Nasri thumps United

Gooner Professor Wenger is happy to see kiddy transfers like Nasri delivering the goods

It's another battle royale as Man Utd faces Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. This time, the scale tips in favour of United since they do not really have a senior striker playing upfront. Adebayor is injured while van Persie has done himself a favour by stupidly getting sent off after having a melee with the keeper. The game was for United's taking. It was no better time for them to score a victory over the Gooners.

The Gooners' nervousness in the match was evident when blur-king Silvestre, in his altruistic and "enthusiasm" in helping out his teammates, backpassed to Almunia when Rooney was just lurking around the corner. Almunia was another absent minded fellow as he picked up his good friend's pass using his hands. In less than a minute, United had a nice opportunity inside the box free kick. However, the effort came to nothing. To some extent, this gave some form of impression that United was beginning to dominate the game. First blood was supposedly to be Man Utd's after Berbatov put the ball past Almunia he was adjudged to be offside. At the 22nd minute, Samir Nasri got lucky with his shot as it looked to have taken a slight deflection off Gary Neville and into the net. The Gooners were 1-0 up. 3 minutes into the second half, Nasri was there again and the sleeping Man Utd defence gave him like 5 seconds timing to adjust his position before pulling the trigger past van der Sar. That was horrible defending. One man on the left wing has single-handedly destroyed Man Utd, nevermind the absence of Adebayor or van Perise. I cannot provide an explanation on how everytime the Gooners attack, United left lots of spaces behind for them to exploit but when United attacked, the Gooners were smart enough to close their ranks to restrict movement. Seriously, what's up with the big spaces by Ferdinand and friends? But the biggest culprits are not the defenders but the attackers. Rooney's blistering form seemed to have left him as his first touches were clumsy and squandered plenty of excellent chances which if taken properly, who deal a huge psychological blow against the Gooners. And Ronaldo, the man who scored 2 in each of the previous two matches, has been silenced too. Horrible horrible..it's a crime not to score against a team that has Silvestre in it.

Ironically, it was Rafael da Silva who provided the spark for attack and he was duly rewarded with a goal in the 90th minute. The referee gave an astounding 6 minutes of extra time and Arsene Wenger was starting to get restless and panicky coz it looked like dejavu all over again when Spurs came from behind to draw 4-4. I bet he did not need reminders of that. Alas, the Gooners held on and confirmed United's poor record this season against its top rivals, garnering only 1 point from the Chelsea draw and losing both to Liverpool and the Gooners. Well, at least those are away games. They better start winning all of those games when they visit Old Trafford. All in all, Man Utd had no one to blame except for the poor finish in front of goal. Tevez didn't provide the last minute shocks like Solskjaer and it took Rafael to spark the team attack. The Gooners took their chances well and they were duly rewarded with the win. I guess partially, they had more of the hunger to win because this match has extremely high stakes and they can't even afford to draw. Oh well, Man Utd's form this season has been stuttering and they can't seem to be able to put on a string of good results together. It's like 2 or 3 games of wins and then bad results. The loss of Emirates meant that Man Utd need to depend on Chelsea to lose yet again if they were to catch up.