De Gea – Made a fumble for their first goal and looked troubled throughout the game when dealing with aerial threats. Not his best performance. 5
Smalling – Asleep for the Newcastle third and caught napping on too many occasions. Added very little going forward too. 5
Rio – All over the place at the back this evening. Failed to lead the team and control the defence. Slow and uncharacteristically disappointing. 4
Evans – Misplaced some easy passes and wasn’t his usual composed self from defence. Scored a good goal but was unfortunate to put the ball into his own net after a shocking refereeing decision. 6
Evra – Having pulled one back and fallen behind again thanks to an own goal and a bad refereeing call, it was up to the captain to pick up the ball and slot it into the back of the net to stop his team from collapsing. A real presence in the United side who’s playing some of the best football of his life. 7
Valencia – Shockingly poor for the majority of the game until the last 15 minutes where he actually pulled his finger out for once and started running at players rather than looking for the easy option every single time. It might seem like I’m being harsh on him but its because he’s our #7. He’s supposed to be our creative outlet and match-winner but its not enough having a good 10 minutes cameo ever six matches. 4
Carrick – Lost the ball for their first but picked himself up and started to dictate the game from deep afterwards. Constantly covering for his disappointing midfield partner made his job even more difficult but he still managed to set up both our third and four goals. 8
Scholes – Pathetic performance from someone I’d normally expect to flourish in a game as open as this. Offered nothing going forward and played a few risky passes at the back. He shouldn’t start games in my opinion but he can still offer plenty going forward. 3
Giggs – Unfairly on the end of some stick before the game had even started, Ryan worked hard and looked to be our only real creative attacking outlet for the first 70 minutes as Valencia did nothing. Put in a few good crosses for the attackers. 7
Robin van Persie – Heavily involved with our first and second goals which came directly from his crosses, he made the best use of whatever little of the ball he saw. After we conceded the third, he looked like a possessed man determined to win the game for his side. Worked hard, tracked back and had to quality to score. What a player. 8 (MOTM)
Hernandez – Failed to get involved throughout the game and missed one easy chance after the other. Still, credit to him for keeping his cool and slotting the winner in with a perfectly timed run. However I still think he’s best coming on from the bench as well. 6
Subs:
Cleverley – Injected some much needed enthusiasm, energy and quality into a slow and uninspired United side. Says everything about how highly Sir Alex rates him by turning to him when he needed someone to win the game for him, and Tom didn’t disappoint. 8
Fletcher – N/A
(A lot of people tend to comment on these posts but I’m unable to respond to them via mobile. If you want, feel free to tweet me @Nashat_Hassan so I can answer your questions or reply to you comments. Thanks)
Valencia is playing poorly for two reasons. His nasty injury last season seems to have sapped him of a lot of his confidence running at defenders. Secondly and most importantly, because of the team’s lack of invention through the middle in recent seasons they’ve almost made Valencia the defacto option in attack. Towards the end of last season teams increasingly began to realize how dependent and one-dimensional United were in this regard, and began to work out Valencia’s limitations and how to shut him down. Doing so stifled United’s foray’s going forward and left the team utterly bereft of ideas, which is why they dropped a 9 point lead so dramatically over the last few weeks.
De Gea 5, Smalling 5, Rio 5, Evans 6, Evra 7, Valencia 5, Carrick 6, Scholes 3, Giggs 7, RVP 8, Hernandez 6.
SUBS : Cleverly 7.
Scholes shouldn’t start the game anymore. He has no pace and look like to loss his ability to produce any good going forward. He made our game slower and less effective.
Cleverly is the one that change the rhythm of our game really. Overall, however, RVP is our best player by far, no doubt about that.
Additonal comments:
Evra – Did so well last night especially on his offense role. His performance was extremely solid. Also, he was brave to shot a great goal. 9
Evans – Altought he contributed a goal, he made quite a lot of mistake on his forward pass. He was lack of confidence. He used to pass the ball to Rio for further distribution. He cannot work by himself. He usually did well when Rio was beside him. That’s his essentially problem. He must solve this issue. 5
Rio – He was slow but his experience made the defense more solid. Besides, he was confident to hold and distribute the ball that was the best among all the defensive players in Man Utd. 6
Giggs – When I read the line-up, I knew it would be a great problem when putting both Giggs and Scoles together in the midfield. Giggs used to do offensive and give up defense. Last night he was working extremely hard on offense although he still didn’t do well on defense. I was impressed by his great work. 7
Scholes – He used to do well on distribution. But when there was no good wingers, he could do nothing. Besides, he was slow to block in midfield and he needed to make foul instead. 3
i love man u comtribution yesterday..
Dont agree with your opinion on evra. He’s great going forward but very average in defending. He’s still very good though.
Nailed it.
Carrick was MOTM. He played three world class passes over the top of the defence in the 2nd half and kept creating chances until Hernandez finally took one.
Valencia is shit he’s not world class, people need to realise that, he doesn’t deserve to wear that number 7 unless that’s not uniteds symbolic Jersey anymore I mean from Ronaldo to Owen and Valencia it seems like a mockery or killing the hype on that number.
I think it is very sad to see the increasingly critical comments on Paul Scholes. Unfortunately they are fully justified and it seems to me that this is becoming apparent to The man himself who doesn’t look to me as though he is enjoying it much anymore.
The worry is that Fergie hasn’t got enough reliable alternatives. It would appear that Fletcher is now a squad player at best and Andersons fitness remains a perennial problem leaving us basically with Carrick and Cleverley in central midfield. Unless Fergie sees Jones and Kagawa in midfield in which case he will have to put that to the test between now and May.
In any event we cannot fudge the midfield transfer issue much longer particularly if we have any genuine ambitions in Europe..