Lille 1 v 0 Manchester United
Stade de France, Paris
2nd November 2005
Another day, another match, another 3 points lost.
It was the same team who had collapsed with so little valour and passion against mediocre Middlesbrough, that fell once more into the same trap of failing to create chances, whilst giving the opposition time on the ball, and pretty much a fw runs at goal for free.
Van Der Sar has played well for United, and it can hardly be his fault that the defence is leaking goals, and he was certainly not to blame tonight, pulling off some wonder-stops to keep us in the game.
Our defence should have been its strongest since Gabe and Gary bowed out, with four strong centre-backs playing against a futile Lille attack. Silvestre did well on the left, and was one of our main attacking threats believe it or not, whilst O'Shea continued to bungle his way through the match with miscued passes and poor tackles.
The midfield of Richardson, Fletcher and Smith is hardly going to cause anyone, let alone Chelsea, any loss of sleep, and it must be their lack of service to our attacking trio of Ronaldo, Rooney and Ruud that is costing us chances, as quite frankly the forwards are all World Class.
The game started scrappily, with missed passes, losing posession too cheaply, and failed chances.
On 38 minutes Lille pretty much strolled through our defence, as Rio and Wes Brown both went to sleep, and Acimovic banged it in clinically.
It was pretty much the same in the second half, with the oly thing saving United from getting nailed by a proper score the fact that Lille couldn't tuck the chances away. Two unmarked headers in the six-yard box and a shot from close range could have spelt disaster as Rio did his usual trick of standing there doing nothing.
Ronaldo and Rooney did their best, and van Nistelrooy put all his effort in, whilst trying to inspire the Reds with his captaincy, but it was not to be. Ronaldo hit the crossbar from a header, and Rooney had a few flying efforts that sailed just by, but other than that the game was fairly non-descript.
Game Over, and we'll be lucky to qualify for the next stage of Europe at this rate (Kind of scuppering the Glazer's plans...!)
