ManUtd 1-1 Chelsea: A Damn Close Run Thing
May 31, 2008
I was afraid this would be an unhappy night for United, one way or another. Our recent record against Chelsea has featured cautious team selection and under-performance. A 100% record in European finals can’t last forever. There was the curse of the Charity Shield, the possibility of a referee persuaded to favour the Russian billions, the worry that skilful passing would die a death on a disgrace of a pitch.
Even if we won there was bound to be trouble, especially with the Moscow police. I was at work and the Management Centre was bound again to prove incapable of providing adequate TV coverage. Yet I had not been tense; shades of 1996 when I was so euphoric about winning the league that I felt that a final was just icing on the cake.
I was sure that I could relax and enjoy the enormous privilege of seeing the club I have watched for forty three years in their third European Cup Final. Came the day, Ferguson had picked the full attack. Our flair and speed against their power. The promise of a big screen materialised.
There was, me and a United supporting IBM trainer called Jolene in a South Coast soccer desert with our first bottles of wine while others purporting to be interested in the match finished dinner and wandered in later. The whistle blew, the match of the century (so far) was under way. Now, whatever was going on inside me was certainly not relaxation!
I was sipping wine on a balmy summer evening. In Moscow it had been throwing it down all day and the imported turf laid hastily across the underlying plastic pitch looked sodden.
United took the initiative. Scholes and Carrick controlled the middle of the field. The first threats came from Hargreaves, who got in several crosses from the right, but it was Ronaldo who emerged on the other flank, and Rooney as the inspirations behind a magnificent first half in which United showed all those boring continentals how a European Cup final should be played in all aspects except the most important; finishing.
Wigan 0-2 ManUtd: Rest at Last
May 31, 2008
By Jupiter (as Dan Dare used to say) the season took us to the brink. I have wished more of my life away in the last few weeks than in almost any other season. On Sunday humiliation was a possibility. For Chelsea the only possibilities were glory or the acceptance of the expected. It speaks volumes that our players (with a little help from the referee) worked through their nerves and delivered in style.
I was not amongst the 25,133 who were there. 50,000 will claim they were, but I did not get a ticket and was in a pub in Bradford-upon-Avon suffering like tens of thousands around the world, watching the drama unfold on the screen.
Steve Bruce has rescued Wigan, for a season at any rate. Some see him as Ferguson’s replacement; others see him as part of a Ferguson plan to populate the league with his ex-employees. Friend he may be but Steve Bruce is a fighter; this was never going to be any more of a cakewalk than Blackburn under Mark Hughes a few weeks ago.
At least Vidic and Rooney were back; the team was up to strength – even Louis Saha was on the bench. Beyond my understanding (but, hey, Ferguson has just won us another championship) Park was in the side and not Giggs; neither Hargreaves (on the bench) nor Anderson (in the stands) were starting. Why has our midfield magician not featured since being taken off in full flow at Stamford Bridge?
Wigan played with gusto and direction. Palacios at right back (rumoured, along with his team mate Valencia, to be a United target), Heskey, Kumas and even Bent caused trouble. For fifteen minutes or so as a team Wigan gave as good as they got, and we rode our luck outscoring them in the first half.
Paul Scholes performed one of his trademark tackles on Palacios, who tumbled spectacularly (do we need another diver?). Scholes was booked, not unfairly. Heskey got himself unmarked in our area at a corner and Boyce missed his chance. Kumas shot from outside the area and the ball hit Rio Ferdinand’s shoulder (no, actually; Rio deliberately deflected it with the uppermost part of his arm); referee Steve Bennett ignored the penalty claims.
For our part Ronaldo had a free kick saved by Kirkland and then in a sustained piece of attacking Rooney was tripped from behind by Boyce while trying to dribble through the crowd around the penalty spot. Wigan players complained, Steve Bruce whinged afterwards, but it was a clear penalty.
High noon. The man who missed his last one, in Barcelona, stepped up to take it. There were none of his hallmarks. Ronaldo ran and struck it; no hesitation, no change in the run. Kirkland went flying right and it was a good job he did because the ball was cracked into the net on his other side, very hard but not far away from where the goalkeeper had been standing; Ronaldo’s 41st goal of the season; 32 minutes 1-0.
