It’s not often that I slag off Manchester United but their performance last night against Sunderland, especially in the first half, was absolutely terrible. They could not string more than 1 or 2 passes together and were needlessly giving the ball away at every opportunity.
Darren Bent’s opening goal was a sublime strike and not much blame can be attached to the United team. Normally after playing poorly and conceding an early goal Manchester United are able to elevate their game and come back, this was absolutely not the case yesterday.
Scholes looked like a liability in the midfield, almost every pass went astray. He got a needless yellow card after just 24 minutes; I was praying he was not going to do a repeat of the Spurs game and end up taking an early shower. Fortunately Ferguson subbed him at half time, but Anderson was not able to make much of a difference. Giggs has a lot of life left in him, but I’m not so sure that Scholes can still perform consistently at the top level.
In the second half United did show a bit more intent, and managed to pull the score back level through a magical bicycle kick from Berbatov. Dimitar was one of the few players who didn’t play poorly.
It didn’t take Sunderland long to recover the lead when the ball was floated into the box and Kenwyne Jones jumped over Foster to head it home. Foster absolutely should have won the ball. Jones is a big boy but if Foster was concerned about the power of Jones he should have punched the ball clear. Instead he opted to catch the ball and got steamrolled by Jones.
At this point I have seen enough of Foster. I was all for Ferguson giving Foster a chance to prove himself. Sir Alex has given him chance after change and Foster has blown them all. There are so many holes in his game I don’t know where to begin; every single backpass he receives he either slices into touch or gives the fans a nasty scare, he’s poor on crosses and highballs as he doesn’t have the power to collect or punch the ball away from big forwards, he’s no good on one-on-one situation, the only thing he can do is stop shots.
I for one will be very relieved when Van de Sar comes back, and I think Ferguson should seriously consider bringing in some new keepers as neither Foster or Kuszczak seem capable replacements when Van de Sar retires.
United did manage to steal a point right at the death after Sunderland were reduced to 10 men when Richardson saw a second yellow for kicking the ball away. Evra’s shot was deflected by Anton Ferdinand into the Sunderland net.
Despite conceding 2 goals I feel that the United back four played pretty well, it was really the midfield four and keeper that let the team down last night.
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