Premier League Review: Manchester derby stalemate – Part 2
Continued from http://www.senore.com/Premier-League-Review-Manchester-derby-stalemate-Part-1-a40591
With the help of James Milner, they started to look dangerous; they forced a foul from veteran Paul Scholes who also got a yellow card in the 1st half and the resulting free kick was taken superbly by ex-United player
Tevez, only to be saved by the Dutch keeper.
Chances from either side were limited; Nani’s free-kick lacked pace and Berbatov’s volley went straight to keeper Hart who made a comfortable save. In the stands watching was the England coach Fabio Capello ahead of the next week
friendly with France.
The 1st half ended with a foul from old boy Scholes on Milner. It was a typical challenge by Paul and as a result, he misses Saturday’s important trip to Aston Villa which is going to be very tough.
Both United fullbacks Rafael and Patrice Evra got injured in the 2nd
half and were replaced by Wes Brown and John O’Shea respectively. United’s last change came in the 78th minute when the Bulgarian striker was replaced by Javier Hernandez commonly known as ‘Chicharito’.
On the other hand, Mancini brought on Adam Johnson, Aleksandar Kolarov and Emmanuel Adebayor in place of James Milner, James Boateng and Carlos Tevez. It was a like-for-like replacement and didn’t try to impose any attacking move
from both teams.
United manager Ferguson believes his team should have won the game with the possession they had.
After the game, he said: "It's a decent result but we don't count draws away from home as the target before the game. Our target is to win the game and I think we had enough possession to do that. Some of our football was good,
we were good on the ball but we needed to create openings to win the match and we only really made two which was difficult.”
Mancini was quite content with a draw and appreciated his team’s overall progress.
The Italian said: “I think it was a difficult game for both teams. I think the result is correct but we improved from last year because we didn't concede a goal in the last minute. I wanted to win this game but sometimes it is
better to draw than lose. We played the game to win, though."
Pointing the finger on his counterpart, Fergie blamed the former Inter Milan boss of negative tactics and playing for a draw and turning the much-talked about derby into a forgettable affair, but Mancini thinks that he has full
right to play for a draw and conceded that his team was fatigued.
United’s Dutch keeper Edwin van der Sar believes that the Blues didn’t try to come forward and stayed behind to just defend and were clearly playing for a point whereas their side were in it for the win. He didn’t have anything
to do besides just one save he made on Tevez’s free kick.
The Red Devils will be without Scholes (suspended after getting 5th yellow) and Rafael will be out with a dead leg for their trip to Villa Park on Saturday, the 13th of November.
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