A quiet day

Not much in the papers today.

A sensible article in The Guardian by Andy Hunter goes someway to redressing the balance from yesterday:

Mascherano's dismissal "finished the game" according to the Liverpool manager. It undeniably cleared United's path to victory but the pattern of their dominant performance had been established with the influential Argentinian on the pitch. His second yellow card and the loss of self-control that followed was a smokescreen on Liverpool's meagre offering, one Benítez clung to afterwards.

There's even an article by Kevin McCarra criticising Wenger. Yes really:

Wenger's obstinacy is quite marvellous in its way but the trends are going ever more strongly against Arsenal. Sir Alex Ferguson might have made an immense misjudgment when deciding that the £30m Juan Sebastián Verón would fit the English scene but, undeterred, he continued the outlay on Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney and many expensive others. In consequence Owen Hargreaves, Michael Carrick and Anderson, for example, constitute three compelling candidates for the role in front of the defence.

Arsenal, in comparison, are wilfully starved of resources.

Then there's just some comments from Carrick reported in various papers, here, and here:

“We have a tough run-in, so we're nothing for granted, but we're happy to be in this position,” Michael Carrick, the midfield player, said. “A few weeks ago, we were three points behind. Now the door is open for us. We have a great chance. It's up to us.”

Sir Alex in The Sun:

“A lot was made of Sunday with two big games going on. Well, we did our bit.”

Tony Cascarino in The Times suggests more teams should try man marking Ronaldo.

To finish I'll just highlight one sentence from Sue Mott's article in The Telegraph in which she praises Steve Bennett. But how could this involve Manchester United in a negative way, you ask? Well:

When do managers ever come out and criticize or punish a player, as Brian Clough would have done, for behaving without respect on the field when so much is to be gained by so doing? Benitez was the guilty man on Sunday, but Sir Alex Ferguson has been in the same dock, Arsene Wenger is often in "I didn't see it" mode and, as for Jose Mourinho in Chelsea's heyday, he positively urged his players to behave like over-paid savages to exploit the weakness of the on-field authorities.

Did she read any papers last week? Sir Alex seemed to have something to say on this matter:

"We had a pivotal moment some years ago when our players surrounded Andy D'Urso," he said, referring to the incident in January 2000 when the referee gave a penalty to Middlesbrough at Old Trafford. "I went off my head with them about that, I thought it was ridiculous and it never happened again."

Of course he's not going to criticise a player publicly. Sir Alex criticises referees after games when he sees reason to. Fair comment. To go from this to include him in a list of managers who get their players to show dissent to referees in an attempt to gain an advantage seems willfully perverse.