The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes

Not the best performance last night. In many ways the second half reminded me of the Derby game, passing not slick enough, and that when we actually managed to string passes together, too many misplaced balls from midfield. Thankfully we had the early goal. Although perhaps it was a case of "scoring too early", becoming complacent. Vidic had an amazing game, and Wigan looked pretty good, gave it a go and turned it into a match. Anyway, we got the points.
I thought the performance of Steve Bennett was interesting. Only one of the match reports I read mention the referee, and in fairness there was no one decision which could be isolated to make a story, but I thought his entire performance summed up why he's not a great referee. He seemed like a man who had heard Benitez's comments about referees at Old Trafford and refereed accordingly, giving no decisions to us except the most blatant. It was one of those nights where our players would have have to have been shot in the box to get a penalty. Twice he could/should have issued a second yellow card to a Wigan player and twice he failed to do so. Numerous times he let play run when he should have given us a free kick. There was no huge decision which went against us, just many petty decisions. If there had been a big decision to make though I'm fairly sure we wouldn't have got it. He's a referee who, rather than referee a match on its own merits, will take in the surrounding debate and referee according to that - remember when he sent of Mascherano at the height of discussions about dissent? I prefer a referee like Rob Styles who, for all his faults, referees each game on its merits.
The reports today aren't really worth reporting on, as if the writers are reflecting on our performance on the level of their own writing - they are truly a lacklustre bunch of reports. So I'm not going to link to any of them.