure.  Either way his comments after the game, surely a better guide to his thoughts don't speak of bemusement.

The Times version of events seems entirely wrong as well:

Ronaldo, who appeared one dropped lollipop away from a tantrum from the moment
the game kicked off, took a blow to the ribs when attempting to convert a
chance created by Dimitar Berbatov early in the second half. A quarter of an
hour later, after much wincing and limping, Ronaldo just walked off the
field.

Starts with the usual cliches about him before, and I had had a bit to drink by this stage of the game but still, blatantly exageratting the amount of time between the injury and going off the pitch, presumably intending to give an image of Ronaldo "wincing and limping" for a ridiculous amount of time, rather than the minutes I'm fairly sure it was (The Independent claim 5 minutes between Ronaldo's injury and him going
off, and I think that's probably a rounded up estimate...).

To the actual game.  I think it is fair to say that it wasn't the greatest performance ever, first half we played some nice football, second half we maybe got lost a bit.  But 22 shots to 0 tells its own story as far as I'm concerned.  And, if you read between the lines of the reports, it even comes out in the papers despite their hatred of us.

The Observer report exemplifies this, first off praising Sunderland:

Moral victories will not keep Sunderland in the Premier League, though a few more performances of this quality should see them shooting up the table.

The
fact the game had entered the 91st minute when Nemanja Vidic secured
the points says it all, apart from adding that Old Trafford was
mightily relieved and that Sunderland still managed to come back and
scare Manchester United in stoppage time.

It
would appear Sunderland could teach their former manager a few lessons
in stickability and refusing to give up the ghost just because the odds
seem stacked against you. Judged on this gritty display there does not
seem a lot wrong with the Wearside fighting spirit.

Yes Sunderland defended well, but performances like this one won't see them "shooting up the table" for the simple reason that they couldn't muster up a single shot, and last time I checked it helped in scoring goals.
The Independent go for the having cake and eating it approach - they praise Sunderland, while at the same time berate them:

This is why you would not want to be a football manager. Not just Roy
Keane, anybody. After holding out for 90 minutes and four seconds,
after frustrating Manchester United at every turn with a performance of
massed defiance and no little spirit, Sunderland finally cracked last
night. They did not deserve to win and, given United had 23 chances and
71 per cent of possession, you could argue that Sunderland did not even
deserve a point; but that they held out for so long meant that when the
crack came it felt sharp and cruel.

Sunderland deserved what they got but it was still so cruel.  Great analysis.  Especially as the bizarre report also concludes, with regards to Sunderland, "at times the lack of forward progress was an embarrassment to the League".  So what was so cruel? And then they turn round again and say that Roy Keane would probably be feeling "some pride".  Pride at being an embarrassment to the league?   Odd.

99 Red Balloons

A good article on The Guardian blog about Ronaldo and the Ballon d'Or:

On the bench, on the pitch, talking at length about himself in the
press: at all times he talks, acts and plays as though he is the best
footballer in the world. By miles. This is understandably annoying. And
all the more so because it's true.

Black Balloon

From the BBC, that unbiased source, "Ronaldo named Europe's top player":

Cristiano Ronaldo has been crowned European Footballer of the Year by France Football magazine.

Ronaldo won the prestigious Ballon d'Or trophy after scoring 42
goals as Manchester United won the Champions League and Premier League
last season.

"It is one of the most beautiful days of my life, something I dreamed of as a child," said the 23-year-old winger.

I find it odd that the BBC decides to finish off this article telling us how Torres (who finished 3rd) was brilliant for Liverpool last season and yet there's no mention of Messi (who finished 2nd).

This report in The Independent has the full quotes from Ronaldo:

"Great emotion fills me but I cannot really describe it.

"I want to thank those who voted for me, those who know me and those who live
with me.

"I was not worried, because I was aware of what I did in the course of the
season.

"But to the people who mentioned my name, I say thank you. Thank you also to
my team-mates.

"This (trophy) is one that I want to win again because it is so good.
Therefore, I will wake and I will say to myself 'I want to be even better'."

To return to Sunday's sending off, Ronaldo explains what happened in this report in The Guardian.  Of course from the first paragraph we can see whose side they're on:

Christiano Ronaldo last night strongly criticised the referee Howard Webb for sending him
off in Sunday's Manchester derby and claimed the man considered by many
to be the Premier League's best referee had failed to listen to his explanation for the handball which led to the dismissal.

Is it really necessary to have that bit about the best referee?  Surely he should be judged on each incident not on reputation? But anyway:

"[Wayne] Rooney knocked in a corner, I jumped and that was when I
heard a shout from [Micah] Richards [City's defender] and
simultaneously the sound of a whistle.

"At that moment I was
convinced that the referee had whistled for a foul. I stopped trying to
head the ball and score a goal, and I grabbed the ball so Richards
could get help . . . after Richards yelled I thought that he was hurt
and needed assistance. I tried to explain what had happened but he
didn't want to listen. I hadn't done anything wrong. I heard the
whistle so I took the initiative to stop the match."

Sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it?

All of which must have come as a surprise to the Manchester City team
who, quite apart from hearing no whistle, had seen Ronaldo pick up a
first booking for hacking down their team-mate Shaun Wright-Phillips

So there wasn't a whistle?  So what?  Haven't we all established this fact?  Does the absence of the actual whistle mean that Ronaldo couldn't have thought he heard a whistle?  And what does the foul on Wright-Phillips have to do with anything?  Jesus.

Final word to Ronaldo:

"I have come to understand that every movement I make, on or off the
pitch, is analysed to death," Ronaldo added. "If I don't celebrate
goals it is because I am sad, if I talk to the public it is because I
have lost my humility. People are always waiting for me to do something
and they pick on absolutely normal and unimportant things to criticise.
They analyse things that have nothing unusual about them through a
magnifying glass."

Hands Around My Throat

A pretty good performance yesterday, no real worries throughout the entire game, just one chance for them in the dying moments, safe as houses.  Of course all the papers tell us just how stupid Ronaldo was, how it was the most obvious sending off ever, etc., etc..  This completely ignores the facts, obviously.
I'm not going to deny that it was a bit of a strange thing to do, handling the ball like that, but a yellow card?  The Telegraph report at least manages some humour from it, rather than the pofacedness of the other papers:

Cristiano Ronaldo is clearly so determined to get his hands on the Ballon
d'Or, the traditional prize awarded to the European Footballer of the Year,
that he is now actively grabbing any spherical object that comes his way,
regardless of the consequences.

