Man United were steamrollered

Posted on | October 27, 2009 | 4 Comments

If any Manchester United supporter was not aware before the defeat at Anfield it is clear now to anyone who loves the club that we were second best in midfield.

Without Owen Hargreaves and Darren Fletcher we are pretty lightweight in that department against Liverpool’s physical, aggressive approach. There’s no way that Paul Scholes, Michael Carrick, Ryan Giggs and Valencia are ever going to match that sort of confrontation. They are ball players, skilful passers and when they have time they can outplay the best in the world but the only way a Liverpool side without Stevie Gerrard –the best midfielder in Europe for me – could compete against us was to knock us out of our stride, rough us up and stop us playing nice football. That’s exactly what they did.

With four defeats behind them they had to win; reputations were on the line from the manager down to the players. They steam-rollered us and with our two best physical combatants injured we were on the back foot from the word go.

Fletcher has come on a lot in the last 12 months but the guy we miss most is Hargreaves, a player with a fantastic engine, a ball winner with a dynamic, all-action approach.

Brian Clough, a good friend, once told me that you have to win the midfield. That’s the battleground, that’s where it’s tough, that’s where you’ve got to get your foot in. That’s where we came up short.

We also have problems up front where it’s obvious that without Cristiano Ronaldo there is no pace through the middle. At £30 million Dimitar Berbatov looks like another expensive misfit like Juan Sebastien Veron. I’m sorry but he doesn’t cut it. The modern game is all about pace and although he’s got very talented ball skills he’s too slow.

We’ve always had good or great finishers up front like Tommy Taylor, Dennis Violet, Denis Law, Mark Hughes and Eric Cantona. When I talk about that vital speed there was no better example than when Torres won the game with one fantastic moment of forward play.
It was the only chance of the game when his pace took him in front of Rio Ferdinand, he showed clever know-how to shield the ball with his body, the skill to control the ball at speed and a clinical finish.

Last year Liverpool beat us at home and away and Torres beat up Vidic as he did Ferdinand at Anfield and these two are suppposed to be the best centre backs in the league. When Liverpool come to Old Trafford, if the central defenders can’t do better, Torres will embarrass them again.

The whole game was ill-tempered, scrappy and not a great advert for football but one magical moment came out of it.

Although the referee was right to send off Vidic, Jamie Carragher should also have been shown a red card but the ref bottled it. Not that it would have altered the result, Liverpool were the better team on the day.

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