VIDIC HITS LATE WINNER

 

(Image taken from BBC)

 

Last season, Sunderland were a newly promoted team managed by the man that was United captain when this website originally started up, Roy Keane. When Keano made his return to Old Tafford as Sunderland gaffer his team gave us a match but we still came away 1-0 winners. The season went on and we started to get more into the title race and by the time we arrived at the Stadium of Light, we were the beneficaries of a very nice 4-0 win. By the end of the season, United went on to collect the title. As for Keano, well he managed to keep Sunderland up but it was still a tight job for him. Still, he did the business and looked to be able to settle his team long time.

Or rather, he didn't. Sunderland hit a bad run of form this season and are currently deep in the relegation mire. That's not the sort of thing that should have frightened our former hard man but apparantly it did, exit Keano and enter a more obscure United connection, Ricky Sbragia as caretaker gaffer for the Mackem's visit to Old Trafford. For our part it was back to 4-4-2, Van de Saar was back in goal, Rio(captain) and Vidic back in central defence, Evra left back. Ronaldo right mid, Carrick and Fletcher centre mid, Park left mid. Rooney and Berbatov up front. Job for the weekend, build on the City result and hope for more slipups elsewhere.

Well United may have attacked from the start but Sunderland must have felt they had something to prove because it's not often that you get a team under caretaker management playing quite like this. Their defence was desperate and scrambley but it certainly worked, if their goalie couldn't handle things then one of his defenders cleared it off the line. The team certainly hadn't been set up for attacking play, seeing former United assasin Dwight Yorke being used as a midfield holding player seemed like a waste. The result was hardly any Sunderland attacking of note. However that just made it more surprising that the game was still goalless at half time.

The second half proved to be more of the same and with United's shots started to go more and more off target it was time to bring some subs on. United tried steeping up a gear but the visitors held firm, matters weren't helped when we wound up going down to ten men temporarilly due to an injury. As the match went on, they were some chances that were definately in the realm of "how did that not go in?" and the question then became, were we going to score? We certainly couldn't afford to drop more points. Finally, in injury time, we broke through, Carrick slamming the ball against the post before it fell to Vidic and even he wasn't going to miss with an empty net to aim at. Job done. Just.

Elsewhere, well before I go any further, UEFA have just announced an overhaul to the Champions League rules. The Premiership top three will now go straight into the group stages, only the fourth placed team will have to survive a "qualification playoff" but it's garunteed to be against opposition from one of the top fifteen league in Europe, UEFA want a broader range of teams in the group stages. In the meantime, Liverpool beat Blackburn 3-1 at Ewood Park while Arsenal beat Wigan 1-0 at the Emirates Stadium. That leaves United 3rd in the Premiership and under the new UEFA regs, heading straight for the group stages, six points behind league leaders Liverpool but two points ahead of Arsenal and having to go via a playoff.

North of the border, well Aberdeen were meant to be up against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park in the SPL. Slight problem, just because there are SPL rules concerning undersoil heating does not mean that said heating system is garanteed to work, hence the match was postponed due to the pitch freezing over. Some games did go ahead though and one of them involved Hibs beating Celtic 2-0 at Easter Road, a pretty impressive result. That drops the Dons down to 6th in the SPL though, eight points behind Hearts and a Europa League spot but still two points ahead of Kilmarnock and the SPL now just has to work out where they're going to fit an extra game in.

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