So my predicted team for United at Aston Villa was wrong, I only got 10 of the 11 starting line-up right and the man who scored the winner replaced Ryan Giggs. Otherwise my prediction of a 1-0 win with that team was correct and I also got the continued form, or loss of it, from Nani, Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra right.
But I am not happy to be right. We have to know that Villa were very poor and we didn’t put them away, in fact we didn’t test either of their keepers much through the entire game. It was hardly vintage United.
In my opinion it is the continued selection of players out of form that bothers me. Sir Alex has always been patient and bloody minded, and he is exhibiting both attributes in choosing some players, notably the three players mentioned above. I could also add the loss of form of Ashley Young to that list although he has been injured recently.
However it’s not all bad, the re-emergence of Michael Carrick has been a bonus and adds to the the excellence of both keepers, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Nemanja Vidic and Javier Hernandez. I know that players can’t all play well all the time, that’s obvious but why pick out of form players when you can mix it up?
Evra was his usual yesterday, the player I have been watching keeps playing himself into trouble in defensive positions, he is slow to recover and get back into his position, leaving us exposed to right wingers all the time. His crossing is poor; he dives a lot and generally looks like a prima donna lookalike of the player we bought.
He moves closer to the clown that had his debut against Manchester City every game, and his off-field issues with Luis Suarez and the French National team far overshadow his contribution to his employer. We badly need left-back options because Evra is not Dennis Irwin and will never be reliable, in fact there probably isn’t even a French word for that.
Rooney was awful, he had a couple of shots, one burst thru and a left foot smash over the bar from 10 yards out, one great cross-field ball to the righ wing and lots of trotting around looking uninterested. His passing remains poor and predictable in the main, his one move is to drop the right shoulder and move the ball a yard.
He has nothing else to offer as far as i see, he is almost no goal threat and he ducks out of headers and complains to the Referee all the time. He remains a hot headed enigma, over paid, over hyped and over the hill?
I am sure that harsh assessment of the start man will not resonate well with rose tinted spectacled fans but he just doesn’t do enough, and the more you get paid the more we expect from you Wazza. It really was not good and this was against Richard Dunne for god’s sake.
Nani, well what can I say. His shooting is awful, he runs into blind alleys, he is like a bad copy of Cristiano Ronaldo, I even suggest a new chant “he plays on the left, he plays on the right, our boy Nani makes Beckham look great “. His best position is right wing, when he beats his man and crosses the ball but we have Valencia who also defends, so what to do with Nani?
Yes, Ashley Young seems to have become negative and predictable too but I am hoping that’s just a temporary loss of form. With Evra, Rooney and Nani the loss has gone on too long.
Drop the players out of form Sir Alex, buy some talent at left back, and cash in on Dimitar Berbatov
United should have put 4 past Villa and it was only that we have passengers that prevented it. Please Sir Alex, watch the tape and make the calls because this team will give us a fright in Basel where we can afford no slip-up’s.
Steve Burrows CBE @ifollowsteve
