CITY GIVEN REALITY CHECK

 

Well things didn't go so well at the City of Manchester Stadium in the first leg, City had the last laugh there. However as we proved against Derby last year, a one goal deficit from the 1st leg counts for little. So, round two of this rumble saw a Carling Cup semi final second leg match which had Manchester's finest nervous. The Reds were certainly back on form and Fergie wasn't pulling any punches with team selection. United started 4-3-3 with Rio and Evans in central defence, Carrick Scholes and Fletcher centre mind with Nani, Rooney and Giggsy(captain) up front. OT was as fired up as ever and the Reds were desperate to put the Blues in their place.

Except that the match started a little flat. Again United seemed to be taking it for granted that we would turn the tie around. In the meantime, certain former United assasin looked well fired up to bury us this time around - OK Carlos we get the message. The match got pretty rough at times but credit to the ref for taking things in his stride. United did have some chances but we didn't really have quite enough fire to do the business. Half time and things were starting to look slightly nervy. We weren't going to let City get out of our place with the bragging rights of a Cup final were we? Still, forty five minutes to go and it would only take one goal.

Well the first major incident of the second half were some morons I'd rather not be associated with deciding to throw a coin at one of the City players. I far preferred what happened soon after with United fastbreaking in the 52nd minute, Giggsy setting up Carrick who found Scholesey who wasn't going to miss from close range, and when Nani's cross found Fletcher who found Carrick in the 71st minute to put the ball in the net, it looked like job done. Not quite. A 76th Carlos Tevez and Craig Bellamy 1-2 led to the Argie landing another blow in his vendetta against the Reds. However, United still had the last word with Giggsy crossing to Rooney in injury time and Wayne heading it in then cartwheeeling off. Wipe yourselves off Blues, you never will have the class to seriously compete with us.

Well, that sets up a Carling Cup final between United and Villa at Wembley. Historically, it's a rematch of the '94 final where a Ron Atkinson gaffered Villa prevented the "Come on you Reds" team from completing a domestic Treble. Fast forward to the present day and there's every reason why history might repeat itself. Villa have already beaten United in the Premiership and at OT no less. The question is, have we regained enough form to get payback in the cathedral of football. In theory we could, though we haven't won back-to-back League Cups since the tournament started in 1961, the last team to pull off that feat off was Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest in 1989-90. This will certainly be a tougher match than last year's final and even that needed penalties.

In the meantime, plenty of Premiership action was happening. Chelsea beat Birmingham 3-0 at Stamford Bridge with the Blues giving Alex McLeish's formerly on-form team a reality chech, going two up before half time. Spurs beat Fulham 2-0 at White Hart Lane with Harry Redknap's team hitting the net either side of half time though Fulham did get their act together in the second half. Still, it was too little too late for the visitors. That leaves United dropping to 2nd in the Premiership, one point behind leaders Chelsea who 'still' have a game in hand. However the Reds are still nine points ahead of Spurs and a detour through the Champions League preliminaries.

North of the border, there was an all-SD1 Scottish Cup 4th round replay to deal with between Airdrie and Raith Rovers at the Excelsior Stadium. Kevin Smith opened the scoring for Raith only for Bobby Donnelly to equalise for Airdrie but then Raith retook the lead just before half time thanks to Gregory Tade. The second half turned out to be relatively uneventful with Raith cruising to a victory finally sealed with a Johnny Russell penalty. Congratulations to Raith for pulling off a result here though it's still a long way to Hampden for a team that have never won the competition but the Raith players don't seem to be complaining about their achievement.

So, now we have the 5th round and Aberdeen will face SD1 Raith Rovers at Stark Park. Well back in the 90s this would have been an SPL fixture but Raith certainly haven't looked like reaching the top flight recently. In the mean time they are in the lower half of SD1 so even on their turf, should in theory not provide much of a threat. Having said that, the Dons can't forget the amount of times they've been mugged by lower division opponents in the Cups - particularly during the Jimmy Calderwood era and they were also knocked out of the CIS Cup in similar fashion. Still, while anything can happen in a Cup tie, that safe bet is still on the Dons making the quarter finals.

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