Bizarrely it is The Mail which, between the lines, gives the truth about the situation - this report tells us that Howard Webb changed his mind:

After initially seeming content to only award a free-kick, Webb sent off the distraught Portugal winger

While Graham Poll, while nowhere following this thought to its logical conclusion, tells us when a referee should book someone for a deliberate handball:

handball is not a mandatory caution.

The player must be seen
to be either breaking up a promising forward attack or trying to gain
an advantage with his deliberate act.

So Ronaldo shouldn't have been booked.  Simple as that.

So tell me how The Mail's actual match report says this:

Booked correctly for a late tackle on Shaun Wright-Phillips and
rightly again for a peculiar handball at a corner, the 23-year-old
fully deserved the red card issued by referee Howard Webb.

On the whole, the official enjoyed an almost faultless afternoon.

Even the first booking was a far too harsh, ijn fact I thought Howard Webb had, maybe not quite a shocker, but he certainly was over fussy and eager to book players.

The most outrageous report of the day is in The Independent though, read this:

But his dismissal, for an unfathomable two-handed volleyball punt in
the six-yard box, is the latest in a series of theatrics which are
raising serious questions about his mind for the title-retaining job in
hand – and about his manager's latest claims about his greatness. There
has always been something incendiary about Ronaldo – witness his
straight red in the January 2006 derby match for a lunge at Andy Cole –
but never such a continuous state of distraction.

So incendiary is he that we have to go back to 2006 for an example - the other sending off was nothing as well, and how "incendiary" it is to handle a football I really don't know.  Where's the sense of perspective here?

Then read this:

Before all that, a moment's consideration for a real football story,
because it screams out hypocrisy. Shaun Wright-Phillips, the best man
on the field in the 151st Manchester derby, was hacked in a way which
did for his free-flowing threat and saw no fewer than four United
players – Darren Fletcher, Patrice Evra, Michael Carrick and Ronaldo –
booked for fouls on him. The Blackburn manager, Mark Hughes, was
diplomatic. "Shaun was the attacking threat for us and I would suggest
that United felt [that] and fouled him in possession," he said.
Ferguson, who gave us that baton imagery, would have been fulminating
had Ronaldo received the same.

What?  Strong refereeing to stop it was what Sir Alex was asking for and he congratulated the referee after the Villerreal game for the use of the card and the way he handled the fouling on Ronaldo.  Our players were booked (though as far as I'm concerned the word "hack" is overstrong here) so where's the hypocrisy?  Oh.  It's in The Independent.

And now this:

the winger's malevolent side was on show. Ronaldo should have been
dismissed before the hour when, having hacked at Wright-Phillips and
been booked by Howard Webb, he looked the referee in the eye and
offered ironic applause. Ronaldo was spared, only to leave after
raising his hands after climbing towards a corner Rooney lofted over
nine minutes later.

First he's "incendiary", now he's "malevolent".  The booking was very harsh and while his handclapping was perhaps ill-advised, to suggest he should, rather than could, have been sent off seems ridiculous.
I would check through my archive but I don't have time, but from memory Ian Herbert has a history of this hatred of us, maybe he should go and watch a team he could bring himself to enjoy watching...

Minor Threat

There's just the press conference from yesterday with Sir Alex reported today.  Not too much in it, just a bit of banter about Man City, here from The Times:

When questioned about the growing “threat” of City, Ferguson could
barely keep a straight face. “Excuse me, where are they at the moment?”
he asked rhetorically, knowing that they lie eleventh in the Barclays
Premier League, three points clear of the relegation zone. “At this
moment in time, our threats are still Chelsea and Liverpool, who are
sitting above us.”

M.I.A

Just noticed this article criticising Ronaldo from Ian Herbert in The Independent, too late to include in usual round-up.

Keep Forgetting

Some crap around today.  Graham Poll on Villerreal fouling Ronaldo:

This was effective management of team fouling but Villarreal may still
feel the tactic is worth repeating because Ronaldo was forced out of
the game

No he wasn't, he played the full game.  Did Poll even watch the game?

Mark Ogden in The Telegraph forgets the campaign they usually run against Rooney to have a go at Ronaldo:

Since being subjected to a torrent of abuse from Stoke City's vociferous
supporters at Old Trafford two weeks ago, when he foolishly allowed himself
to be drawn into a series of ear-cupping gestures towards the visiting fans,
Ronaldo appears to have been rattled by his reception on and off the pitch.

In recent seasons, Rooney has found his own temperament questioned following a
series of high-profile flashpoints that have resulted in red cards in the
wake of retaliation to tough play by opposing defenders.

However, the England forward appears to have developed a new aura of calmness
this season, learning to curb his temper and avoid a repeat of previous
disciplinary problems.

Yeah.  I forget how many times Rooney's been slagged off this season for his temperament, but he definitely has, against Hull for one, but here, to make Ronaldo look bad Ogden simply forgets.

Brief interview with Rooney here.

This is the (s)hack

I feared the worst before looking through the match reports this morning, expecting the usual Ronaldo bashing.  This feeling was not only due to the expectation that the normal biases would be in evidence, but also to the utter blindness the ITV commentators demonstrated.  It started when the Villerreal player pinched Ronaldo on the cheek and throughout the replays all they could talk about was Ronaldo making a meal of fouls and going down easily, and the complete refusal to accept that Capdevila deserved to be sent off for a foul which saw studs connect with Ronaldo's Knee, no matter how many replays were shown, instead talking about Ronaldo going down easily and making a meal of things.  So I expected a similar treatment from the papers this morning (especially as he'd been booked for dissent).
Imagine my surprise then to see that most of the papers are actually praising Ronaldo.  Seriously.
The Guardian make this astonishing claim: "Ronaldo, it should be stressed, was the innocent party."  I can hardly believe I've just quoted those words from a national newspaper...
The Times has a "little sympathy":

The United forward was subjected to some horrible challenges, with Joan Capdevila, the Spain full back, sent off for the worst of them with eight minutes remaining.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, complained of “systematic” fouling of his No 7 and, while such grievances have often fallen on deaf ears in the past, Ronaldo was entitled to a little sympathy last night. Even if it is not always easy to draw parallels between late tackles and “being hit with a baton as you walk down the street”, to use the analogy that Ferguson employed on his arrival in Spain on Monday night, the cumulative impact of the physical suffering that Ronaldo endures over the course of a game, let alone a season, must be enormous. Prima donna he may be, but there are times when his posturing and flouncing can be excused. This match was one of them.

