Midweek Action

It is 9:00 PM on Wednesday evening and now is the best time to write about what happened today at Turf Moor to Manchester United. I don’t understand how I can be 26, living in LA and a terrible result in Burnley, Lancashire can take my day and regurgitate it. Things were going reasonably well until 11:45 AM, I watched Danny Dyer’s “Football Factory” – which is like “Green Street Hooligans” with more use of the word c-u-next-tuesday… Game time! I had to watch the match on the computer, which in itself is a testament to anybody’s “fandom,” especially when the site is awful (E360 does not count here!).

We got to see Michael Owen start with Wayne Rooney up top, and this started very well in the first five minutes, but then trailed off. This, to me, was not the big story which is not even about Manchester United: Burnley came to play (Side note: It has been a long time since I heard Old Trafford as electric as Turf Moor – it sure wasn’t on that fateful April day with me in attendance) and they won because of passion, guts, determination, and skill. Yeah I said it, skill. I like Steven Fletcher, his 3 million pound transfer from Hibernian was a great move, and he could have put Burnley up 2-0 right after that rocket of a volley by Robbie Blake. Manchester United looked confused at times with Rooney and Berbatov missing the cue on a ball, and Carrick missing a penalty that he should never have taken.

I want to take a moment and deal with the Ronaldo talks. All the media is saying that we are greiving the loss of CR, but I don’t agree. First of all, it is the second game of the season, and MUFC are traditionally a slow starting team. The fact that we beat Birmingham City on the opening day was stunning. if CR took that penalty who is to say he would make it? Go back to his stellar season – 07/08. Off the top of my head he missed some key penalties that season against: West Ham (away, which we lost), Barcelona (leg 1, drew 0-0), Chelsea (UCL Final, well we won that one). He did make some key ones: Namely Arsenal at Old Trafford which we won 2-1. Michael Carrick is a fantastic player, and God knows why he missed it (besides what his passport reads). When April comes along and we are sitting in 5th, then maybe Mancunians can grieve. Ronaldo has saved us in so many games over the past three seasons in particular, but I hope it doesn’t come to this…

I get so mad at Berbatov but he is handy. He was tied for second last season in the assist category at 10 (with the likes of Fabregas, Gerrard, and Lampard), and he does give Fergie something that none of the other strikers do, but at this point we need (more) goals.

The mistake of the night was putting on Gary Neville for Wes Brown at that point we need to score so we put on grandpa? Could have removed Park for Berbatov and had the three strikers in there, even Valencia played poorly, he could have been left on the bench. Well let’s hope we beat Wigan and put this behind us.

Fin.

Arsenal took care of Celtic in the first leg of the Champions League qualifiers. I really feel for Celtic, maybe it is the Catholic in me, those two goals were really unlucky, but Arsenal were never in doubt of being the better side.

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