As it happens, Torres did play against Evans, and instead of taking advantage of him like a predator in the night he allowed Evans to discover his form from two seasons ago and keep him well and truly quiet. Ferguson has said that Jonny has been back to his best in training lately, perhaps discovering a bit of confidence again, and while it'd be easy to say "Well, it's just the off-form Torres", that same off-form Torres gave Evans the runaround in the league fixture and won a penalty off him. It didn't hurt that Evans was playing alongside Ferdinand, who is definitely the cooler head of the Vidic/Ferdinand pairing. Jonny's issues have usually stemmed from losing his concentration and not reading a situation correctly, perhaps letting the ball bounce when he should have attacked it or standing off when he should have tried a tackle. Ferdinand kept things together, Evans followed his lead and it all worked out beautifully.
Player Ratings: Kuszczak 6, Rafael 7, Ferdinand* 8, Evans 8 (Smalling 7), Evra 7, Nani 7, Carrick 8, Fletcher 7 (Anderson 6), Giggs 8, Berbatov 7, Chicharito 7 (Owen 7)
One of the most bizarre things for me was the choice of man of the match for this one. I've gone for Ferdinand who's kind of an obvious choice, him and Vidic are always up there, but aside from that I have to say that a lot of the more derided players decided to show up. Evans as mentioned had his best game in a long time and Michael Carrick, who's quietly come into some form since he gave Pablo Hernandez the ball in the Valencia game held the midfield together nicely without giving away stupid balls as he occasionally has done in the past. Ryan Giggs hasn't been criticised but he also had a tremendous game and still has incredible pace, and Tomasz Kuszczak, while I don't think he will replace Edwin Van Der Sar, did a commendable job and has in the last few games when he's been called into action. It's nice that Ferguson is giving him the opportunity to prove himself instead of overlooking him in favour of Anders Lindegaard. ITV gave the award to Berbatov which is slightly absurd, but I don't think they put much thought into that so let's not complain too much. He had a good game, the usual quality he's provided this season, but there were much better candidates.
The Gerrard red card was completely justified as far as I'm concerned. The only people who I've heard defend it are the minority of Liverpool fans (read: TalkSport listeners) who like to invent rules to explain why it wasn't a red (ranging from "he's not that sort of player" to "it's a 50/50 tackle") or ex-professionals who still behave like it's the 1970s where you could shoot a man with an AK-47 and get away with at most a stern talking-to. I don't care if it's a 50/50 tackle. It can be 60/40, 70/30, 99/1. Jumping in like that is dangerous play and the people leaping to Gerrard's defense only have a leg to stand on because Carrick didn't suffer a serious injury. The same absurd logic applied for the Tiote tackle in the Newcastle/Stevenage match. It was a wild tackle. The rules of football do not state that winning the ball constitutes a good tackle. If you win the ball but do it in a dangerous manner that's not on. People were making that absurd argument about some of Nigel De Jong's wild tackles, saying "Well he won the ball", ignoring that in the process of winning the ball he snapped Hatem Ben Arfa's leg. But that's alright, he touched the ball.
People keep knocking United, saying they're playing poorly in all of these matches, but I can't agree with that for the home games. Away, absolutely. United have underperformed and some of the teams have played out of their skins, knowing they can have a good go. Fulham, Everton, West Brom, Birmingham for a bit, Aston Villa. At home I don't agree with that assessment at all. Most of the performances have been professional. Would I prefer United to kill the game and score a million goals? Of course. I think a lot of the criticism stems from the lack of the one talisman this season. A couple of seasons ago it was Ronaldo. He scores all of the goals, he's awesome, he's the main man. Last season it was Rooney. He scores all of the goals, he's awesome, he's the main man. This season, who is there? Instead of one man doing the work it's been shared around. Berbatov has scored more this season than he had in either of his previous two seasons at United. Ji-Sung Park's been scoring and contributing a lot. Nani provides goals and assists. Rafael da Silva, who I think is one of the best right backs in the league, is always running up the touchline and has got a lot of assists in addition to learning how to defend. Anderson is benefitting from his more advanced midfield position. Chicharito is scoring whenever required, showing a proper poacher's instinct and scoring a lot of crucial goals. The workload has been spread around the squad. I'm sure a loss will eventually come and people will begin declaring that it's gone tits up for United but getting this far undefeated without kicking into overdrive with such an allegedly poor squad says something. Maybe they've just rode their luck for the entire season so far. Or perhaps they're not as bad as the critics are saying.
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