With Wayne Rooney out injured after a reoccurrence of his ankle injury, Sir Alex Ferguson opted to put 18-year old Federico Macheda up front along with Dimitar Berbatov. Patrice Evra was rested; he had been replaced by John O’Shea, who had made his first appearance since November 2009 last Wednesday against Bayern Munich.
Sir Alex may have gone for youth in the second leg against Bayern but Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs were brought back into the side to add some experience
Throughout the game United had most of the possession but only really creating a few good goal scoring opportunities. The fulltime stats showed that United had 56% of the possession.
The best chance of the first half fell to Antonio Valencia after he had been one-on-one with goalkeeper Paul Robinson. Unfortunately for United, Robinson made the save but Valencia should have done better.
Berbatov probably had United’s best attempt in the second half but we never really looked like we were going to score.
Berbatov was infuriating today, if he wasn’t shouting at his team-mates, he was wasting chances. You know it’s bad when you have to leave Rio Ferdinand upfront instead of having him in defence, which happened later on in the match.
I have tried to argue the point that we aren’t a one-man team but performances like this without are main striker, doesn’t help. We missed Wayne Rooney!
Blackburn didn’t threaten United’s goal too much but what they did do is put players behind the ball and defend well as a team. United were unable to break through and as a result, the game ended 0-0.
We just weren't good enough...again!
It isn’t over but both Chelsea and Arsenal have a game in hand, if they both win those games then I think it’s all over. Mathematically it isn’t but I can’t see Chelsea dropping too many points.
If the result hadn’t been bad enough, the news after the game is that Giggs, O’Shea and Ferdinand have all picked up injuries. Next up is the massive Manchester derby against Man City.