The jitters would not be dispelled; Scholes obstructed Palacios, nudged him off the ball with no intention to play it and the television pundits went on about how Bennett should have shown a yellow card and sent him off. Indeed he might have done but we got lucky again; Bennett gave Scholes a wigging instead. In another Wigan attack Bent, in a heavily populated area, missed the goal by a whisker.
Was it the tension, was it me, or did it all become slightly surreal at half time? There were we and, I think, nearly all the rest of the country sweltering in the sticky heat of un-air conditioned pubs whilst at Wigan they were drenched in the downpour, forking stubborn puddles off the pitch.
Then the Football Association stepped in. In sport you can always count on the administrators to make matters worse. The Chelsea game was running late because of an injury to John Terry, so our second half had to be delayed so that the games kicked off together.
We were kept waiting for more than twenty minutes; this from an organisation which week in, week out over the last two months has given the London sides the edge by ensuring that the result of our game is known before theirs starts. Why does this become a vital issue of fairness on the last afternoon?
Quite contrary to the FA’s wishes, however, the break turned out well for us because United turned in a second half performance befitting our position in the league; the kind of away performance we have been producing all season; 60% and more possession of the ball and all but one of the chances; sound and cool in defence, swift on the break.
We needed that second goal, though, and it would not come. Scholes was put through into the area and chopped by Bramble, a cast iron penalty not given. Rooney cut in from the left and shot, Kirkland saved brilliantly. Then with just over twenty minutes to go Hargreaves came on for Scholes and, crucially, Giggs came on for Park. It was Giggs’ 758th United appearance, drawing him level with Bobby Charlton as the man most honoured in wearing the red shirt.
The news came through that Chelsea had scored. At Wigan the rain had stopped and Emile Heskey headed over our bar from Kumas’ free kick. I thought it miles over, but the replay showed it was inches and Van der Sar would not have got it. Could it all still go wrong?
Another solid attack, backed by numbers, Rooney gets the ball on the left and works it nicely inside. On the screen you can see Giggs’ movement between Bramble and Scharner who are standing in formation and not sensing the danger and then Rooney releases the perfect ball forward.
The great players always appear to have time; Giggs controls it and turns giving the illusion he is in oceans of space just as Bobby Charlton might have done and then, like the younger Ryan at the peak of his powers, clips it effortlessly past Kirkland. In that moment an entire season’s work is won and lost; 79 minutes 2-0 and what might be happening at Stamford Bridge becomes an irrelevance.
But just to put the icing on it, as the fans dance and sing in delirium and the minutes tick by the news comes through that Bolton have equalised there anyway.
We might despise Chelsea and their Russian money and annual quarter of a million pound deficit and I derided Avram Grant earlier in the season for being a boring whinger in need of a charisma transplant but give him his due, he now speaks sportingly and warmly of United’s achievement and congratulates Ferguson. Take note, Arsenal; we are still awaiting your congratulations from 2003.
I leave the pub in the heat of the warmest, sunniest day in the warmest and sunniest of moods. How fitting that it is Ryan Giggs, the man so much involved in decisive moments over the last sixteen years, who scored the decisive goal.
There’s this bloke in front of us at Old Trafford who had the nerve to question our credentials. He turns up only for the really big games and comes five minutes late and leaves five minutes early no matter how tight the scoreline and never sings but spends his time screaming abuse if Giggs or Fletcher or O’Shea are playing (and lately Van der Sar). I am so pleased for him and for any other such fuckwits that it was Giggs who settled it.
Enough of this negative thinking on our day of glory. I reflect on Grant’s ridiculous suggestion that there should have been a play-off if we had finished the season level on points. I delight in the final table. Two points ahead. Two more wins. Fifteen more goals scored. Four less conceded. Aggregate winners on the head-to-head. Five points clear on the record against the top four. It might have been a close race but on all rational measures we have been superior.
