VIEW: United vs Everton (a). 3-3 *PART II*

A mate of mine on Saturday night told me to cool
off before writing up the match review. Judging by my instant
reactionary post immediately after the game, it was too late! But really, I hadn’t even got
started.

I thought I would cool off. I thought I could falsely convince myself – using all
those token clichés to excuse bad performances at the start of the season –
that it wasn’t really that bad. But the disappointment and shock of being 3-1
up at 90 minutes to then drawing 3-3 at full-time is just too much.

My post, had the seemingly inevitable 3-1
win stood, would have merely brushed aside this easy victory, probably
referencing the vast improvement on last seasons debacle in the same fixture. I
would have highlighted the awesome Nani – who’s incredible right-peg assisted
our first and second goals – Scholes’ continually significant impact on this
season – his vision and awareness releasing Berbatov for the ‘winner’ – and
Berbs himself, who remained composed and resilient before beautifully finishing
the game off with an accurate and typically calm shot with the outside of his
foot.

But instead, we embarrassed ourselves. We
outdid all the hard work involved in outplaying Everton at Goodison Park
for 90 minutes, scoring 3 brilliantly well taken goals, and completely bottled
it in stoppage time.

Remember when we used to score two goals in
injury time? And is it in any way significant that we are now on the receiving end?
I really hope not.

If anything though, it acts as a reminder,
that in these uncertain times – off the pitch as well as on – our entitled
sense of arrogance after nearly two decades of success must now be mellowed
before complacence kicks in.

And complacence was exactly what we showed
as the game approached its seemingly inevitable close. Horrible, horrible climax to a decent game. And that's that.

I don’t want to relive it anymore as it definitely feels time to let it go (our next
game is closer than this one for fucks sake!) so I’ll end on a positive...maybe the cool off period did work!




So how about a look back at those faux-reassuring points?? a) It will act as the harshest of harsh lessons that we successfully learn from to come out stronger, b) we're obviously getting all our bad results out of the way, and c) (surely the shittest one of all) Craven Cottage (0-3) and Goodison Park (1-3) were two of our worst defeats last season...so the fact that we were completely on course to winning both games this season to instead end up drawing both games is completely all right...!




And finally, here are some wise words by our captain (via twitter) to perfectly sum it all up for us (Ok, so maybe Rio aint Shakespeare, but had he been on the pitch Saturday afternoon - or at Craven Cottage for that matter - you feel that things may have worked out a little different)...




' I'm a bit :( if I'm honest. We got beat there last year though and this year a point so its the only way you can look at it. Love the lads '




Legend.