I hope Gibbs never passed up the opportunity to say "is it because I'm black" as on this rare occasion he would have had a valid point!
Utds line up away to West Ham De Gea, Rafael, Jones, Carrick, Buttner, Mata, Fellaini, Fletcher, Young, Kagawa, Rooney. Carrick and Jones at centre back.
Amazing Beckham style goal from Rooney - almost from half way line. Probably a foul to win the ball though!...
Nice to see Mata playing in a position where he can be effective. Utd's problem all season is that the defence never looks comfortable - and 90 minutes without a blunder is a very, very long time.
Goal keepers often get sent off for handling outside of the area. I think an intentional handball can be either red or yellow.
I'm guessing that the Wenger's 1,000th Game commemorative DVD isn't going to sell too well, either. Not with Arsenal fans, anyway.
West Ham should be forced to change their adverts to say The Academy of Hoofball. Plan A: Hoof it. Plan B: Bring on Carlton Cole and see Plan A. It's utterly embarrassing that we've lost twice to them this season.
Absolutely shameful But on another note....just how bad is Ashley Young that he still manages to look **** even when Utd are actually having a decent game?
I labelled them the "Academy of Hoof" over a year ago, Before I even went to their place to watch their Academy kids hoof it for the first 15-20 mins in the game against Spurs.
I was afraid that might happen when van Persie's injury was announced. Everyone can play in their natural positions, barring Carrick in this game, so it should be a far better balance. It did help that Allardyce failed to switch things up once it was clear that Fellaini was being used to control West Ham's endless hoofing, though.
Rooney can play 9 or 10, but is better as a 9 with Mata at 10. With some steel in midfield in Fletcher and Fellaini, there are options for Moyes with the other midfield/wide positions. As good as RvP can be when fit and firing, RvP, Rooney and Mata don't all fit into the same XI. Moyes seemed to stumble across a front six which was effective even if the defence is still a car crash most games. If there is £80M to spare on 3 quality defenders and a holding midfielder, this Utd team can still compete
Yes, as we saw at Villa park as recently as last week Losing a midfielder would have been far worse than losing a defender the way the game was going. It was a nailed on penalty and nailed on red card for intent alone. We all agree it was the right decision but the wrong man, wouldn't have changed the result though.
You can't seriously think you were hard done by at Villa. I doubt even Mourinho believes that deep down. Anyway, I think too much is being made of the incident. Whether it was the ref or the lino who got it wrong, it's a freak incident and nothing bad happened out of it really. I've seen some say that Marriner should've taken Chamberlain's word for it which is bollocks, the refs shouldn't trust a players word. They'll happily swear blind to the ref that they made a legitimate tackle, didn't touch the ball before it went out for a goalkick, etc so how can the ref just take his word at that point. If it had turned out to be some elaborate ploy by Arsenal to get an injured player sent off instead of the right man and the ref believed them he'd have been utterly humiliated. When it's an opposition player correcting him and they have no conceivable advantage to gain from it then fair enough but that's very rare too.
