More Yellow Birds

The papers are a mixed bag this morning, some criticising us, others praising us, no institutional bias might be the inference but I like to think that we played well enough that even (some of) the haters have to give us some credit.  Were it not for piece of sloppy defending we'd have had all 3 points - at least we halved the sloppiness from the week before...

What hasn't changed is the agenda against Wayne Rooney.  Take this from The Daily Star, or this from The Independent, both argue that it was Rooney's fault we lost the goal as he gave the free kick away in an act of "petulance".  Yes, he did give the free kick away and, yes, it was a stupid foul, but it was from a position that should have made it a piece of cake to defend - why didn't Kuszczack just come and claim it?  Blaming such sloppiness on Rooney giving the initial free kick away is just perverse.

And another thing, 7 bookings?  7?!  And the papers reaction to that?  It was deserved, Chelsea were really fair and thus only had one booking.  Brilliant.  In The Guardian we have the suggestion that Sir Alex was only having a go at the ref because we didn't win:

Blaming the referee is nearly always a cop-out, of course, but it is
also Ferguson's way of letting off steam when the heat of his emotion
is rising dangerously close to intolerable.

The Independent headline their collection of quotes with one from Scolari -"[The referee is there for this.] If the players do not respect the
referee, then it is yellow and red. [Same for Manchester, Chelsea and
Liverpool.]" - to lead us to the "right" conclusion.  3 of our bookings were for dissent, Ronaldo's especially was a joke, a slight indication he was pushed when he wasn't given a free kick, dissent?  Ashley Cole did his usual whining routine on several occasions and got nothing, Joe Cole scythed down someone (my memory...) and got a quiet word.  Riley had an awful game.  Berbatov was penalised everytime he jumped for a ball and was eventually booked for persistently ... jumping for the ball?! 
Sir Alex probably says it best in this piece:

Park Ji-sung, United's scorer, appeared to suggest a certain bias –
"Chelsea players made the same tackle they didn't get a yellow card,"
he said, although his moderate grasp of English may have been
responsible for that basic verdict. However, his manager, Sir Alex
Ferguson, was more bemused than angry. "The game is being screened
worldwide," he said. "Everyone is watching it and something like that
goes on. It was a competitive game but I did not think there was one
bad tackle in it." Apart from Ferdinand and Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul
Scholes, Dimitar Berbatov, Gary Neville, Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra
were cautioned. "People are saying, 'What is going on here?' But it is
difficult to say anything about the referee," added Ferguson. "I do not
want to get involved."

I'll just finish with two of the better articles, this, from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian, is pretty reasonable, previously quoted passage excepted:

The upshot is that United have won only one of their opening four
Premier League fixtures, taken only five points and scored only four
goals. It is far from the start that anyone in the football world could
have foreseen. But let's not exaggerate United's problems or dust off
any of those cliches about a "crumbling empire." This is still the team
that won the Champions League and Premier League last season and, for
long spells yesterday, it felt faintly preposterous that anyone could
genuinely have believed that a side of this talent could somehow be on
the verge of surrendering the second of those titles when it is the
fourth week of September.

And David Pleat, as ever, has a decent look at the tactics of the game, also in The Guardian:

United had the better of the game to begin with, Berbatov's
unhurried play giving Scholes and Rooney good opportunities to support.
United's lead was deserved and owed as much to the touch of Berbatov
and the vision of Rooney as the dash of Patrice Evra's run.

Chelsea
tried to respond but with Bosingwa and Ashley Cole pinned back, Florent
Malouda looking a "nearly man" and Joe Cole failing to assert himself,
it needed Scolari's repositioning of Mikel to bring Chelsea the upper
hand.