Pretty Little Lightning Paw

The game against Boca Juniors is the main thing in the papers this morning:
This line from The Times summing things up fairly well:

Ferguson admitted that his team “didn’t play particularly well” against Boca, but the positives far outweighed the negatives.

We did seem to tire and allow Boca to run the show for much of the second half, but first half, and the last 20 minutes or so of the second half, when fresh legs came on, we didn't look in too much trouble. It certainly wasn't a great performance from the team, but individually, Valencia had a great debut, not only his goal, which might have been a goalkeeping error but the scoring opportunity was created well, but also his overall performance; Cathcart had a good introduction to the big stage as well, excepting his almost own goal. And let's not forget Anderson scoring a cracking first goal (both our goals can be seen here). The only negative was seeing Wes Brown going off injured, but it sounds more precautionary than anything:

Ferguson said: “Wes had a little pull on his thigh and it was wise just to take him off.

Sir Alex's view of Valencia:

"We're very satisfied with him," said Fergie. "He's a good athlete who has great power and running ability.

"His record at Wigan was not good in terms of goals, so we have to think why he's not scored more. Maybe the way we play will give him more opportunities and he will get more goals.

"He did well to open up the space up for himself for his goal and I'm sure he will play a lot of games this season."

And he hopes that Anderson's goal will lead to more:

"I hope this sparks Anderson off and gives him the incentive to be more positive," said Fergie.

"Over the two years he's been with us he's had many opportunities, hit the post and had shots saved. Hopefully his luck will change and he will score more for us."

And that's about it - match reports of pre-season friendlies are not exactly filled with prose worth quoting - the only other thing is more papers picking up the comments by Sir Alex on Berbatov I mentioned yesterday, for those who missed them, I'll recycle them here, to fill a bit more space, from The Daily Star:

“I expected the form we’ve seen from Berbatov in pre-season so far. Last season was a strange one for him and maybe we didn’t use him in the right way.

“We know exactly how to use him now – further up the pitch playing as a centre-forward. He will improve. I think he will have a terrific season.”