De Gea – Pulled off an impressive double save before City’s first and and even better save from Silva which smashed off his chest and onto the crossbar. Stood up tall in front of goal and took one for the team. 8
Rafael – One of the very few ‘foreign’ players that really understand what it means to play for United. Hard working, committed and never one to shy from a challenge, he set the example for his teammates. 8
Rio – Held the defence like a leader should and read the game well. Intercepted important passes/crosses and won header after header. 8
Evans – Just compare his performance today with our 6-1 defeat at the same time last season. Such an vital player for us now. 7
Evra – Had a good match overall but his poor positioning allowed City to expose the free space in defence which they subsequently scored from. 6
Valencia – Better than his recent performances for us, he actually passed the ball well without delaying our attacks. Tracked back and connected well with Rafael. Faded away late on. 6
Carrick – Roy Keane would have been proud of Michael today. He ran the midfield show and made it near impossible for the opposition to pass the ball freely. He was everywhere. 9
Cleverley – Full of energy and enthusiasm, Tom was eager to get hold of the ball and get the team playing from the start. 7
Young – Arguably his best performance in a United shirt yet. Always tracking back with his runner, and carrying out his attacking duties too, he was our best player in the first half. 8
Rooney – Finished well for his two goals. More importantly though was his contribution to the midfield. Covered the spaces in midfield and stopped the City midfield from overrunning our ‘inferior’ central midfield. 8
Van Persie – You know what I define as ‘world class’? Someone who can still influence a football match on their ‘off-day’. Robin only had two contributions to the game today, one of which saw Young score an incorrectly disallowed goal, whilst the other was our winner. RvP is world class. 8
Subs:
Smalling – Came in for Evans and showed a tonne of maturity when reading the game. 8
Jones – Replaced the tiring Cleverley. 6
Welbeck – Distributed the City defence with his pace and directly contributed the our winner. 7
Rooney has a least a 9 for me. Spot on with the rest. What a team, this result has hopefully put to rest some of the negativity from fans.
“One of the very few ‘foreign’ players that really understand what it means to play for United.”
Ouch. Jingoism anyone? Or mere confusion? Because Keane, Cantona, RVP, Van Nistelrooy, Ronaldo, Nani, Van der Sar, Evra, Berbatov, Stam, etc. etc. didn’t and don’t know? Okay, it’s a fan site and you’re not responsible for producing good journalism but still….
You should give Rio a 4 because he let himself get hit in the head with a coin by a City fan! He should have defended that, the lazy Twittering bum!
Oh my god – get a hobbie mate. Snooooozzeee comment.
How many of those mentioned players are playing for us today?
You’re a knobhead.
Narrow minded ignorant rubbish – taxi for Suarez wannabes. Evra? Vidic? RVP? Hernandez? It’s also perfectly acceptable to refer to Keane, Cantona, Stam, Ruud etc in the context of that stupid comment.
Cleverly 7? Rafael just 8? Rooney with 2 goals just 8? Persie d match winner just 8? Hahahahahahahaha carrick our jittery midfielder wit 9? Have a rethink except carrick is connected to u somhow
Good overall analogy.
Still disagree with the loving of Jonny Evans though. He did OK.
Would much prefer Smalling or Jones to start ahead of him.
Agree with those ratings.
Special mention to Smalling – not easy to come into such a frenetic game half-way through but he excelled when he came on. Lacks some of the authority Evans is starting to show but still could be a better foil for Vidic. As he is our 4th choice centre half, not to mention Phil Jones, I’m still baffled why people think a transfer priority should be a defender. Our defensive problems – as showed yesterday – can be solved by concentration and resilience, not new recruits.
De Gea was very good and hopefully he will keep his place in goal for the foreseeable future. I don’t believe its healthy to rotate the goalkeepers and De Gea needs to know he is the number 1 for us now. I think Evra did well and deserved a 7, but I agree with the other ratings.
Valencia is an important player for us and he works hard for the team. It wasn’t his best performance yesterday and hopefully he can rediscover the form his showed last season. If Valencia reaches that level again then we will be a real threat for the second half of the season.
Young put in his best performance of the season and hopefully he will push on and show that consistency needed. Young showed from his Aston Villa days that he is capable of doing more. The guy normally gets double figures in assist and contributes at least 9-10 goals a season. We should still expect the same this season.