Still the odd dig in there but definately an improvement over the usual.

The Mail are full of praise for him:

it was difficult not to admire the manner in which the 23-year-old led his team’s attacking efforts in the Estadio El Madrigal last night.

After taking such a verbal and physical buffeting at Villa Park on Saturday evening, Ronaldo could have sat this rather meaningless game out and prepared himself
instead for the rigours of Sunday’s visit to the City of Manchester Stadium.

But he chose to play and on a night when attacking football of any note was thin on the ground, he emerged from another evening of rough and tumble tackling with sore ankles but with his reputation as a footballer enhanced.

Ronaldo was pretty much under assault all night. Not all of it was particularly vicious or crude. Some of it was not even intentional. But the monotony of it was notable and
the point is that it was not particularly unusual.

The Sun has this great sentence:

If this player is a diver then he does it in a bramble bush.

The Independent can't quite bring themselves the whole hog and still manage to find some criticism of Ronaldo:

He is operating in a perpetual state of agitation – reluctant to accept a handshake; ready to take the extra, theatrical roll when fouled. He was also quite prepared in the second half here to stand, hands on hips, near the partisan Villareal's partisan Frente Amarillo 'ultras', eyeballing the assistant referee who adjudged him to have fouled Capdevila. After removing the ball to where he thought the kick should be taken, he was booked for dissent.

But even they accept he was "more sinned against than sinner".
Why this change of heart?  Is it because it was just really too much to ignore it last night (unless you're Jim Beglin)?  Or is it because Sir Alex had a go:

his manager said the treatment confirmed his theory that Ronaldo is a deliberate and sustained target for United's opponents.

"If
the referee does his job that's sufficient. The problem is the press
don't do enough," said Ferguson. "Systematic fouling is happening now,
it is a tactic. One foul becomes another becomes another, and
eventually the referee thinks he's diving.

You decide...

Home of the Brave

Some more sniping at Ronaldo in the papers this morning.  Sir Alex has a very good take on the whole thing, quoting from The Mail:

'He took some tackles on Saturday. Most of them were fair and some were not so good.

'He did not always get the protection he deserved but he showed great
courage and I admire that. He had some cuts on his ankle but he is OK.
Nothing unusual. He wants to play against Villarreal. I would rather
him sit it out. But when players show that amount of enthusiasm you
don't deter them. You encourage it.'

Truth Serum

Funniest sentence ever in The Mail today, from the report on our game and Villa's claim for a penalty:

Sir Alex's contention, that the Serbia defender had won the ball, was
greeted by the only neutrals inside Villa Park - in the press room -
with snorts of derision.

Journalists eh?  Never biased...  Even Martin O'Neill wasn't certain:

In my opinion, it should have been a penalty, although that was debatable.

So, yeah, let's snort with derision...

The Independent decide to go with episode 1293 of the Slag-off-Ronaldo-show, presumably next week they'll return to the Wayne-Rooney-is-sooo-temperamental-show...

Moaner (Relentless Legs)

This is what happens when Ronaldo makes a tackle, rather than having to put up with being fouled continuously. 

Haters

There aren't many days like this... There really is nothing but nice things to be said about us today.  What is the world coming to?  Where have all the haters gone?
Take this from The Guardian:

Even those who did not necessarily carry the fortunes of Manchester United close to their heart, whose heads had not been turned by the whispered blandishments of Sir Alex Ferguson, could not fail to leave Old Trafford on Saturday afternoon without a glow of pleasure over the appropriateness of this result.

This had less to do with United than Stoke, even though there were times, especially in the second half, when the home side produced some breathtaking exchanges. Cristiano Ronaldo, in particular, showed some scintillating touches and Dimitar Berbatov, once again, proved himself one of the best hold-up men in the game.

No, it had more to do with Stoke. Their football failed to fire the imagination and a large section of their witless supporters soured the spirit by verbally abusing Ronaldo whenever he was remotely near the ball. No footballer should be subjected to that. No spectator, either. And after the match the distressingly hard-of-hearing Stoke manager, Tony Pulis, completed a squalid little day for his club when he said: "You get some banter. I don't know what they were singing. I switch off when I'm in the technical zone."

Praise for Ronaldo?  One minor gripe I could have is that the following quotes from Danny Higginbotham are only fully given in this report, not the others.  BUt that would be petty gripe I guess:

It was left to Stoke's left-back Danny Higginbotham, who started his peripatetic career at Manchester United, to partially redeem the day for Potteries folk. He said of Ronaldo: "The lad was absolutely brilliant - you just have to say what a great player he is. He's the best in the world, there's no doubt about it. I don't believe he has a weakness."

And that abuse? "I don't think it bothered him in the slightest bit. That's testament to the character of the lad. You don't become world player of the year and get talked about like he does if you're not special. People can say what they like but his quality rises above everything else. You simply have to admire anyone who can score more than 40 goals a season. People say he dives but he's from a different culture and I've got absolutely no complaints about him. He's an unbelievable player."

I like the description of Ronaldo's game from The Independent:

Welbeck almost overshadowed Cristiano Ronaldo who, as he kicks on from last season, is making the prospective £160,000-a-week wage demands United could face from his representatives look difficult to face down. He didn't play Premier League football until 21 September, remember, but he is its second top-scorer this morning and currently United's most compelling performer by a distance. He wasn't immune, in the course of taking his career goal tally from 99 to 101 with two more dipping free kicks, to the Stoke fans who threw abuse at him. The kisses he blew back and the leg he wiggled in time to their vitriol egged them on. But then he calmly dismembered right-back Andy Griffin's game and self-belief.

The Telegraph have high praise for Welbeck and The Mail praise Ronaldo. 
Days like this are very rare. 