I walk down the street back to the family and know that for the first time in weeks I’ll be getting some decent kip tonight. We are the champions. There is no feeling like it. Roll on Moscow, the icing on the cake. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
Copyright © Paul James
ManUtd 4-1 Westham: A Tale of Two Todgers
May 31, 2008
What is it about Australians? I was astonished went I first went there with all my prejudiced baggage to discover what a civilised and decent place it is and how good natured and polite they are to travellers and what good blokes the ones you get to know are. Love the place; can’t stop going back. So how do they select the footballers they send over here? There’s Bosnich and Cahill and Kewell and there’s Lucas Neill, and these are just for starters. Are we being used as a criminal colony?
Neill on Saturday might have added to the entertainment value of a pointless end of season fixture for West Ham but he was less than amusing in the context of our situation.
Saturday was the fifteenth anniversary of the day in 1993 when we played Blackburn and celebrated our first championship in 26 years. It was a pleasant enough Spring day and a big day of football issues up and down the country. The motorway was clogged with Bank Holiday travellers and football fans; Bournemouth fans on their way to Carlisle (that’s some long trip to watch your side relegated), Derby fans in superb fancy dress when we stopped for breakfast at Sandbach.
My mood of cautious optimism for United’s fate seemed shared at the start; the Old Trafford crowd, while nothing like as vociferous and inspiring as on Tuesday, was in decent voice. There were actually 76,014 of us by the end; the official announcement, one less, was wrong because our Tom turned up with about twenty minutes left.
Ferguson had picked the same side that got us to Moscow, Rooney and Vidic still injured. The first half, however, did not go half as smoothly as the post-match commentaries would have you believe. West Ham did not lie down at all. For thirty five minutes United did what needed to be done and attacked.
The rearranged West Ham defence could not take the strain and when Wes Brown’s long pass was touched on by Nani’s head and found Ronaldo on the right wing, Ronnie took it cleanly, left Neill on his backside, cut inside and let fly with a drive inside the near post which took a slight deflection off McCartney as the defender backed off. It was 3 minutes, 1-0 and we thought we could all breathe easily.
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ManUtd 1-0 Barcelona: The Lucky Cockroach
May 31, 2008
United’s tenth European Cup semi-final, Ferguson’s fifth, my eighth. Determined to enjoy this evening amid the tension, the usual suspects met half an hour early at Al Nawaz for our last curry of the season. There Margaret discovered a chubby cockroach on the floor outside the ladies loo (an acquaintance of Martin Edwards presumably).
This elicited a discussion of our patronage but I got the feeling that she did not regard the debate as pertinent. She might be persuaded to accept that issues like waiting an hour and a half for our food (“Why, are you in a hurry?” they said), or chickens halved the wrong way, or gippy tummy are merely tangential.
She also accepts the evidence that United’s destiny on the field depends upon what we eat. On the subject of where we eat, however, I fear that cockroaches present an absolute and overriding argument in the female mind, like chocolate, only in reverse.
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Chelsea 2-1 ManUtd: Blue it?
May 31, 2008
Stamford Bridge has always been a unique experience. When I first went there to watch Georgie Best weave his magic against Tommy Docherty’s excellent Chelsea side it was a crumbling ruin set against the railway junction at the seedy end of the Fulham Road. It had been built about ten years before Old Trafford when Britain was top nation and Edwardian industrial power was at its peak and the facilities had been largely untouched since.
The playing area was a vast, uneven field within a cinder track. Even a few years back when we watched Eric get his first United goal there the away end was a massive open terrace with one disgusting toilet cubicle and a urinal big enough to handle four people at a time and you stood behind vast metal cages, the vendors with hot dogs and drinks and monkey nuts on the other side handing their wares through the bars as if you were in the zoo.
When the club began to get rich, a succession of extraordinary stands went up, one of them so tall and vertical that the Special Forces could safely have parachuted from the top tier and the view from it was like watching Subbuteo. Now, of course, they live on the unimaginable wealth sequestered whilst infant democracy blinked in Russia, and it’s not like a football ground at all. It’s like going to an upmarket shopping mall.
You turn right past the brick and concrete offices, built in that universal architecture that would mark the financial quarter of a city in a modern Gulf State, you go past the big block of overpriced city apartments, turn left just past Marco Pierre White’s internationally acclaimed restaurant (where Peter Hain, the former Cabinet Minister, strolls past you on the way to the match) and the visitors’ turnstiles, only five of them, are discreetly tucked away opposite the Millennium Hotel.
