Beauty Lies in The Eye

Pretty much universal praise for us today. Before we get to that I'll just get rid of my two gripes of the day. The first one is this, in The Sun, where a picture of Ronaldo spitting on the ground with Robbie Savage in the picture is ruled controversial. It's like there's always got to be some reason to have a go, even after our magnificent performance yesterday, they can't have a go about that, or about Ronaldo being grumpy or theatrical or whatever, so they just make something up. The second gripe is a continuation of the theme I mention every FA Cup weekend and involves this in The Times, talking about the FA Cup draw:

What transpired from the picks did little to revive the romance of the Cup, either. If the results of the six outstanding matches go to form or status, the five remaining clubs from the Coca-Cola Championship will disappear and it will become an all-Barclays Premier League line-up in the quarter-finals.

The fairytale nature of the semi-finals last year, in which Portsmouth beat West Bromwich Albion and Cardiff City defeated Barnsley, could be but a thing of the past, too. Should form be upheld in the last-eight clashes, the semi-finals could be made up of four of the top six in the Premier League — Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Everton.

When Premiership teams get knocked out of the cup they're accused of not taking it seriously, of tarnishing the tradition of the cup. When Premiership teams don't get knocked out they're accused of ruining the romance, of tarnishing the tradition of the Cup. You can't have it both ways. And last season's semi-finals were the exception rather than the rule so to write that they could be a "thing of the past" seems strange in the extreme. As I've said before, if shocks happened continuously they wouldn't be shocks; they wouldn't be romantic, they would be mundane, and the tradition of the cup would be tarnished.
Having got that out of the way, let's savour our performance yesterday.
We'll start with the ever reliable Daniel Taylor in The Guardian, who, like all the papers, singles out Giggs, but who also waxes lyrical on the whole team:

Sir Alex Ferguson takes pride from nurturing the most adventurous team in the land and his players put on a performance here that made it seem as though they were affronted by the suggestion they had lost the ability to scintillate. ... All this came from a side with no recognised centre-forward in the starting line-up. It was an epic, lyrical performance, full of everything that is good about Ferguson's team and a reminder that "genius" is not too strong a word to describe Ryan Giggs's gifts.

His description of the disallowed goal is also the best at making clear the timescale:

Ronaldo would have been on the scoresheet even earlier had it not been for the most confusing moment of the day when the referee's assistant, Paul Tierney, decided United's most prolific player had been offside from Giggs's exquisite flick. The delicacy of Giggs's touch was, it turned out, too subtle for Tierney to notice, and he took so long making up his mind Ronaldo had accepted all the congratulations and was trotting back for the re-start by the time the flag was raised.

The score was 1–0 at the time and, in the unlikely event of a Derby comeback, ­Tierney's punishment would undoubtedly have been an infamous place in FA Cup lore, especially as Jordan Stewart had been playing Ronaldo onside regardless of whether or not Giggs touched the ball.

The time taken would have been absolutely insane even if it had been the correct decision, the fact that he got it wrong just makes it farcical.
Oliver Kay in The Times pinpoints the quality of our squad and the integration of new players into the team as the key to our success:

If, as no longer seems implausible, Manchester United’s class of 2009 are to carry out their threat to sweep all before them this season, they will be remembered not as one of the all-time great teams but as an astonishing squad whose depth of talent is surpassed only by the willingness of their ever-changing cast to accept whatever role is required of them.

.... The list of absentees was so long that Derby County’s supporters might either have been tempted to demand a refund or put a fiver on their team to pull off an FA Cup upset, but instead they were subjected or, depending on their mood, treated to an awesome exhibition of the talent at Sir Alex Ferguson’s disposal.

What took the breath away was not only the quality of United’s goals ... or another majestic performance from Ryan Giggs, but the way in which this makeshift team, without a recognised centre forward in the starting line-up, came together so successfully. This victory, their fourteenth in 15 matches in all competitions, came against a club from the lower reaches of the Coca-Cola Championship, but, as the only team to have beaten United over that period, Derby were not overawed yesterday, just overwhelmed.

The Telegraph compare us to the Red Arrows:

Such is the speed and breathtaking movement of Manchester United that the Red Devils almost resemble the Red Arrows. Nani, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs all flew around Pride Park on Sunday afternoon, leaving Derby County choking on their vapour trails.

Giggs, all touch and vision, was again magnificent. Nani and Ronaldo, such elusive scarlet pimpernels, both scored while United's phenomenal strength in depth was confirmed in well-taken goals by Darron Gibson and Danny Welbeck. Amid all this shimmering beauty lurked a real ruthlessness.

Neil Moxley, in The Mail, has to ruin the general mood by criticising the reaction of our bench to the disallowed goal:

It would be heartening to write that the decision was greeted with a shrug of the shoulders on the visiting bench. Of course it was not.

It would be "heartening" if people could just look at the performance of the team without trying to make a big deal over nothing.
Even The Independent manage to praise us, although its more restrained than most, with Ian Herbert singling out the youth we have to replace the likes of Giggs and Scholes:

Ryan Giggs, whose winner at West Ham seven days earlier had presaged his new one-year contract, created most that was memorable but Danny Welbeck's third goal in six appearances and Darron Gibson's major contribution provided an ominous sense of the continuity which marks out United from any other club in the land.

The Sun has the most extensive report of Sir Alex's post match comments here:

“Darron did really well. He has got into the Carling Cup final team with that performance. He played in every round, so deserves it.

“Danny Welbeck has a great scoring record for the ratio of games he’s played. He’s a natural finisher.

“Everyone else will be ready for Wednesday. I rested Carlos Tevez with that game in mind.

“Wayne Rooney should be ready for Saturday. It might be Wednesday but definitely Saturday.”