Insane in the Brain

Match reports and looking forward to the Porto game, the 2 themes for the day.
Once more Macheda makes the headlines. Only one report, from The Telegraph, seems to pick up on the one negative for Macheda:

The only downside for Kiko is that he cannot now play enough games to earn a Premier League medal

Which is a shame, especially if he continues coming on and winning games for us. Sir Alex had words of praise for him, quoted in The Mail on Sunday:

'There is something special about him, that boy,' said Sir Alex Ferguson. 'I haven't seen the goal, but one of the players said he actually meant it, he sidefooted the ball as it came to him. It is that quick thinking which goalscorers have. That instinct.

'I didn't say anything to him before he came on. He knows the role that we want him to play. He has good movement, good speed and he showed that when he came on. He wasn't fazed by anything. Right away he got involved in the game and he had a good 20 minutes for us.

The Mail on Sunday is also resigned to the fact that we'll probably win the league:

Despite their faults United will, in all likelihood, be Premier League champions again

How begrudging does Rob Draper want to sound?
I thought we showed yesterday that we're getting back on track, Sunderland did well and put us under pressure but we defended, on the whole, stoutly, passed the ball very well for large periods and after their equalizer there was only going to be one winner as we stepped up and put them under pressure. Most of the reports accept this. Sir Bobby Robson in The Mail on Sunday really lauds us:

from where I was sitting at the Stadium of Light yesterday, it looked as if they have got a second wind.
They showed enough commitment against Sunderland to convince me they can win the lot. ...

The transformation in United in just a few days was remarkable. I watched one of my favourite players, Michael Carrick, against Porto and he looked a bit leggy.

Several players appeared to be a bit fatigued mentally and when the mind gets tired, the passing begins to go.

Squad players Ji-sung Park and Darren Fletcher looked short of being top quality, the quality you need to win a grand slam.

But United put many doubts to rest yesterday.

They knew it was a big game, a game they had to win. And they did so more convincingly than the 2-1 scoreline would suggest.

Michael Walker in The Independent is less flattering but still accepts we're finding something like a return to form:

This was not as shaky as United were against Porto or previously against Fulham ...
So United go to Porto with a reassuring win, even if at times it was scrappy; they have also again taken some wind out of Liverpool's League title push.

There's two reports, from The Sunday Times and The Observer, which explicitly state that we weren't very good again, and yet reading through the reports you can see the implicit truth coming through, that we deserved the win. The Sunday Times:

Once again United were fallible, fading after their most positive start to a game in weeks ...

With Calum Davenport having dived bravely to block a previous Scholes effort and Danny Collins clearing a Nemanja Vidic header off the line, United looked as if their old authority was back. But Fernando Torres still haunts them.

What? Sunderland's attacking play was a damn sight better than the hoofed balls into the box that Liverpool used against us. And we saw them off. "Fading", yes we faded in the first half, but we were the better side second half, we faded and then re-emerged:

The second half began with both Rooney and Cisse whistling shots past the goal ...With Dimitar Berbatov twice missing chances and Carlos Tevez denied by a combination of Bardsley and Collins, no winner for United seemed forthcoming.

Admits our dominance but nowhere does he explicitly acknowledge that we were deserved winners. And the goal came in the 76th minute, so this Macheda-as-saviour line becomes, in this report, just a way to criticise us.
On the subject of Macheda there's a couple of things in the papers to redress the balance after the Lazio attack on us earlier in the week. The Observer has this, which shows the hypocrisy:

Lazio president Claudio Lotito - says "Manchester United rob young players as a matter of course. It's not moral. We cannot allow ourselves to behave in a way which is immoral." Also last month: Lotito given two-year suspended sentence and €65,000 fine for "stock-market rigging" and "attempting to avoid financial regulation relating to club ownership". The sentence followed a 30-month suspension from football plus €30,000 fine in 2006 for his part in the Serie A match-fixing scandal, plus condemnation after Lotito defended Paolo Di Canio's fascist salutes to fans waving swastika flags as "a non-political gesture - even the Pope does it". Taking over Lazio in 2004 Lotito told the press he'd "change the football environment": "I want to make it more moral."

And The Mail on Sunday has this:

Volfango Patarca, who in almost 25 years of service to Lazio’s youth system also spotted such talents as Paolo Di Canio and Alessandro Nesta, has told Macheda’s former club to stop blaming United for what he claimed was their own poor handling of the player.

‘Three times Pasquale asked Lazio for financial help, because it was so tough trying to get Kiko to the training ground every day,’ said Patarca. ‘It cost money and time away
from work. Pasquale asked for the club to fix him up with a job. I believe as little as
500 euros a month could have solved the problem.

'But my understanding is that Lazio only offered to help once they realised that Manchester United were interested in Federico.

‘That was too late because they hadn’t seemed to believe in him enough before. So thank God for Manchester United. What would have happened if they hadn’t been interested and Kiko’s parents had been left with the problem of trying to find the time
and money to take the boy such a long way to training every day?

