Basking in the glow of the Arsenal demolition, shall we take a look through the papers for their take on it? Of course, that Arsenal weren't very good is an understatement, so we can expect a certain amount of attention to be given to their woes in the match reports, but after scoring 8 our "woes" in the spotlight? Srsly?
First off The Express (a rag I generally ignore, and shall ignore again after reading this), who describe De Gea's penalty save thus:
And weak was the word to describe Robin van Persie’s penalty ... Once David de Gea had guessed the right way to dive, he only had to fall on the ball. ...De Gea blotted his copybook again by letting Walcott’s shot through his legs in added time at the end of the first half.
I'm not saying it was the best penalty, but it was still a good save, and he certainly didn't "fall on the ball." And having failed to give him credit, the goal was of course his fault...
Skipper Robin van Persie stepped up but his spot-kick was poor and David De Gea palmed it away.United's players mobbed De Gea — who has had a nervous start to his career in England — while Van Persie sank to his knees. ... ...Walcott side-footed through De Gea's legs.
Having had the boost of the penalty save, this one will have knocked the Spaniard's confidence once more.
Do we really need the aside about his "dodgy" start? And is this the future of reporting on De Gea, every good save is put in a plus column and every goal is put in the negative column. It will soon (already?) get boring. And to get petty about the report (why not, they constantly pick up on the smallest things) they call Hernandez "the little Pea" without quotation marks, as if, instead of a nickname, he was actually a rather small pea.
Sam Wallace's Independent report: is better, giving us credit, mentioning De Gea but pointing out its meaninglessness:
But just as crucially it was a touchstone performance from Sir Alex Ferguson's young generation of players, from Phil Jones, Danny Welbeck, Tom Cleverley and Chris Smalling up to the older hands such as Patrice Evra, Anderson and Ashley Young. But no-one was quite the equal to the prince among them all, Wayne Rooney whose hat-trick – two sensational free-kicks and a penalty – was the crowning glory on a giddy day for Old Trafford.It was a comic book game, so full of incident that moments which could define lesser matches were worthy of only a passing mention. What to make of David De Gea, who made a stunning penalty save in the first half only to let Theo Walcott's shot go through his legs in injury-time before the break? What of Welbeck, scorer of United's first goal on 22 minutes who then pulled a hamstring before half-time and is probably out of England's two Euro 2012 qualifiers?
Yesterday, none of those smaller details seemed to matter as this young United team rampaged through their opponents, matching and then exceeding the eye-popping 5-1 victory for Manchester City at White Hart Lane just an hour before.
Yet if there is one statistic, beyond the scoreline, that reflects the depth of the crisis at Arsenal, it is that both starting line-ups had the same average age, 23. Arsenal are still planning for some mythical future; at Manchester United the future is now.
And he points out our injuries and missing players, quite as bad as Arsenal's "crisis" - the point being that the headlines do not necessarily have to be about how bad Arsenal are, but about our young team, the way we've changed from last season, the football we're playing. We destroyed Spurs second half on Monday, Arsenal yesterday. There's a pattern there - our football is great, not other teams are rubbish.
Oliver Holt goes all doomsday scenario on Arsenal's ass, the end of an era type stuff, but Patrick Barclay in The Times points out the danger in this kneejerk reaction (behind a paywall, quoted here):
“Something like it did happen before: in February 2001, when Wenger was aghast to see a less understrength side than yesterday’s lose 6-1 on the same ground — and 15 months later Arsenal ended a sequence of three United title triumphs with victory at Old Trafford.”
Manchester United were so good with a breathtaking, chance-taking display of football. United versus Arsenal was Total football versus total chaos.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s men used to bully Wenger’s physically; now they bully them with the ball, utterly destroying them with their speed of mind and feet.
He seems confused though, contradicting himself in the space of a couple of paragraphs:
Arsenal’s manager, patently in denial at his squad’s deficiencies, must change direction. He must start buying experience to protect and educate his youngsters.Arsenal were unbelievably embarrassing, a disgrace to the shirt, with players like Tomas Rosicky and Andrei Arshavin so poor it was astonishing to think they are actually internationals.
They need experience, but two of their most experienced players were "a disgrace." Not simply experience they need but a certain type of experience.
In the hard-nosed world of American gridiron, they call what Manchester United did to Arsenal here yesterday afternoon running up the score. It is not a term of admiration for outstanding, even brilliant performance. Indeed, the opposite is true. It is what they say of examples of mean-spirited exploitation of plainly out-gunned opponents. Running up the score is the equivalent of bar-room boasting. Unfortunately, yesterday, United were not given a whole lot of alternatives.
Wayne Rooney thundered in his free-kicks. Ashley Young ran with the continued freedom of someone who has arrived in a situation which plainly suits perfectly his belief that he is at the point of his career where he can achieve just about anything he wants – though the goals that came to him quite exquisitely yesterday are not often going to come quite so easily.
The Sir Alex quote doing the rounds also seems to say much the same thing:
He said: "You don't want to score more when you play against a leaking team like that."Of course, I feel sympathy for Arsene Wenger. You look at the Arsenal team and it was very weakened but you still have to win these games."
I don't know the context of these quotes, but they seem to have the air of false modesty, given we scored 8 and the last of them was in injury time - we didn't have much time to score any more. These other quotes seem closer to the mark:
"It is (a surprise) because when you play Arsenal you expect a difficult game," Ferguson said afterwards. "If you look at Arsenal the team is weakened – but we still did the job.
"We got careless at times and they made chances because they still have quality up front. But overall we are very satisfied that we kept the performance levels up."
And yes, Sir Alex is allowed to be picky and to describe our wonderful performance workmanlike terms. That's his job.
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