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ManUtd 4-0 Aston Villa: Poetry in the time of the Flood

April 2, 2008

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ManUtd 4-0 Aston Villa: Poetry in the time of the Flood Paul James

I nearly drove with the roof down on Saturday because it was a lovely sunny spring day when I left after breakfast. By the time I had reached Stafford the first spots of rain were falling. By the time I parked in Rusholme for lunch there was a good old fashioned Manchester drizzle.

By the time I parked at Trafford Bar it was throwing it down; cold and grey and miserable, the puddles in the waste ground turning into ponds, the tyres of the passing buses throwing great waves of oily water. At least Arsenal were losing. By the time I got to the ground I was wet through my coat and my jumper and my tee shirt, and Arsenal had won. I wrung the sleeves of my coat and the water spilt from it as if I had put it in to soak.

How would it be possible to play football on such a day? Villa should have won at Stamford Bridge and The Emirates, surely the prospect of Rome on Tuesday would distract United and the weather would do the rest. And Kuszczak in goal! Oh dear. At least we were starting with Tevez and Rooney back together up front.

Mark Lawrenson and Lou Macari said that what followed was a one-sided lesson in football mastery but what do they know about football? The Sunday Times had it as “a romp past hapless Villa” but it did not look that way to me, especially at the start. Perhaps the tension of the run-in is warping my judgement.

Aston Villa looked a far better team than Liverpool. Fast, skilful on the ball, not a hint of the rough house about them, they set off to play football, gained territory and possession and looked likely to cause us difficulty; three or four early Scholes passes were charged down, Kuszczak looked jittery.

Giggs started brilliantly up the left and Tevez had one of his tiger days; all over the pitch, closing down every Villa player, hunting, harassing, tackling, the back of his shirt after half an hour looking as if he had been playing Rugby League in the days that was a winter sport.

We looked solid at the back against a young and nifty collection of England hopefuls, but the difference between the sides was the breathtaking quality of some of our attacking; this got better and better as the game progressed until it reached a level bordering on the ethereal.

At first these attacks were coming against the balance of possession; Rooney’s volley was blocked from a Giggs corner, a beautiful move through Giggs and Carrick ended with control at speed and a reverse drive from Ronaldo which Carson saved well and Wes Brown headed another Giggs corner narrowly over. When Giggs took yet another corner on the left at the Scoreboard End, the ball was nodded down at the far post by two Villa defenders, Ronaldo stuck it in and it was 19 minutes 1-0.

I felt a bit sorry for Villa; the better team up to then, they just blink at a corner and wham bam thank you Ma’am they find themselves behind. Phil Hughes said “That was a Denis Law goal”. There is no higher accolade but he must have better eyesight than me because now I have seen it on television I wee what he meant. Ronnie reacted instantaneously and coolly in a heavily crowded area and backheeled it from eight yards through Laursen’s legs and past the defender on the line and the goalkeeper.

With a goal of such brilliant cheek came release for United. Though we still did not utterly dominate the rest of the half, the moves began to flow; one such left Giggs just unable to read the move and arrive at the space in time. Then Tevez successfully challenged for the ball half way down the field on the right.

He gave it to Scholes and through Carrick, Giggs and Scholes again the ball was transferred with speed and accuracy in a move which stretched the width of the field and back, and half its length, to allow Scholes to find Ronaldo’s run wide right and Ronaldo to produce a wonderful cross and Tevez to end what he had started, diving at the far post to head the ball into the net; 33 minutes 2-0; sporting perfection.

The cold monsoon eased off at half time but I was by now shivering and the wetness had soaked evenly through all my garments and left me thinking that if I didn’t catch pneumonia today I probably never would. As the players came out for the second half the rain fell again across the stadium in great grey clouds.

United went all out to finish off the game. Tevez fed Rooney with a lovely ball and ran for the return, but Rooney chose to drag it onto his right foot and he shot past the post. This trademark profligacy was worrying; within seconds Vidic had had a rare lapse and Maloney was clean through on goal. He beat Kuszczak all ends up with his shot but dragged it wide of the post.

That was a let-off but the movement which took us down the other end of the pitch was a joy to behold; Scholes’ run wide left superb and he picked out Ronaldo on the right with inch perfection. Ronnie’s volley on the run was all power and drama, but it just took a deflection and hit the bar. Then came the moment we needed.

Giggs produced a long low ball upfield on the left and Ronaldo’s backheel was as instinctive as it was perfect. The ball split the defence, Rooney read it as ever and this time he did not waste the energy; at pace he took it beyond Carson and the defender with one dummy and then successfully rolled it in for a long awaited and most deserved goal; 52 minutes 3-0.

Maloney brought an excellent fingertip over the bar from Kuszczak (who for all his jitters is a top stopper) but any pretence of equality between the sides vanished with a triple substitution. Off went Carrick, Rio and Evra and on came O’Shea, Hargreaves and Anderson.

With water now visibly settling on the sodden surface and the ball throwing up spray and needing twice the normal energy to project it for any distance along the ground, the display started; in what seemed impossible conditions our players sprayed the ball about between each other apparently effortlessly and as the dispirited Villa wilted in the cold and the rain I began to see that for this day at least my only fear should be whether the game would be abandoned; with the artists strutting their stuff and every player in red giving their opponents no peace when the ball was lost. Quite frankly, we were looking like one of the best United sides I have ever seen.

From Hargreaves’ splendid right wing cross Tevez somehow contrived to miss another diving header when the ball apparently defied the laws of physics and went wide from only a few feet out. Anderson, showing Tevez qualities and winning the ball deep from a less than fifty fifty chance, fed Rooney; whose effort clipped the post.

Even Ronaldo, when he lost the ball outside the area, challenged and set up the second phase, then nutmegged Rio Coker with a lovely ball for Rooney to finish inside the post, first time from the corner of the area, all his goalscoring confidence returned; 70 minutes 4-0. There was a wonderful little collector’s moment when Ronaldo, now wide on the right delivered yet another inch perfect forty yard crossfield ball and Rooney, wide on the left, found the time to applaud it before he switched his attention to plucking it out of the air and instantly controlling it.

It was a pity that Rooney’s hattrick goal, from Hargreaves, was not allowed, but it was clearly offside. We were so good that I didn’t even notice that Giggs gad been withdrawn and we were playing the last period of the game with ten men until the applause started in the far corner and I saw he was walking down the tunnel.

Never has a more thoroughly cold and uncomfortable semi-drowned rat reached safety than when I got to the shelter of my car; my underwear was cold and damp and my feet coloured brown from the colour washed out of my sodden leather shoes. I took off all I decently could and turned the heater up full to try to dry myself out as I drove home, slowing down to a more respectable speed once I had had the uncomfortable experience of aquaplaning on the M5; ABS is brilliant, but it only works on the assumption that one’s tyres are in contact with the tarmac.

My impression of the game, at odds with that of the experienced neutral commentators, was borne out by the statistics; we had 56% of the possession overall and 19 shots to 14. They had nearly twice as many corner kicks as us. It was in the quality of what we did that we excelled, and to see this done in wild weather was far more gripping than if it had been on a summer bowling green in the welcoming sunshine. Sport can offer a raw beauty out of unpromising circumstances; that is what engages the passion.

With Chelsea’s narrow win on Sunday my euphoria evaporated and gnawing worry set in again. We were but one game nearer the end of the season, still five points clear of a dogged and determined pursuer, but Middlesbrough is next, sandwiched between the two Roma games. Now, there’s a tricky one. There is much fretting to be done before anything is won or lost.

Copyright © Paul James

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