Sir Alex Ferguson will take much heart from victory over Champions Chelsea at Wembley following a summer of minimal investment and a public declaration of faith in his squad. Manchester United swept aside the tepid Londoners, with Mexican striker Javier Hernández, Dimitar Berbatov and Antonio Valencia on the scoresheet.
Ferguson’s men largely monopolised possession, save for a late Chelsea rally which brought Salmon Kalou’s 82nd minute goal, in a match regarded as little more than a final pre-season warm up by both sides.
Prior to the Ivorian’s strike United had taken the lead through Valencia’s 41st minute goal after Wayne Rooney’s outstanding right-wing pass, with Hernández scoring in off his own face with 15 minutes to go in a promising competitive début.
Man-of-the-match Paul Scholes rolled back the years to deliver an outstanding display of passing on Wembley’s relaid turf, although Chelsea’s parsimonious attitude towards marking the 35-year-old allowed the time and space in which the midfielder thrives. If United is truly not going to reinforce in midfield this summer then Scholes’ form and fitness must belie his advancing years.
Perhaps even more importantly United’s striker Wayne Rooney – unsurprisingly booed by Chelsea fans, many of whom will turn out to support England at Wembley on Wednesday night – impressed during a 45 minute first half work out. The striker looked sharper than at any time prior to his March ankle injury against Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
Indeed, Rooney’s vision to set up Valencia for the opening goal underlines the striker’s brilliance. The former Evertonian turned blind on the right wing, firing into the six yard area to leave winger Valencia with a simple finish.
The goal came shortly after Rooney’s 60-yard pass had created the game’s opening chance for the Ecuadorian who failed to lift over the advancing Chelsea goalkeeper.
Rooney departed for débutant Hernández at half-time and United noticeably sought out the speedy striker with direct balls over John Terry’s back-four. The Mexican’s pace will surely be an outstanding weapon this season even if a period of bedding into Premier League football is required.
Yet Ferguson reserved the largest slice of praise for the Mexican’s second-half striker partner Berbatov, who scored late into injury time by lobbing over Henrique Hilário to seal United’s victory just as Chelsea pressed for an equaliser.
“He needed it [a goal] given the adverse publicity he had last season. It’s an old problem when we pay big money for someone and they are not scoring three goals a game and making 50 passes, they get slaughtered,” said Ferguson of the £30.5 million Bulgarian striker.
“But there’s no disputing his talent; he can be a genius. He had a mixed season by his standards but maybe this will be his season.”
The result, certainly just due to United’s superior possession, could have turned late into the second half when Ferguson’s defence sustained a period of pressure from last season’s double winners.
Even before the Londoners late onslaught Edwin van der Sar saved superbly from Bratislav Ivanovic’s powerful first half header. Further saves by the Dutchman from Florent Malouda, twice, Ashley Cole and Daniel Sturridge in the second half kept United ahead.
However, United and Scholes in particular took the plaudits in front of more than 30,000 delighted United supporters in North West London. The midfielder’s brilliance is beyond doubt; his ability to perform every week is however and that is where United may just fall short this season.
It is not with any surprise that newspaper reports again linked United – and Chelsea – today to a £13.5 million bid for Germany’s ‘ghost’ Mesut Ozil.
“He’s just an incredible footballer,” said Ferguson of 35-year-old Scholes.
“It’s a phenomenon that he goes out there and becomes man of the match, approaching his 36th birthday.”
“This time last year, he’s saying to himself, ‘This is my last season’ – and a lot of people thought that,” Ferguson said.
“It came across my mind also, simply because he’s had a lot of injuries in his career. He keeps coming back; it’s not easy to do that.”
No need to worry about retirement today though with Ferguson rightly reserving the last word for the ginger midfielder.
Brilliant all round. Lot’s of positives, roll on 19.
scholes bossed a midfield of mikel, essien and lampard….tat is an absolutely astonishing feat considering his age and their pedigree
we dont know how fucking lucky we are to have him, and to have witnessed what he has done for us these past 17 years or so
a bona fide footballing genius and deserves legend status up there with law, best and prunier
We need to store Scholes in an oxygen chamber when he’s not playing. We need him to carry on for another 5 years at least. With no adequate replacement in the pipeline, now’s the time to start getting worried.
The attacking players were fantastic. In defence though, we were awful. At 50, it’s not good on Edwins heart to make him do all that work.
Antonio Valencia only uses his right foot on ball, that’s extremely worrying.
Valencia took cashley cole apart, one footed! no worries there.
back four did look very suspect at times, its still early doors but smalling looked lost at full back imo. da silvas need to have a good run of games.
glad nani backed up all his midweek talk about his role in the team.