Inside you climb the stairs and emerge into a modest modern stadium, the pitch as compact as possible in an area where land can only be afforded by Arab Royalty or Russian capital. This lends itself to an atmosphere of sorts, but unlike other similarly sized grounds, Anfield for example, or White hart Lane, it retains nothing of history or tradition. Roy Bentley would be lost. The Shed itself is celebrated by a plaque on the wall outside as if it were a famous writer.
The home supporters have been packed on the trains like mobile phones packed in a cardboard carton from Shanghai. They come with us up through Purley and Croydon, past the Crystal Palace ground, or from Wimbledon and Putney, past the Fulham ground, or from the West past the Brentford or Queens Park Rangers grounds. They all have blue shirts and sing “We support our local team”.
The pubs around my own home suburb will be packed with them watching the game on television, all assuring each other they have been lifelong Chelsea supporters. Before 1994 I swear I never saw a blue shirt in Wallington.
So we walk along the Fulham Road in the warm Spring sunshine with the gathering blue throng and pockets of shirtless lads loudly bearing raw suntans from Barcelona in good spirits “We’re going to win the football league again, this time at Stamford Bridge…..” Then we hear the team and my heart sinks.
I know this is sandwiched between two Barcelona games. I know Chelsea, who have been whingeing about the injustice of the fixture list, have had an extra day to recover from their semi-final and will get another extra day to recover from this. But we are going to our hardest away game of the season where the home side are unbeaten over 80 games, with a weakened team.
Chelsea also have a lot to do to get to the Champions League Final and they are playing all their available stars. In the stand I listen to the roll call of their intimidating collection of mercenaries and contemplate no Evra, no Scholes, no Hargreaves, no Ronaldo, no Tevez in the starting line-up. We allege we are coming here to win yet we are playing with just Rooney up front.
We are at the back of the upper tier at the Shed End. The singing is good. Some of the men next to me have drunk enough by 12.45 to be having trouble standing in the aisles and they stagger forward causing a domino effect, all in fairly good nature. Out on the pitch all is not well. We see Wes Brown very nearly beat Van der Sar with an early back header, and United can hardly get the ball.
As in Barcelona, there appears to be no connection between the back of the team and the front; we are not relieving the pressure because we are not keeping the ball, we pass it about, then nobody makes a run and it goes back to Van der Sar who punts it upfield where we lose it again. We belt out all the current ditties; what else is there to do? We are not fifteen minutes into the game yet and already counting the minutes.
Then Drogba clashes with Vidic and leaves him on the floor with a bloody mouth. The sight of our big man being carried off on a stretcher is not a good one. Wes Brown moves infield and Hargreaves comes on at right back, thus restricting our ability to bring on the cavalry should it be needed.
I watch with envy as Drogba plays a superb first half for them, winning every aerial ball, flicking on ground passes and headers, every time to a blue shirt. It helps that like most of their team he is bigger than our lot. They look enormous. We have poor old Rooney jumping valiantly against giants for long punts and even when he wins it there is no-one for him to pass to.
They are pressing all over the field; Hargreaves, right in front of me, is constantly under threat, mainly from Kalou. He is good on the ball, but it prevents him doing anything other than occupying a small wedge of space near our corner flag. The central defence copes well with the threat but we are defending much too deep to survive, a fact illustrated when the ball breaks luckily to Joe Cole (who looks like a midget in this company) but he is able to snap in a dangerous shot which ricochets of the bar.
Just as I begin to think we will survive until half time disaster strikes. It’s Drogba. He makes his twentieth run at our defence, this time on our left, and when he crosses there is nobody on Ballack of all people, who does not even have to leap to bury a very competent header; 45 minutes 0-1. As the half time whistle blows it dawns on me that we are lucky to be only one down, it could be worse.
As the second half begins, it gets worse; Rooney holds his groin and starts limping. Then out of nothing Carvalho, whom I rate as one of their best, is given a most unwelcome surprise pass and delivers a shocking panic crossfield ball to Rooney who ignores the injury, outpaces Terry, goes dribbling across Petr Cech and scores from twelve yards out with a lovely reverse ground shot off the left hand post; 57 minutes 1-1.