‘Without Manchester United, I believe he would have had to stop playing. He would have had to finish with football and would have been lost to the game. Instead, he is in
England, where United have helped him to mature far more quickly than he would have done in Italy.

‘You cannot go wrong with Sir Alex Ferguson. Lazio should just be quiet and learn from their mistakes.’

Onto the Porto game and the main story there is Sir Alex "criticising" Ronaldo, from The Mirror:

"I don’t accept that [giving the ball away] from anyone.

"I speak to Cristiano about it. He’s not immune from that."

"He always feels he’s not getting the proper protection from referees and I think that in a few cases it is right," said the United boss.

"But there are also a lot cases where it’s not right.

"It’s hard when a player who wants to entertain all the time doesn’t get everything his own way.

"But you can’t get everything your own way – that’s just the way football is."

Ferguson added: "Cristiano understands that now and there’s not a problem.

"It’s just a frustration because he feels he doesn’t get the decision. He gets upset about it.

"I think he obviously knows he’s letting himself down more than anything and he has held his hands up.

"I have had to remind him about certain things, but I’m not getting into what’s been said."

Which I think is more of an attempt to get Ronaldo firing again, rather than a real criticism - criticising players in public isn't really Sir Alex's style. So the reaction to the comments is a little over the top, with the Mail On Sunday claiming:

With Ronaldo relegated to the bench yesterday, it is unclear whether he will play a part in Wednesday’s second leg in Porto.

Ronaldo not play against Porto? What are the chances of that, really? Being on the bench against Sunderland seems more like giving him a rest, and, in combination with his comments, a wake up call, precisely so that he'll be fired up for the Porto game.
Other comments from Sir Alex on the game, from The Sunday Times:

“We’re good at being the first to do things. We were the first English team to win the European Cup, the Premier League, the World Club Championship,” he said. “We’ve got a good chance. The mindset will be to make sure we are sound defensively. Get a feel of the game first. We will be much better prepared this time."

And from The News of the World:

"Our mindset will be to make sure we get into the game quicker than we did on Tuesday. We have to get into the rhythm of our game quicker. If we do we'll give them something to think about.

"I watched their game when they drew 2-2 with Atletico Madrid over there. They never looked to score on their own ground. They just played defensively.

"That is a dangerous game to play against us because you will always fancy us to score. We are very good at being the first to do things."

Mourhino tips us to win:

"How many times have United broken records or beaten the odds?

"Sir Alex Ferguson is an expert at it, and they have the quality to go and win anywhere in the world.

The Independent have some words from Darren Fletcher:

"You can't have an entire season where things go smoothly all the time. There are spells when you have a dip in form. At the end of the season, you look back and you usually find you win what you deserve to win. We know it's not plain sailing all the time. We need to get back to the old United of not conceding goals. Our experience will help us get back on the right track."

That track, of course, needs to be located on Wednesday against a side who surprised many at Old Trafford in securing a deserved 2-2 draw. Some felt Sir Alex Ferguson had picked the wrong team, but Fletcher explained the rationale behind it: "We knew they were going to play 4-3-3 from the start. From the beginning, we had five in midfield to counter that. But the gameplan went out the window when they scored an early goal. We had to change and we did, but we never found a rhythm. We thought we had it at 2-1 but they scored that late goal. Now we have to go and win the match. The challenge has been set. If we'd won 2-1, we might wonder if we'd sit back or go for it. We know now we have to win the match, as simple as that."

And The Observer have an in-depth look at Porto's "Hulk".
In other news, The Mirror report that Newcastle want Ben Foster, if they stay up.
And finally Rafa Benitez acts like a 5 year old in responding to Sir Alex's words from Friday:

Benitez said: “I don’t understand him, the way he talks in a Scottish accent. But I do understand the meaning of winding someone up.”

Having a go at someone for speaking with a Scottish accent? What's that about? If he was a public school educated Englishman he might be able to get away with it, it would still be an extremely stupid thing to slag off, but at least he'd be doing it as an old school representative of Received Pronunciation. Rather than as a Spaniard, speaking in a Spanish accent...
He continues:

Benitez said: “Mind games are against managers who are affected by them. I am focused just on my team before every single game. I don’t see that what’s said about me will affect my team. I don’t think so.

“Maybe once in every 10 times but not every time. Anyway, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

“I prefer to talk about football but sometimes you have to hit back.”

Benitez said: “Ferguson is always talking about us which shows they are really under pressure. I don’t care but I know he’s nervous, so it’s good. You can see he’s under pressure.”

It's like a schoolboy, responding to criticism saying, "Look in the mirror, you're that", and then repeating "No, you are" to every further word spoken to him. He just says exactly what Sir Alex said on Friday. And he actually admits that it gets to him, even if only 1 in ten times. He truly has lost the plot.