Last weekend I travelled from Belfast to Manchester to watch my beloved team, United v Derby County. It was my first trip to Old Trafford for about 13 years so I was not only excited to see players in the flesh such as Tevez, Rooney and Ronaldo but also to see how much the ground has changed since my last visit.
As it turned out, the weather was just awful! It rained most of Saturday and was so cold it felt like sub zero temperatures. I was seated in the upper tier of the North Stand which meant that I had the cover of the roof to partially protect me from the elements but boy is that far back from the pitch! In the warm up I enjoyed watching how serious some players were. For example, Kuscak probably trained the hardest, diving around a muddy pitch (and bizarrely being allowed to cut it up) but the funniest sight was Tevez. Never have I seen a player look so disinterested during a pre-match warm up. He barely broke a sweat as all other players looked determined and well prepared. As it turned out of course Tevez later stole the show but onto that in a minute.
So after patiently waiting an hour and half in my seat the game kicked off and United looked pretty average. After about half an hour they started to have better possession and when near the end of the first half Giggs scored his 100th league goal . That was effectively game over. Tevez got another before the break but the real star of the first half was Anderson. What a superb prospect he looks. Not once did he give the ball away, he seemed to win every 50/50 tackle and cover every blade of grass.
Second half Tevez scored a brilliant strike from the edge of the box. As I mentioned above, in the pre-match he looked lazy and disinterested yet for the whole 90mins he chased every ball and hassled defenders - who says foreign players don’t like the English weather?
After a mess up in defence, which probably wouldn’t have happened had Ferdinand stayed on the pitch Ronaldo dived to win a penalty. Not one for sportsmanship he wouldn’t let Tevez take the penalty but tucked it away nicely himself to leave the final score was 4-1.
The next day I was looking forward to reading the Sunday papers to see what they would report on having seen everything myself. Would they talk about Anderson’s brilliant midfield display? Perhaps how Tevez worked so hard and looked a class above with his 2 goals? Maybe they’d shine the light on Vidic who again was solid as a rock and commanding in defence? No. All reports (that I saw) were about Giggs. Man of the match they said, all because he scored his 100th league goal? Sure he played ok but there were at least 4/5 players in front of him who did better.
It makes me wonder do newspapers actually send their journalists to these matches or do they rely on Match of the Day highlights? I’d be interested in know if any other Premiership fans who regularly watch their team experience the same thing? It’s a joke really and makes you wonder why you actually bother to read the gutter press!
Didn’t watch that game in particular, but it generally depends on the journo. I think it was nice for them to make a fuss of Giggs for his 100th league goal (fantastic player over what, about 15 years?) - but making him man of the match for that alone is daft.
But then again, frequently MoM awards are chosen by the corporate sponsors, who often know bugger-all about football, and just pick the player who they’ve heard of.
My gripe is with my local paper who seem unable to give Newcastle players scores comparable with Boro and Sunderland - on a given weekend sunderland lost, newcastle & boro won: boro players averaged 7.4, sunderland 6.9, newcastle 6.1…
I could understand it a bit more if they were more honest “we expect better quality from newcastle than the other two, so mark them harder” but in practice it means the north east’s player of the year award will go to some mackem left-back who wouldn’t be fit to lace the boots of the equivalent toon player, simply because the toon are seen to have underperfromed whereas if sunderland finish 17th it’s a party.
Yes, expectations are different, yes, our players are underperforming. But they’re still performing better than that dross served up at the SoS (stadium of shite)…
anyway, it’s your own fault. you provoked the rant…!