27th October vs Barnsley (a). 2-0.

http://therepublikofmancunia.com/stats-hows-owen-doing-so-far-compared-to-arsenal-chelsea-city-and-liverpool-strikers 

Good.

• Owen’s goal. An absolute peach that will give him confidence (important) as well as surely giving Mr. Capello serious food for thought (unimportant…just a clichéd thing all post-match reports will comment on, innit? So thought I’d jump on the bandwagon).


• Through to the whatever-round of the Carling Cup. Lets face it, after League Cup success in recent years – a competition in which Ferguson used to completely neglect and endure universal stick over his favouring of more important trophies – I reckon we all now secretly want to do well in it. It’s the League and FA Cup’s little, annoying, brother who in comparison used to be a tad dumb and irrelevant, yet now (due to the fear amongst the big-spending, high-pressured Top 4© of having a trophyless season), it has been embraced and accepted into the season’s convention. Welcome pointless little brother, welcome.


• …having said that, Fergie hasn’t quite given in to the nouveau-Carling Cup hype yet, as he continually rests the big-boys to give the kids ago. Maybe his regard of the competition hasn’t changed; maybe we’ve just been blessed with a much more promising reserve selection than in previous years? Wellbeck, Macheda, Da Silva x 2, Tosic and even Obertain had a run-out last night; and although Barnsley were not the meanest of competitors, we still performed at a convincingly high-level without any drastic disruption (even though a brave 11 changes were made from last Sunday’s game and Anderson, Neville and Brown were the only proper first-teamers starting).
  

Bad.

• Barnsley at times were allowed an awful lot of time on the ball and attacked with confidence; confidence that should not have been granted seeing as we scored so early on and should have killed the game off by half time.


• Also, it seems that our ‘fans’ left their mark good and proper on that little Northern football club and their stadium. Horrible shame.

Players.

Obertain had an adequate debut; one full of promise and potential. He clearly has pace and sharp awareness on and off the ball that will hopefully improve rather than plateau and fizzle like Nani's. We will have to wait and see.

Macheda and Wellbeck. They were able to forge a formidable strike partnership; one that has no doubt been developed and nurtured through their time in the reserves. I really like these two and hope, like Obertain and our other promising youngsters, will emerge as great players and that their potential will materialise to the standard of a player worthy to play for United.

Owen. A well needed decent performance from him, with a goal of quality to reward his efforts. Let’s pray that as the season progresses his confidence builds, and so we will begin to see more of the clinical (out of position..?) Michael Owen we saw last night.

Foster. Not the busiest of games for him, but that's probably exactly what he needed on his first return to the first team after VDS recovered from injury. Again his confidence and control/communication with his defence seems to be an issue; but over all, a clean-sheet will do his calamity status the world of good.

Player Ratings. Foster 6; Neville 5, Brown 6, Fabio 6, Rafael 7; Evans 6, Anderson 7, Owen 7 (65, De Laet 5), Obertain 7; Wellbeck 7 (53, Tosic 5), Macheda 7.