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!