Terrace Talk

On Saturday afternoon, Manchester United made the trip to Ewood Park to take on United legend Mark Hughes’ ever-improving Rovers. With Chelsea collecting all three points from their game in hand at Goodison Park, a win for Fergie’s latest crop of players became increasingly important. Blackburn of course were still pushing for a European place, and Sparky wouldn’t stand to have his men lie down quietly in light of this.

Having dispatched Arsenal last week after going a goal behind to Adebayor’s best impression of ‘La mano de Dios’, United exhumed that air of invincibility they so often possess during ’squeaky-bum time’. Surely it would be a difficult but fairly routine win. Step forward Brad Friedel.
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On a warm European evening, Manchester United did just enough to grind out a 2-0 victory over hosts AS Roma at Il Stadio Olimpico. It certainly wasn’t the beautiful football United fans have come to expect from their side, but the result did just enough to put a firm foot in the door for qualification into the Champions League semi finals.

It was clear from the onset of the match that Sir Alex Ferguson and his coaching staff were fully intent on trying to beat Roma at their own game. United fielded a side which did not feature a clear striker and essentially would require their players to push into advanced attacking roles and then interchange up front in the forward position. AS Roma’s manager, Luciano Spalletti, has refined a similar 4-6-0 tactic over the years with great success, winning the Italian Cup last season, and his club currently sit in 2nd position in Serie A. Without a traditional striker up front, Roma play with numerous attacking players that interchange, stretching the defense and forcing defensive mistakes through variety in attack. It is a very open and attacking style of football which is quite wonderful to watch when all goes as planned. Sir Alex has used a variation of this tactical formation to achieve great success in the last few seasons, culminating in the absolute decimation of Aston Villa over the weekend.

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Rain soaked and weary, United seemed as if they were beaten before they had even made a single pass. It must have been miserable getting on that plane, back to Manchester and in retrospect I can’t say time has healed the wounds of last April. All the papers went on at length how decidedly United were beaten and outclassed by a Milan side led by Kaka and an almost divine right to advance. It was all too much to bear as a United fan, and I did everything I could to ignore the media coverage. It’s hard to imagine how much worse it must have been for the players and the manager who have hungered for European glory for a decade.

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