Transona 5

A good win yesterday, a great first goal from Danny Welbeck, Ronaldo back on song, what more could we ask for.  Even the papers give us a bit of credit - they even give Ronaldo some credit...
Look at this from The Mail on Sunday:

For most of this season, Ronaldo's performances have been a pale
imitation of his true form; of the menace and bravado that brought him
42 goals for United, as they won the title and the Champions League.

But yesterday he burst into life. He scored two goals, one of breathtaking magnificence - and created havoc wherever he roamed.

The Times call him "Irresistible", while The Independent point out he is joint second in the top scorers "despite not playing till September 27".
And so to The Guardian and Ian Whittel:

The game told us nothing about United's championship credentials and
the destiny of this season's title. As for Ronaldo? The petulance and
frustration he showed for so much of this game suggest it will take
time, and presumably another summer of Real Madrid courtship, before he
looks content playing for United again.

Squeeze me?  Belittle us and then make stuff up about Ronaldo?  What's that all about?  He looked back to his best (as the other papers acknowledge, perhaps Ian didn't get the memo...) and fully involved in the game at all times.  And yeah he appealed for a few free kicks when he felt he'd been fouled, not like him at all is it?  While we're talking pettiness read this paragraph:

As has often been the case throughout so much of his Manchester United
career, Cristiano Ronaldo dominated Old Trafford proceedings with two
goals, including his centenary goal for the club, then pouted his way
through the remainder of a match his team won at a canter.

His second goal was in the 89th minute, so this sentence pretty much suggests that Ronaldo "pouted his way through" the fnal minute of the game.  If you're going to write shit, get it to make sense...

The Guardian also have a good interview with Rio Ferdinand here.

Doomtrooper

Didn't see the game last night and, if this report from The Guardian is anything to go by then it probably wasn't a bad thing:

Discounting the moment when the fourth official, Colin Webster, rescued
a mouse from the side of the pitch, it was not until the hour-mark
before the first genuine moment of excitement

However I'm not sure whether to actually believe that report as all the other reports seem to make the game sound a little better than that.  The Times:

QPR were hanging on for dear life by the time Danny Welbeck was brought on in
the 72nd minute, but having withstood a siege, thanks mainly to Radek Cerny,
their goalkeeper, the Coca-Cola Championship team looked as though they were
going to take a one-sided contest into extra time.

Sir Alex's thoughts from The Telegraph:

“It was just a matter of opening them up and taking the first chance, but that
was difficult,” Ferguson said. “We created a lot of chances, but at
the moment they’re just not going in for us.

“There was some relief when we finally made the breakthrough because, as the
game wears on, it only takes a second to score a goal and QPR, with their
massive support, were always going to give it a go at some point. The
attitude of the players was very good, though, and I’m pleased to go
through.”

The other news is of course of Owen Hargreaves missing the rest of the season and career being in danger, from The Guardian:

Owen Hargreaves' future as a professional footballer is in jeopardy
after he was ruled out for the rest of the season because of his
persistent problems with tendinitis. Hargreaves underwent surgery on
his right knee yesterday and will also need a successful operation on
his left knee if his career is to progress beyond the age of 27.

Although Sir Alex seems slightly more optimistic than that:

"We gave him injections to begin with but, when that didn't clear it
up, we sent him to see people in London and Sweden and, again, we never
really got to the bottom of the problem," Sir Alex Ferguson explained
before last night's 1-0 Carling Cup win over Queens Park Rangers. "We
needed to speed it up, which is why we decided to send him to the best
man possible. It's been really difficult for the lad, being out so
long. But what we are trying to do is put this to bed and get him back
as a fit player next season. The operation went well although, of
course, we won't know the exact circumstances until we've got him back
with us."

Kerosene

Just going to post on one report this morning.  This, from The Independent.  It is an 11 paragraph report.  7 of those paragraphs discuss Wayne Rooney's temperament. This was a great game of football and The Independent spend 7 paragraphs out of 11 discussing Wayne Rooney's temperament.

Definition of insane.

One of those days

There's a sentence in The Independent's report on the match which, in between all the lavish praise for Arsenal in today's papers, pretty much sums up the game:

Ferguson will need to analyse what went wrong.  Bad luck, for
sure, contributed. United, probably, had more chances. But nothing ran
for them until Rafael da Silva – a chirpy, impressive replacement for
the sluggish Gary Neville – smashed in his 90th-minute volley.

And I'm a bit short on time today so I'll leave it at that.  It was a great game of football, but not one that proved anything about Us, or anything about Arsenal.  It was a game where they got the run of the ball and scored their chances, while we didn't.  We had more possession, more shots on and off target and yet we lost.

One of those days.

Don't Believe The Hype

This story doesn't really concern Man Utd but it is Roy Keane and he is slagging off the media so... From The Independent:

Keane said he will not be doing so in a television studio soon. "I
was asked last week by ITV to do the Celtic game," he said. "A couple
of weeks before that I was asked to do the United game against Celtic
at Old Trafford. I think I've done it once for Sky. Never again. I'd
rather go to the dentist. You're sitting there with people like Richard
Keys and they're trying to sell something that's not there.
"After the Newcastle game we had Keys on saying we've never seen
anything like it, dressing things up that weren't really there, just
because he was in a bad mood. If you're going to watch a game of
football, just go and watch it. Anytime I watch a game on television I
have to turn the commentators off. They say: 'He's playing really well'
and I'm thinking: 'No, he's not'. My advice to anyone is don't listen
to any of the experts.

And I love this quote by Sir Alex on his FA charge, from The Guardian:

Ferguson's jibes were reserved for the Football Association, which has
charged him with improper conduct for verbally abusing the referee Mike
Dean after the game against Hull City last weekend. "I've not read it,"
he said. "I'm a little bit surprised but it's the FA and they have
probably been dying to send me a wee letter."

The Power of Independent Trucking

In the run up to the Arsenal game we find a very nice example of the bias we have to face:

The FA decided Wenger's comments post-Stoke did not cross the line into
bringing the game into disrepute but it charged his Manchester United
counterpart Sir Alex Ferguson with improper conduct. He was angry at
the referee Mike Dean's decisions in the home win over Hull on Saturday
and confronted him on the pitch.

