Manchester United have the best centre-back partnership in England and owe the point they earned today to the pair. Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidić won yesterday in the air and while they’ve ridden their luck to remain unbeaten with over half the season gone they are still incredibly hard to break down.
Jermain Defoe returned from suspension against Charlton last week and scored two goals, but Harry Redknapp made the odd decision of picking Peter Crouch (who is in mediocre form) ahead of him. Even stranger it took Redknapp 78 minutes to bring Defoe on.
Both sides started brightly, Wayne Rooney skipping past William Gallas and shooting wide as early as the second minute. After eight minutes Luka Modrić shook off a shirt-pulling Darren Fletcher, played the ball wide to Alan Hutton whose cross found Crouch, but his shot was wide. Shortly after Modrić made a run along the byline, but his square ball was blocked by Ferdinand.
Rooney had a shot saved and Rafael van der Vaart headed into the side-netting from a Gareth Bale cross.
Michel Carrick and Rooney came close early in the second half, but Spurs dominated possession. Crouch wasn’t winning anything in the air and Bale and Van der Vaart were less incisive than usual. Despite having a lot of the ball a goal didn’t really look like it was coming even when United were reduced to ten men. Rafael was booked in the first half for a lunge and with 16 minutes to go he clipped Benoît Assou-Ekotto’s heels curtailing a Tottenham counter attack. Its difficult to say whether it was deliberate or not, but like the farce of the Nani goal in the away game it probably didn’t have much bearing on the result.
Defoe finally got on the pitch replacing Wilson Palacios. Jermaine Jenas has been in far better form this season, but he’s no holding midfielder and the decision to play Palacios proved wise. Aside from a couple of wayward long-range efforts he had a good game.
As the match fizzled out Van der Vaart put a curling shot inches from the top corner and in the final seconds an Assou-Ekotto interception stopped Rooney from having a go at a winner.
No comments:
Post a Comment