ManUtd 3-0 Liverpool: Vital for the Title

March 27, 2008

For the first time in United’s history we had a match on Easter Sunday. I do not approve; Easter Day is for other things. The scaremongering weather forecast and the fact that Tom still had my ticket from Wednesday night did little for my peaceful sleep. I had to be up at 5.30 and out into the sub-zero morning to make Easter Mass at Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Just in case I was tempted not to take the trouble, the only time I have ever missed Mass because of a football match we lost 0-1 at home to Liverpool.

My plans went well. The roads are not teeming with activity at six thirty on a freezing Easter morning, there was some fairly serious snow around Oxfordshire and Warwickshire but up the West of the country the sun was shining, there was a beautiful covering of snow on the Pennines, I made breakfast with John at Sandbach and Tom turned up with my ticket with minutes to spare and I was in my seat for kick off.

The atmosphere inside the ground was what you would expect from one of the bitterest rivalries in European football with both clubs in the last eight of the Champions League and on impressive winning runs, and despite the inhospitable timing of the fixture the ground was packed. 76,000, they said. What’s that? Have we stopped bothering to count properly now?

I was relieved the defence was back together again but I am always disappointed to see Tevez on the bench. Nevertheless the decision to play three central midfielders was a sound one and Scholes, Carrick and Anderson were the right choices. Ronaldo and Giggs were on the flanks and Rooney on his own up front. Liverpool also played it with caution, like a big away European match, Torres, lately in devastating form, their lone striker.

Ferguson had picked the First XI, and they blew Liverpool away. We were not hindered by referee Steve Bennett’s decision to send off their most aggressive player after 44 minutes but by then the pattern of the match was clear, and at the end Liverpool were grateful to get off the pitch only three goals down.

The match started with both sides cagey but United began to notch up the tempo after twenty minutes or so. By then it was evident that Ferdinand had complete control of Torres, who was already a frustrated young man, feigning injury with each challenge and at odds with the officials. It was equally evident that Anderson had the measure of Gerrard, that Scholes and Carrick were out-passing the Liverpool midfield and that it was our fullbacks, not theirs, who were getting upfield to threaten.

Already United had missed at least three really good chances to score and Liverpool had created nothing. First, Anderson produced a wonderful ball to put Rooney through one-on-one. Rooney was fouled in the area by Carragher but kept his feet and was not given a penalty; Reina smothered the shot.

Then Scholes put Rooney in with a brilliant forty yard quickly taken free kick, another one-to-one; this time Rooney could not quite pluck it out of the air. Then Giggs delivered a superb free kick from the right and Ronaldo’s shot hit the far post. In between Reina nearly put the ball in his own net from Giggs’ cross.

From a Liverpool corner Arbeloa impeded Rooney to prevent the swift counter-attack, but the referee waved play on. The attack thus developed a little slower, but as United yet again worked the ball around the Liverpool area Scholes passed wide left to Rooney, who retrieved the overhit ball, putting in a cross which begged to be attacked.

Wes Brown did just that; nobody jumped with him, not even the goalkeeper really, and the ball looped off his left shoulder blade slowly that from where we were it looked as if it had gone over the bar and behind, but no; it was nestling in the back of the Scoreboard End net and it was 33 minutes 1-0.

Then, just before half time, Torres was fouled by Rio on the Liverpool left, quite a way out. He said something to the referee who had done his best up to then to let the two teams get on with it. Torres had already tested our patience by lying like a dying man on the pitch until United players put the ball out, fit as a fiddle when he stood up. Bennett had had enough and booked him, harshly you might think.

Mascherino, who had already had to be booked for a late, poor lunge at Paul Scholes and had been pushing both the rules of the game and the referee’s patience all game, ran from the middle of the field to speak to Bennett. None of us can know what he said but he had clearly said “Fuck off” to Bennett on at least three previous occasions and gestured to the linesman about his eyesight. I don’t expect he sprinted twenty yards to invite Bennet to his birthday party.

His own team mates tried to stop him but he was not listening to any common sense and out came the yellow and red cards and he was off. But would he go? No he wouldn’t. We got the full dramatic works; gestures, stewards, trainers, the manager restraining him. It really looked as if he was going to thump Bennett. Eventually, off he was led like a martyr to the tunnel, accompanied by Liverpool staff as seventy five and three quarter thousand of us gleefully sang “Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio”.

United began the second half with intent. When Rooney cleverly dribbled his way around the defenders right in front of us and crossed for Ronaldo, Ronnie had got himself clear yet he somehow managed to miss, allowing Reina the chance to save the half hearted chip. A few minutes later Van der Sar’s clearance was brilliantly read by Rooney, his control was perfection, but his shot cannoned off Reina’s leg.

For a period the ten men representing Europe’s City of Culture took heart from the misses and pressed quite persistently, but Ferdinand was cool itself in some tight situations in the area, Brown was generally alert to the danger and Vidic produced some of his no-nonsense Serbian tackling. Liverpool got nowhere; in all the match they had one shot on target; we had 24 shots to their eight and 64% of the possession, which is a spectacular figure for a match at this level.

Giggs and Anderson were taken off and Nani and Tevez came on and immediately the Liverpool defence had more than they could handle. Tevez could have scored almost immediately only for Reina to fingertip it wide, then from a quite brilliant Scholes pass Ronaldo somehow allowed Reina to push an absolute certainty onto the bar. From Nani’s resulting left wing corner Ronnie made amends, Alonso unable to keep up with his powerful run, the goalkeeper after all those good saves wimpishly flailing at the ball. From four, five yards out Ronaldo nodded it into the far corner; 78 minutes 2-0.

The celebrations around me had hardly died down when, with United running at them from all positions now, Nani took a Scholes pass and fed Rooney; Rooney took three defenders and produced a reverse ball to Nani on the edge of the area, then Nani took the ball outside the area left to right, suddenly reversing direction with a cracking shot just inside the left hand post; 80 minutes 3-0.

It was a wonderful feeling, I can tell you. I’d made the effort to start my Easter Day in church renewing my Baptismal vows and for ten minutes it felt as if I was ending it in Heaven; 3-0 and the Scousers well and truly stuffed. “That’s why we’re Champions” we all sang. Rafa Benitez was incoherent with rage and disappointment at the post match interview and spoke utter rubbish. Victories against Liverpool are so sweet; you can never get enough of them!

Driving home through the evening as the temperatures dropped and the gritting trucks were out on the roads in force I listened as Chelsea beat Arsenal to assume second place in the table, five points behind us with an ominously easy run-in.

Then Spooney on Six-o-Six tried to tell me that our match had been dross and none of the sycophants who rang up had the gumption to tell him he was talking bollocks. He’s a Liverpool supporter, of course, and he wasn’t at the match. A bloke rang in to give his eyewitness account of the sending off and then confessed he’d left his seat to go to the toilet at the time.

The standard of debate was riveting, so I put on the London Mozart Players’ recording of the Fortieth and the Forty First symphonies and contemplated the words of that famous Liverpool poet John Toshack which went something like “Easter time is always vital; that is when we win the title.” Such intricacy and subtlety blossoming from the City of Culture.

ManUtd 3-0 Liverpool: Vital for the Title

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ManUtd 3-0 Liverpool: Vital for the Title

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