One rule for them and another for us.  Makes a change...
The Independent pretty much admit that the FA has a vendetta against us:

The Football Association has renewed its attempts to challenge Sir Alex
Ferguson's conduct with referees, lodging their third improper conduct
charge in two seasons

The way they describe the decisions in the Hull game which most infuriated Sir Alex is a masterclass in understatement:

...enraged by Dean's decision to award Hull a penalty and failure – as he
saw it – to issue Hull's Michael Turner with a second yellow card
following his challenge on Michael Carrick. The penalty decision
certainly looked an acceptable one, though Turner's challenge on
Michael Carrick would have earned some players a second yellow.

Some players?  Do they mean that the other players would have got a straight red?  Let's assume not.  They truly are Independent...

Bring on The Clowns

The reports on the game last night are a pretty anodyne bunch.  Plucky Celtic, misfiring us.  No real point in going through them (full disclosure I'm pretty busy at the moment and like I say there's nothing to get my teeth into with these reports so I'm saving some time).
This, from The Guardian, has a pretty good summary of quotes from Sir Alex:

"Given the performance in the second half, I think they are ready for a
big game on Saturday," Ferguson said. "It is never easy picking teams
with the squad I have got and having a lunchtime game against Arsenal
to come, that was a bit of a dilemma for me."

Stop the Nonsense

If yesterday's reports were a touch biased in Hull's favour, today's are insane.  Reading the reports today you'd probably think that Hull should have won.  I'm reading about how rattled we were, how they beat us tactically.  I'm reading everything but the truth, and I'm yawning at the return of the Rooney bashing.  The Mail spend pretty much their whole match report slagging him off, as do The Times.  I can't even be bothered to look at it in detail, it's just the usual rubbish.
The difference between yesterday's reports and today's seem to be, not an extra day's reflection making the reports that bit fairer but, simply that an interview with George Boateng has become available for the reporters to use and they write their reports around the quotes.  It seems like a ridiculous way to write a match report.  Why give Boateng's words such weight?  Where's the balance?
Take The Guardian report, where we have Boateng saying "Tactically United had problems with us when we switched from 4-3-3 to
4-4-2. When we went one on one on them,
they didn't know what to do. We had them rocking."  Instead of just treating this with the pinch of salt that anyone who had seen the game would treat it with (where is Sir Alex's quote about them only having 2 chances in today's papers?  Not fitting the agenda?), The Guardian pretty much bases their entire report around it:

Admittedly Ronaldo, who scored twice, Berbatov, Carlos Tevez, and an
increasingly annoyed Wayne Rooney all spurned inviting opportunities to
send Hull back along the M62 thoroughly thrashed but, as dusk
descended, United's lack of midfield authority threatened to undo them.

With
a 4-1 lead narrowed to 4-3, the closing eight minutes featured Ronaldo
making a last-ditch clearance, Rooney becoming enveloped in red mist
and home fans frantically urging the referee to blow the final whistle.
"We got ourselves in an embarrassing situation," said Ferguson whose
attacking riches - Tevez, once again, began on the bench - are leavened
by a surprising shortage of a string-puller.

Granted, Michael
Carrick, newly fit after injury, can dictate games from that department
and it was no coincidence that United began seriously wobbling
following his withdrawal but, right now, Carrick is not quite in
Lampard's league. Moreover, he does not enjoy the luxury of playing
alongside a midfield anchor in the mould of Chelsea's enforcer Mikel
John Obi. Instead, with Owen Hargreaves facing knee surgery and a
six-month lay-off, Carrick found himself alongside the predominantly
attack-minded Anderson.

This really doesn't make much sense does it?  It pretty much reads - We need a string puller, Michael Carrick is a string puller, dictated the game, but we need a string puller, oh, and a defensive midfielder.  It makes no sense.  Anderson had a pretty good game to these eyes and as we were attacking pretty much the entire game, constantly on the front foot, Neville, Evra, Ferdinand all playing more adventurously than usual, why wouldn't Anderson join in.  There was a barely a threat form Hull the entire game.  But that's not how George Boateng sees it so let's ignore the facts...

Lies, and release from silence

I think this quote from Sir Alex sums up yesterday's game pretty well:

“You’ve got to credit Hull because they never gave in,” he said, “but they had
two chances and scored three goals which is some achievement.”

"Curmudgeonly" is how The Telegraph describe this comment, and the, perfectly valid, criticism of the referee is taken the same way with all the papers ignoring or justifying the dreadful decisions.  Take this from The Telegraph again:

Ferguson felt Michael Turner should have picked up a second yellow card for a
foul on Carrick with the score at 4-2, but the incident was at worst
borderline and as excuses go it was less than convincing.

"Borderline"?  What?  As far I as was concerned it was borderline straight red, it prevented a goal scoring opportunity, Carrick would have had a shot at goal but for the cynical foul, yellow was the very least it deserved.
The Guardian report completely ignores this incident and gives Hull credit where credit's due:

They deserve credit at the very least for coming to Old Trafford to
play football and for sticking to their guns even when seemingly out of
the contest.

 but is it really necessary to ignore refereeing decisions to give them credit?  And as for the penalty, The Guardian's description, "Rio Ferdinand unnecessarily grappled Mendy to the floor", makes it sound so clear cut, as does The Independent's "Rio Ferdinand clearly fouled Mendy in the box".  I really don't see how it was given, it was a coming together, a nothing tackle.  I was astounded when he gave it.  It seemed like Mike Dean just wanted to give Hull absolutely every chance to get something from the game, including playing more stoppage time than was indicated while Hull had the ball, I thought he was just going to play on till they scored.  Do the papers mention any of this? Of course not, it's just Sir Alex being "Curmudgeonly".
At least The Times has the decency to mention Sir Alex's concerns, and admit he was at least half right:

Ferguson also
believed Mike Dean was a factor and had to be restrained by Gary Neville
from confronting the official at full-time.

Ferguson felt Dean should have given Michael Turner, already booked, a second
yellow card for felling Michael Carrick as United’s midfielder was about to
go through on goal, and that Dean was wrong to give the penalty which
allowed Geovanni to make it 4-3 when Rio Ferdinand blocked off Mendy with
his arm. Ferguson seemed wrong about the Ferdinand incident, correct
regarding the Carrick one.

Older Gods

Basically nothing about today, just some quotes from Sir Alex and a response from Ramon Calderon on a comment made by Sir Alex the other day.  Both stories are contained here in The Guardian.  Nothing to say about it, and nothing worth quoting.

