Nobody's Fault But Mine

It's the match reports today, and van Persie, for some reason, is the focus.  Daniel Taylor in The Guardian:

it became a demonstration of why Van Persie cleaned up with the footballer of the year awards last season and why his new employers were so desperate to beat Manchester City to his signature. The penalty? He will want to watch the replays through the gaps in his fingers and it is doubtful he will ever try that form of chutzpah again. Ultimately, though, that aberration simply reinforced the sense that Southampton had encountered something special.

A lesser footballer might still have been ruminating on what he had done, whereas Van Persie simply set about making sure he rewrote the story again. It was a demonstration of his mentality, as well as his talent for putting the ball in the net, and in both respects he passed with distinction, sparing his team a second defeat in their first three league games.

And he also has a word of credit to Sir Alex:

There is something enduringly brilliant about the way Ferguson reorganises his teams when they are chasing games. They had been struggling with 4-2-3-1, with Danny Welbeck on the left rather than a natural wide player. Now they reverted to the 4-4-2 system of old, with Paul Scholes and Nani coming off the bench. Within a minute Scholes had set Van Persie running into the penalty area for a chance he could not convert. Then came the penalty after Davis's poor clearance had gone to Nani and Jos Hooiveld, though connecting with the ball, scythed through the back of Van Persie's legs.

The Sun report combines praise for the two: 

You could argue that it did not take a genius to go out and buy a world-class goalscorer of Van Persie’s quality.

But it takes more than luck to integrate the new boy into the team and get him playing to such devastating effect so quickly.

It was probably the prospect of the hairdryer after a second-half penalty miss which inspired Van Persie to grab two in the final few minutes.

It also needs to be pointed out that when Saints boss Nigel Adkins withdrew his three best players to protect his team’s hard-fought 2-1 lead, Fergie went for broke and refused to settle for even a share of the points.

On came Paul Scholes to spray the ball about and open up gaps in the flagging Southanpton defence.

Then Nani and Javier Hernandez were introduced for added firepower and with Fergie directing, cajoling and furiously pointing to his watch, his substitutions eventually did the trick.

While Sam Wallace in The Independent takes the opportunity to go on about the two sides of van Persie:

There are not many footballers who win a game in injury time with their hat-trick goal and then feel obliged to apologise to their team-mates afterwards, but then there are not many who can hold a candle to the extravagantly gifted Robin van Persie.

The old belief that every brilliant footballer must conquer his flaws as well as his genius was never so evident as in Van Persie's performance, which included a 68th-minute penalty miss, a preposterously self-indulgent "Panenka" saved by Kelvin Davis with Manchester United trailing 2-1. It was Van Persie at his wasteful worst, a bad case of I-dink-therefore-I-am.

The response was breathtaking. He scored in the 87th and 92nd minutes to win the match for his team, break Southampton hearts, and departed the pitch with the match ball in his hands – not before he had stood in front of the United support as they lauded him relentlessly with the kind of fervour a very famous club reserves only for its very best players. It would have been one hell of a game even without Van Persie's injury-time intervention.

Henry Winter plays the party pooper somewhat.  After such an exciting game he still finds space in his match report to look at the negative:

With Wayne Rooney injured, United would be utterly lost without Van Persie. Ferguson will be crossing his fingers and counting the days until his £24 million striker returns from international duty with Holland. An injury to Van Persie is the fear that dare not speak its name at United nowadays.

Which may or may not be true, but why shove that in at the start of the report?  Later on he seems to contradict himself anyway:

Javier Hernández’s arrival also set Southampton problems.

Which maybe isn't an outright contradiction but it shows he's there and causing problems, shows we've attacking options, but with Rooney out, it goes without saying that we could do with our other star striker on the pitch.  Note, Henry, goes without saying...

The other thing he mentions, which everyone else seems to have forgotten with the excitement of the game (not that I'm suggesting Henry wrote bits of the report before the game(I am)), is this:

The focus had been on Ferguson before the match, following his ruthless decision to drop David de Gea for a mix-up with Nemanja Vidic that allowed Mladen Petric to score for Fulham last week. It seemed harsh on the Spanish keeper, and hardly conducive to nurturing his confidence, particularly as he had excelled at Goodison Park the week before.

Which I also saw people moaning about on Twitter before the game, but De Gea coped, improved even, last season when it came to taking a turn on the bench, I'm not sure it's an issue this. The Mail has Sir Alex's explanation:

'I think young David made a mistake last week (against Fulham),' Ferguson told Sky Sports.

'He knows it. 'With the form he's been in, he's been making some fantastic saves but one error like that could have cost us the game.

'It's just a learning process for him and he'll be back in a couple of weeks after the international break.

'Anders had his first game. I thought he was a little bit nervous at points but he's a very good keeper also. I don't think it's a big issue but it's something you have to deal with.

The Mirror join in this silliness, including this line in their match report:

United boss Ferguson had pulled a surprise by droppin David De Gea for Anders Lindegaard and, in fairness, you could not blame the Danish keeper for either goal. But De Gea remains a cause for concern.

I'm sorry, he wasn't on the pitch, and that sounds ridiculously close to you blaming him for the goals, "Lindegaard wasn't to blame, De Gea is a cause for concern," the only connection, their goal-keeping - only logical conclusion - the goals were De Gea's fault - the other conclusion - The Mirror are idiots.

The Mail report is again obscured by too many photos, it was probably rubbish anyway.

Quotes from the game, and The Guardian have a nice round-up.  van Persie apologises for the penalty:

"I don't know what I was thinking with the penalty," Van Persie said. "I wanted to hit it hard like I always do. At the last second, I just changed somehow, maybe it was my brother or something. It wasn't good enough. It was a bit of a down and then afterwards, we were a bit lucky with the 2-2 and then at the end, a dramatic 3-2.
"I'm quite disappointed about the penalty. I ask a certain standard from my game. When you are 2-1 down, you can't take a penalty like that. It is me to blame. I don't know what went wrong, something went wrong big time and I'll have to work on it."

Sir Alex and van Persie both praise Scholes:

"I have to say a big thank-you to Paul Scholes, when he came on everything was ticking," Van Persie said. "Every single pass he hit was the right one. Everyone felt that, I certainly did. For me, he is the man of the match."

Ferguson agreed. "I thought when Paul Scholes came on, it changed the game completely," he said. "I thought we were well out of it until Scholes came on. His vision and consistency of passing gave us complete control again.

"It was a matter of scoring the goals and Robin van Persie has come up with two very important goals. I was surprised [about the penalty] because every time I have seen him take one, he has rattled it in the corners. He made up for it though. He has four goals in two starts and that's a great statistic. And he'll get better.

The Telegraph have Sir Alex on our defence:

“Credit to Southampton, they kept building up and getting the ball into the box,” said Ferguson. “Everything we did in preparation for this game was all about back-post crosses and they scored two goals from them so that was disappointing. I’ve always said when you play two centre-backs consistently, you get better results. Rio’s getting there. I think if those two stay fit, and we get all the centre-backs fit, we’ve got a really good chance.”