Kuyt and Bashed

It was another miserable away outing for United as they got their brains bashed by the Scousers at Anfield. When I saw Brown at the starting line-up, I knew we were going to have a hard time to hold the line. Brown had only played 3 games this season while Smalling is presumely still rocked by last week's performance. Vidic's absence was certainly felt as United were literally ran ragged by Suarez's silky moves. He waltzed past 4 United players to set up an easy goal for Kuyt to tap in. If Mr Vidic had been there, he would have given the Uruguay fella a nice authoritative slide tackle. The 2nd goal was one of stupidity and a giveaway. For some bizarre reason or so, Nani's header ended up directing the ball to Kuyt who promptly connected it with his head. Nobody knows what he was thinking and by this time, the United players knew that the contest is almost over. You don't go down 0-2 at Anfield and recover from that easily.

Melee is plenty and this fixture is probably more heated in more recent years because of what is at stake for United. At around the 44th minute, Carragher lunged at Nani with a horror tackle which could essentially see Nani out for quite some time. The seriousness of the injury was not apparent until after the match when pictures revealed that Nani actually had a deep gash wound which split open the flesh. While watching the match, it looked for a moment as if Nani was crying wolf again and his strange motion of getting up and falling down again looked like one of his usual diving antics. But as the medical staff rushed onto the field, Nani was clearly seen to be in real tears and I was wondering why he was sulking like a prima donna. Nani was almost on the verge of wailing as he stared back at Carragher as if he had made a career-ending tackle. Now, all that drama turned out to be quite serious in the end and I'm sure the United players were not pleased with Gerrard screaming at Nani to get up with his bleeding leg. But that was not the end of the melee, Rafael got into a bad tempered clash with Skrtel barely minutes after the restart of whistle when Nani was stretchered off the field. Red cards could have very well spammed all over the place but the referee opted to keep the players in. Well, some could have argued that Carragher should have been sent off but I reckon that still wouldn't have change the result because United was playing poorly overall.

Any chance of comeback went up in a smoke as Kuyt did what Berbatov did to them at Old Trafford - a hat-trick. The 3rd goal showed how off-duty the two center backs were and Kuyt was literally a free man to pump the ball into the back of the net. Hernandez in the dying minutes put in the consolation goal and that's about it. One would have wondered whether the situation would have been different if Berbatov's chip had not hit the post earlier.

Two defeats in a row. I felt that Fergie should have started Fletcher instead of Scholes because the old gun was not of any use during the match. They would have needed the extra physicality present in Fletcher to combat the Liverpool midfielders. United were fortunate that the Gooners did not overtake them because of the draw that the Gooners had with Sunderland. At present, it means that if the Gooners had won their extra game in hand, they would be level on points with United but United will still come out tops because of the goal difference. This makes the match at Emirates even more compelling as it could be a season decider. In any case, what's done is done and I hope United don't take long to start winning again. It's not easy when the team has the big threes in a row on consequtive weeks but it is essential that they overcome Arsenal next week to inflict psychological blows on Wenger. United really have to ensure that their season don't continue to derail badly.