This is Why I'm Hot

A good win yesterday which, unfortunately, I only saw highlights of on MOTD so I'm not altogether able to fully analyse the differences between the reality and the reports.
I'll start with this one from The Mail which, surprisingly for The Mail, expresses reality in at least one place:

Even though arch rivals Liverpool have started this campaign brightly, does Rafael Benitez really have a squad deep enough to outrun Ferguson's? Does Arsene Wenger at Arsenal?

In truth, they probably do not. United, for example, have three good right backs. Liverpool do not really have one.

So it will still be a surprise if United do not again battle head to head with Chelsea for supremacy when the season enters its business end in the spring.

It's nice to have a dose of reality after days of harping on Liverpool's title credentials (and seeing as I missed blogging it at the time I'll take this opportunity to point out that but for one sloppy bit of defending we'd have broken Chelsea's home record (and but for 2 bits of sloppy defending Liverpool wouldn't have beaten us either)).
The Guardian has a little analysis of Ronaldo's goal celebration:

Nani played the ball across the penalty area and Ronaldo was on to it in a flash, lashing a left-foot shot into the corner of Green's net. How would he celebrate? Old Trafford's amateur psychologists waited to analyse his body language and, after a dramatic pause of which Robert de Niro would have been proud, there was an explosion of unrestrained joy. Point made.

I thought it was more a point made to the media who it seems have been doing most of the analysing (Alan Hansen on MOTD on Saturday showing random clips of him celebrating and not celebrating to demonstrate his banal point).
The Guardian has the best description of Berbatov's skill for Ronaldo's second:

The Bulgarian had done well even to keep Anderson's through-ball in play, reaching it only a few inches before it went out for a goal kick, but it was what came next which took the breath away. In one sublime movement Berbatov spun, pirouetted and danced away from Collins. The defender was still coming to his senses as Berbatov advanced towards goal and slid a beautifully weighted pass across the six-yard area. Ronaldo, alert as always, got there first, leaving Ferguson to eulogise about his £30.5m new signing.

One interesting feature of the reports is that they nearly all say something along the lines of this, from The Independent:

Ronaldo will take the headlines for two well-taken goals that increased his tally to five for the season, yet it was Berbatov who tormented the visiting defence most with the talents

It's obviously an easy way for journalists to point out how great they are at recognising that someone who doesn't score can also have had a great game.  Very clever...
While I'm on this report I might as well add the post match comments from Sir Alex:

Ferguson said: "The first half was magnificent and I was looking for more of the same in the second half. Goals can be important come the end of the season but we took our foot of the pedal. They ended up too lax for me.

"Ronaldo took his goals very well, but Berbatov's play was magnificent. He showed fantastic imagination, control and balance and you'd pay double the money to watch that."

Following this theme, The Times makes the same point:

Aside from a five-minute spell at the start of the game, United’s domination was total and any fears that Ferguson had taken a risk by omitting Edwin van der Sar and leaving Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney on the substitutes’ bench were quickly dispelled. Patrice Evra and Nani formed a lethal combination down the left; the increasingly impressive Rafael Da Silva and Ronaldo did much the same on the right. The only disappointment for United was that the expected landslide failed to materialise.

And some sour grapes in The Telegraph:

Despite the club wallowing in self-congratulation before kick-off: with Ronaldo accepting yet another award for what must be a mantelpiece sagging under the weight of silverware, and entering to the kind of fanfare usually reserved for boxers at Caesars Palace, Manchester United’s beginning was sluggish and sloppy.

Finally, there's this, from The Guardian, which has Sir Alex's comments on Tevez:

"I sat down with him only last week to stress that our faith in him
is absolute, that he remains a top player in the eyes of myself, the
players and our supporters," said Ferguson.

"It's just that three
players won't fit into two positions and my job is to balance the team.
It could be done against certain opposition, but it isn't the real
solution and we are doing so well I don't want to meddle too much.
Carlos understands this and I have explained that when the season
really hots up we will need everyone."

He added: "Our attackers
have been drawing all the attention, with Rooney having the time of his
life and striking up a fine partnership with Berbatov. But my thoughts
have probably centred on the forward who has been the odd man out. I am
thinking of Carlos and the fact that I have not started him in as many
games as he would like. But Carlos remains as important as the guys who
have been hogging the headlines."

The Palpatations Form A Limit

Ignoring the England stories I have only this to post, an interview with Gary Pallister from The Guardian:

Tell us, what was Eric Cantona like as a colleague? Just one of the lads?
Yes, he really was. Obviously he came with this reputation as the enfant terrible
but we never saw that. Whenever Bryan Robson called his Tuesday
meetings – which meant all day at the pub – Eric would come along and I
think it's fair to say it was an event he approved of! The only
difference between Eric and the rest of the lads was that it got to a
point where he had to have a security man with him, but that was just a
reality he had to accept and it didn't affect the way he was. Basically
I think he found happiness at United because he realised that the
players we had would help him get the best out of himself and achieve
what he wanted to achieve.

Sexual Sportswear

For want of anything else to post recently, here's a story from The Daily Mail:

The CR7 store aspires to sell clothes for 'fans who want to dress like Ronaldo'.

Sorry Charlie

A good win yesterday, but, surprise, surprise, the papers (with the odd exception) prefer to concentrate on our first goal, comparing it to last week's penalty in some cases.
Take this from The Mail on Sunday:

Yet, honest endeavour will only get you so far. A combination of the
world's greatest players and weak refereeing is unbeatable and though
the prelude for the opening goal was delightful, as Berbatov and Rooney
combined to force a sharp save from Brown, the finale was ugly.

From
a short corner, Rooney sent a swirling cross to the far post. Vidic
jumped forcefully at Blackburn's keeper Brown in a manner more
befitting a 1950s centre-forward and knocked him off his stride. In the
same moment, Wes Brown stole in behind to send his looping header in at
the far post.

I watched the game and this is just not what happened at all, I don't even think Vidic left the ground, he certainly didn't jump at the Keeper.  From my view, it seemed as though the Keeper, with his eye on the ball, ran into Vidic, who, also with eyes on the ball, was going backwards.  It wasn't a deliberate jump into the keeper by any stretch of the imagination.  And I admit that it's the type of the decision that the keeper often gets, but it's also the type of decision that the commentators generally say "the keeper was lucky to get away with that one".  To me the usual mode of referees automatically giving that type of decision to the keeper is weakness, the easy option.  Bennett, who certainly didn't referee the game in our favour (how many times did he turn a blind eye to fouls on Ronaldo?), at least had the balls to let it go.