Goals change games. Rooney has to go off but Ronaldo comes on and suddenly the season is ours again for the taking; Ferguson is a tactical genius after all. Ronaldo is literally wrestled to a standstill in the box by Ballack; but the refereeing team are all looking elsewhere. Anderson is producing thrusting runs, Giggs has a decent shot saved, Giggs and Nani exchange passes on the left and if only Giggs had anticipated the return there was a near post header there for him. Ronaldo is through with a lightning run only to be pulled up wrongly for offside.
Their defence is not that good; when we go at them we cause them serious problems. Perhaps we will bring Tevez on and finish the day in triumph. The board goes up, the substitution is coming and we look at each other in astonishment. He is replacing Anderson with O’Shea. Just when the momentum was building.
Still, the minutes tick by and we might, we just might, get away with it. Drogba takes a great free kick and Van der Sar pulls off a tremendous save. Then Drogba gets through; cries go up for a handball, Van der Sar saves again, phew!
But football is a cruel game. With time running out an unlucky bounce on the right wing, Essien loops in a cross and the other end of the ground erupts in a call for handball. The referee waves play on and the boos begin and then, horror of horrors, he points to the spot. Nobody at our end can see what happened. United players protest vehemently but he’s not going to change his mind again, is he?
The girl in front of me turns round and wants some comfort, some kind of physical contact with the hands, but what good is that? A gun with a telescopic sight might be of some use. Otherwise its in the lap of the gods now. Van der Sar walks forward, holds Ballack up, gets booked. Go right, Edwin, Ballack always shoots to his left. Edwin dives left. Ballack shoots very hard to Van der Sar’s right; 87 minutes 1-2.
Suddenly, reserves or not, United attack with abandon. When that happens I always wonder why we didn’t do it before it was too late. It is chaos in front of us, Nani’s superb pull-down, Ronaldo’s carefully placed shot, the hateful Ashley Cole is on the post to hack it clear. Then Carrick is floored in the area, it looks a clear penalty (it’s not) but the scramble continues, O’Shea gets in a header but Shevchenko is there this time to clear it off the line and, as Hughsie put it, we have run out of time.
International shopping village it might be, but young men outside are beginning to lower the tone. Football fans, lower the tone? Geriatric coward, I vote for avoiding Fulham Broadway and the traditional gauntlet of locals who roll well oiled out of the pubs and hurl abuse.
We walk in sullen anonymity down the Fulham Road and through West Brompton Cemetery where was buried Pocahontas and a Surgeon General who lived before Stamford Bridge was built with the glorious name of Cunter. Ghouls are picnicking in the place. Chelsea fans around us are going on about the best game they’ve seen all season but it doesn’t feel like that to me. Some tosser on a phone at West Brompton Station is telling his mate that Ashley Cole has Ronaldo in his pocket. No mate, he was on the bloody bench; that was the problem.
No matter how much Ferguson and Queiroz complain, I now know that Carrick handled the ball. He says he tried to move his arm, but it doesn’t really look that way, it’s just the kind of thing you say when you might have thrown away the season in one senseless moment. If it all turns to pig shit it won’t be Carrick’s fault anyway; these things happen. We’re looking at an isolated moment and blaming the referee when we might be examining our own tactics and selection.
I can see that legs have to be rested and that two Barcelonas and a Chelsea in a week is tough by any standards, perhaps there was no real choice. But to my simple mind we play without a real striker. We succeed because we have three great, running ball players who can interchange, interpass and destroy anyone. Sure, we have to rotate them, but the system does not work if two or more of them are on the bench. We talked all week about going and winning it on Saturday and we played in a negative, careful way. Half as many shots as Chelsea, just over 40% of possession.
The fates have deserted us in the last couple of weeks and if they’re against you there’s no hope. But you can appease them, you can at least invite them to help you. The season moves on to its climax and is still there for the taking. It’s just that with a little thing here, a little there, we could have been playing our big game on Tuesday and then resting everybody.
Now every single game is vital. I can’t be the only one who has a bad feeling about this. For those of us not playing, I think plenty of alcohol is probably the best solution.
Copyright © Paul James