For the last 20,we were completely overun in midfield,if we dont buy a midfielder we have no chance this year.On the bright side it was a positive and enthusiastic preformance,Hernandez looked really sharp.
lampard showed what an overrated bag of cunt he is since Ballack is no longer there to wipe his arse in the middle of the park. mikel is shit scared of going forward.
essien – now he is don but without Ballack, they all stink.
nail on head…i said to my lad, we need to bring scholes off at the hour mark, as we all knew for the last 30 or so we’d be overrun……
park played narrow first half nani held the width second, is why we coped better with their cm three better first half than second, and owen said he was told to stand on their deepest mid, berbatoss probably ignored those instructions
You don’t half talk shit sometimes.
Lumpard is NOT overrated… he’s an exceptional player… he may not be Scholes, but who is?
He’s scored an absolute shit load of goals from midfield… 20+ for how many seasons now? That’s more than most strikers for fuck sake… consistantly one of Chumpskis best players, and essential to their 3 titles, not to mention that he’s probably the most durable player in England… almost never injured.
Excellent player.
I was extremely surprised and impressed by our performance yesterday because I didn’t expect us to be so dominant.
I just wished we played like that last season at Old Trafford when we lost 2-1 against these same clowns.
If Chica can feature a lot in the 1st team and score frequently,then we will have solved one of our biggest problems we encountered last season…which was the over dependence on Rooney.
I. too, would like to see Hernandez feature and score enough to relieve some of the burden from Rooney.
BTW, Chica is a somewhat derogatory term for ‘girl’ in Spanish. Chicho would be a marginally more appropriate concatenation of Chicharito (nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine, thus Chicho rather than Chicha).
He cost Chelsea £11 million which anyone would consider to be an absolute steal. I wish we’d signed him. He’s such a good player.
lets call him chico
chico it is then !!
How about Cunto?
grow up dad
Cunto ? That’s Berba int’it
no, he’s just cunt
Hernandez will be quality. I totally agree with Ashish. Now, if only we can get Ozil……
He’s a vastly overrated player who is shit.
He is durable? So that makes him excellent does it. Fuck off.
He scores goals – count the ones from open play, without the penalties and without the own goal deflections and you will see the true Lump.
Just because he scores more from midfield than a striker does not make him excellent you twit, it just means that he is the penalty taker and likes to take a pop and hope for a deflection.
Of course he is not a Scholes, no said he was, and yes there are players who are as good as Scholes if you would just get you funger out of arse. Fabregas for one, Mondric could be too. Pick any player from the Barca midfield and Xabi Alonso – all as good as Scholes, and currently playing.
Just because he is one of Chumpski’s best players doesn’t mean that he is not overrated.
The WC showed what an utter fraud Lumpshite is, put him in the middle of park without a runner and see how cock he is. He is just a better version of Darren Gibson. One pop shot, unlucky the goal never went in but essentially Mr Pop Shot.
He has no creativity, he runs about a lot and has great application but all he can do is a cross-field pass or side shift, he can tackle sure but more often than not he can’t get near the ball.
The fact that Capello was asking Scholes to consider coming back to Engerland to replace Lumpard shows more about the limitations of Lumptard than Scholes.
He is a side shifting, pop shooting, overrated penalty shooter – like I said a better version of Darren Gibson but essentially a man of application, not talent and the fraud will be exposed for what he is now that Ballack is out although Essien will cover his arse too.
You think a pop shooting, penalty taker, mr deflecto, side shuffling, is an excellent player feel free to live in the dream world of a Chelsea fan. Chelsea make him look good, not the other way around.
Overrated to fuck as every England fan who has booed him since he stepped into an England shirt knows.
LOL…
I don’t need to say anything.
There’s more than enough horse shit in that post to laugh at, just as it is.
I think Fergie is hoping Scholes, Gibson and Cleverley are going to save him spending 10-15 mill on Ozil.
Ozil Ozil Ozil why the fuck isn’t he here yet?! I’ve already bought a new united shirt with his name on the back…..
Btw Mandeep did fat Frank bully you as a child or something. What’s with all the bitterness?
It is because he is shagging Christine Bleakley.
Lamps is a good player. Is or was he ever world class…no.
Hi Brian, little schizophrenic again mate
@ Robbo. Who the fucks Brian?
Tory loving fat cunt who dumped his family and abused a lot of grieving people on Sept 12 whilst getting boozed up at heathrow
good yes, but o v e r r a t e d and no that Ballack and Joke Hole isn’t there to give him a hand, he will be exposed. No matter he stil has Ess and Mikel to do the running so that the twat can have his 20 pop shots and he can get on the end of the pennos – no matter, that still makes him great. He’s just hard working – a better Darren Gibson – who can only work in a 5 man midfield.
Mandeep, you don’t have a clue. You need to get your facts right before you post your bile. His name is DARRON Gibson, not Darren Gibson
Brian is the resident Welshman on the forum. He has other names, mostly ones which I make up for him. Arselick is one…what with him being a bum bandit.