The Telegraph go for this view as well:

Blackburn protested that Vidic had fouled Jason Brown but, for once in the
modern game, the goalkeeper had not been given the benefit of the doubt.
Ince accompanied Steve Bennett off at half-time, but his breath and his
protests were utterly wasted.

Although starting their report with comparisions to last week's Bolton game, perhaps undermines this realism:

Then, United benefited from a fortunate penalty; here at an Ewood
Park soaked in wintry rain, their first goal might have been ruled out for a
foul on the Blackburn goalkeeper, Jason Brown.

The Sunday Times description gives the wrong impression as well:

Blackburn’s goalkeeper tried to claim it
but Nemanja Vidic, turning his back in attempting a header, caught the
goalkeeper on the jaw with his arm. The foul seemed unintentional but a foul
just the same but there was no whistle from Bennett and Wes Brown nodded
home from two yards.

Again the active party is Vidic, the passive, Brown.

The Independent's report nicely makes light of the challenge, simply registering that Brown felt aggrieved.

The best reporting of the incident comes from The Guardian:

That ought to have done wonders for the reserve goalkeeper's
confidence, but he rather spoiled the effect by allowing United a soft
goal from the resulting corner. Even if there was a strong suggestion
he was shouldered out of the way by Nemanja Vidic as Wes Brown nodded
in Rooney's cross at the far post, the Blackburn Brown should still
have made a more determined attempt to reach the ball first and was
entitled to a lot more protection from his central defenders

Goalkeepers are renowned for blaming everyone but themselves for goals so is it any wonder he covers himself by protesting?

Onto the rest of the game and the papers generally single out Berbatov for praise with Rooney also getting some good press for once.  The Telegraph oddly have Wes Brown as Man of the Match on their stats thing, while The Star heap praise on Ronaldo, who did look like he was coming back to full fitness:

Manchester United’s Portuguese superstar proved to be a real pest for
Blackburn boss Paul Ince too as he made all the difference on a
rain-sodden day at Ewood Park.

His
teamwork couldn’t be faulted. His build-up play awesome. His
effectiveness unquestioned.

The only
criticism would have been his lack of clinical finishing which, by his
high standards of last season, was well below his best.

Here's The Times on Berbatov:

Manchester United deserved victory and the be-gloved guile of Dimitar
Berbatov was sublime.

The memory of slow starts are fast-fading. Berbatov began quietly for United
but now looks a fully functioning part of the shredding machine which, on
good days like these, is their attack.

And The Independent praising Rooney and Berbatov:

there was no arguing with the second one, scored by Wayne Rooney, which
provided a bonus for the England manager Fabio Capello. He had rushed
from watching Emile Heskey at Wigan to Ewood Park, to see Rooney
unexpectedly start and give an outstanding performance. Having broken
his scoring duck in midweek, Dimitar Berbatov was equally good,
providing all the craft as a leader of the line that Ferguson had hoped
for when acting as taxi-driver to facilitate the Bulgarian's £30m move
from Tottenham on the last day of the summer transfer window.

One other story is in The News of the World, Sir Alex bans the Christmas party:

The United boss has ruled out a repeat of last year’s private gig when they
bussed in groups of women to a luxury hotel in Manchester city centre.

And there's this from Paul Wilson in The Observer, which criticises Sir Alex's criticism of the media, but I shall just quote from the bit on Arsene Wnger, because it's funnier:

But at least Ferguson did not say he felt physically sick, which as
unsporting reactions to unexpected home defeats go is almost as bad as
confusing Hull City with West Brom. Sour grapes in the immediate
aftermath of Hull's stirring performance at the Emirates could just
about be excused, though when Wenger was still moaning two days later
it just sounded plain sour. Especially when he expressly stated, the
day before Porto were rolled over 4-0 in a one-sided match much more to
Wenger's liking, that Champions League opponents know they have a
responsibility to play, whereas Hull's first responsibility was not to
lose.

The famous Wenger habit of missing crucial incidents
appears suddenly to have been extended to whole games. In the match
most people saw last week, Hull adventurously turned up with three up
front and then bravely bounced back from an own goal, playing with such
panache throughout that the home crowd applauded them off at the end.
Wenger seems unable to work out how this could have happened. If
Arsenal lost they must have been kicked off the park or stifled by a
10-man defence. It was as if Hull simply had no right to win. Wenger's
reputation as a fair-minded devotee of attacking football has just
taken a knock, as will his reputation as a manager if he cannot sort
out his defence.

Holy Tears

No news today - there was the odd story about Rooney's fitness for England duty but nothing worth writing.  Luckily I tuned into 5 Live last night for some segment in which they discussed the "crisis" in refereeing with Graham Poll. 
The whole thing degenerated into an opportunity to slag of Christiano Ronaldo for diving, which was a rather odd turn of events given the build-up to the segment which featured 3 incidents:  the Watford-Reading "ghost goal", the Rob Styles awful penalty decision for us and the Wigan-Man City penalty in which the Wigan player (I forget who) did the world's most outrageous dive.  So in the discussion there were at least two (again I forget) people who phoned in to say that they wanted to defend Rob Styles.  And how did they do this?  By saying that it was hard for him because of Ronaldo's diving.  I'm sorry?  Diving?  In that incident there was absolutely no inkling of a dive.  The ball was won, Ronaldo's run took him over the outstretched leg, he went over and didn't even look for a penalty.  I mean, in a situation in which the defender wins the ball from the front what would be the point of diving?  He's won the ball, it's not a foul anyway, dive or no dive.  Are these people insane?  The main point here being that neither Poll or the presenter (I forget...) said, "But Ronaldo didn't dive, if you want to talk about diving talk about the Wigan player".  But no.  They just carried on as if if it was fact that Ronaldo dived in that incident.  Insanity Abounds. (I don't even need to point out that even Gary Megson said that Ronaldo didn't dive, it might have been nice if the BBC had though... they even played a bit of the interview with Megson, but not that bit:  No agenda there then...

Welcome to the Jungle

Wasn't around to comment on the weekend's action, which was a shame, because there was a hell of a lot of bias going down. I won't rehash everything with links and detailed comment but the general tone of the coverage seemed to be rife with innuendo of the "well, Ronaldo may not have dived, but it was still Ronaldo, wasn't it? Eh? Eh?"  kind.  Frankly, after some of the decisions we've already had this season, it's about time we got something.

On to yesterday's action and there's nothing to get my teeth into at all today.  The game was so easy that no one can be bothered to slag us off.

Best report comes from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian:

United should have had six, maybe even more. Ronaldo, in particular,
will wonder how his own performance did not include a goal. He and Nani
shimmered with menace on the wings, Rooney was alert and impressive and
Ryan Giggs, Scholes's replacement, delivered a masterclass in the
centre of midfield.

The piece also contains the odd post-match comment from Sir Alex, but the most comprehensive source for comments comes in The Telegraph:

“Paul has ligament damage, but we don’t know how serious it is at
this stage,’’ Ferguson said. ‘‘It isn’t clear, but we think he has suffered
medial damage and we hope that’s all. He’ll be out for six to eight weeks,
though, so it’s a big price to pay.

Apologies to Insect Life

Just some stories on the Pogatetz tackle this morning.  What is perhaps surprising is that they all (almost all) choose to relate Pogatetz's apology without comment.  Even though it is a rather self-serving-I-didn't-do-anything-wrong type apology.  Here it is, quoted from The Daily Star:

“Firstly,
I have to say that I went for the tackle because I thought I could win
the ball. I now accept that I misjudged the challenge.



“Immediately after the incident I did not think it was a red-card offence because I did win the ball.

“But now that I have had the chance to see the tackle on television, I know the ref was right to send me off.

“I am going to speak to Rodrigo by phone and I will apologise for
hurting him. I hope that he will make a quick recovery and will not be
out for long.”

Wha this basically amounts to is, "I didn't do anything wrong, but I guess it looked bad".  Is that acceptable?  You launch into a dreadful tackle like that and you think there's nothing wrong with it?
Most of the stories combine this apology from Pogatetz with the story about The FA thinking of introducing a sliding scale for suspensions based on the severity of the challenge, for instance this from The Times.  Obviously this is, in some way, an implicit criticism of the tackle, but it still lets off Pogatetz too easily as far as I'm concerned.  Only this story from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian includes further condemnation of Pogatetz, from Giggs and Gary Pallister:

"You can mistime a tackle now and again but he was sliding over the
ball," said Ryan Giggs, United's captain during a 3-1 victory for
Ferguson's team. "That was a bad challenge and the referee has rightly
sent him off."

Pallister was even more critical. "Everyone knew
immediately it was a bad one," he said. "Pogatetz tried to give it the
innocent look but when you see it in slow motion he's actually hit the
ball first but the angle he is tackling he knows he is going to hit
Possebon's leg. And he does - with great force. Pogatetz has got that
part to his game sometimes. He likes to steam in but this was a bad one
and he is going to have to face the consequences."

Tony Cascarino has another in a series of stupid opinions:

The challenge by Pogatetz on Possebon was a red card, but no further
action is justified. It’s not the worst tackle I’ve seen this season by
a long way, but the follow-through as Pogatetz came sliding in, with
his studs showing, could easily have broken Possebon’s leg.

Fortunately that hasn’t happened, but we can’t be judging tackles solely on whether or not people end up in hospital.

Firstly, I've seen a few bad challenges this season, but to suggest that this tackle was "a long way" from being the worst is, well, pretty strange.  It's a short way.  Certainly one of the worst.  If I had a top ten it would certainly be in there.  First he says it wasn't a bad challenge, then he says it could have broken Possebon's leg, then he says you can't judge a tackle on whether someone goes to hospital or not.  Now, pardon me, but if you go into a tackle, an insanely reckless tackle that could send someone to hospital, shouldn't you be punished.  I agree that whether  or not said player actually goes to hospital or not is incidental.  But hospital threatening tackles should be treated more severely than non hospital threatening tackles, shouldn't they?  And as he's admitted that Pogatetz could have broken Possebon's leg, this would be one of those cases.  It's not like it was some accidental collision.  It was straight out assault. I certainly don't think it was, to quote Cascarino, "mistimed by a split second".  It was a horrendous tackle, not due to a mistiming, but due to his jumping in off the ground and attacking Possebon with both feet. 
The only mistiming could have been that Pogatetz intended to break his leg and just missed, and even I don't think that was the intention...

Bad Behaviour

A good win in the Carling Cup soured by the injury to Possebon.  Thankfully Possebon hasn't broken his leg (or, more accurately, Pogatetz hasn't broken Possebon's leg).  Sir Alex on the tackle:

"For the kid to be making his first start for us, and then to get an
injury like that, is pretty horrendous. It really was a terrible
tackle. I've seen one replay of it and I don't want to see it again.

"The
thing about challenges like that is the offender always seems to claim
he is innocent. Pogatetz should have walked straight off. When you see
it, dearie me, it's horrendous. For 10 minutes afterwards, I think
everyone was numb about it."

Anyway, to the game.  It was an easy enough game, we looked by far the better team and it was one of those games where it was perhaps too easy, allowing Boro back into it.  The Guardian report suggests that the sending off was the turning point, but really we were in control for the whole game and Boro scored one lucky goal, so The Guardian's assertion that "Pogatetz's sending-off drastically changed the complexion of the game", is slightly wide of the mark.

Most bizarre description of the day must go to The Telegraph who describe Gigg's goal thus: "Giggs seized on a long punt upfield and
curled his shot beautifully into the Stretford End net."  Yeah, it was a nice finish, but the long punt upfield was straight to Boro's Riggot who layed the ball nicely into Giggs's path.

The Times report on the match concludes with Sir Alex's words on Ronaldo, which are reported widely:

“Just as Italians playing abroad all dream of playing one day for Juventus
or the Milan clubs, so southern Europeans want at some point to play for
Real Madrid or Barcelona,” Ferguson said. “So I understood what was going on
in Cristiano’s mind when he declared that he wanted to join Real, but once
we had talked, he accepted it was a move for the future. I pointed out how
much better it would be to leave like Eric Cantona, with the fans loving and
appreciating him.”