Opta Sports @OptaJoe 91 - Paul Scholes has now collected 91 yellow cards in the Premier League, only Kevin Davies & Lee Bowyer have more. Agricultural.
EFC/UTD has the pace of a F1 qualifying lap... Fellani is such a boss, would luv to add him to the collection of Belgians.
The thing about Fellaini though is if he ever played for your lot or us, he would get carded a lot more for using his elbows all the time. He gets away with it at for Everton
Per Fellanini: I recall Ballack doing this to Utd a few times. His size/skill/physicality bossed Utd and they didnt have an answer for it.
What a great game. Well done to Everton. Shocked that Everton actually look like they will get off to a great start unlike previous years.
It would help if we had a fit CB to play at CB. Time to start thinking about putting Rio to pasture since we were counting on him to be fit for this one. Damn, 3 unnecessary points dropped.
FT: Manchester United 0 - 1 Everton Excellent results all around for the first round of the EPL. All of our rivals drop points, save for Man City, of course. But, then again, they showed they're capable of conceding goals, so there are positives to glean from that. Otherwise, a perfect opening to the season for our sake. ManU never looked like they were going to take the points from Everton. That was maybe the most complete performance I've ever seen from the Toffees. If Fellaini plays like that for the rest of the season, they'll be a real force to reckon with.
Are your centrebacks training on concrete or something? The consistency of the injuries you've had back there is astonishing.
RvP and Rooney are likely to be less than the sum of their constituent parts..........which was always the worry of reinforcing a crowded offense while mysteriously relying on geriatrics and the perpetually injured in central midfield. The thing I found fascinating is that Utd. deserved to lose that game, which is not common against inferior teams for them.
Glad I am not the only one who feels this way. I am so sick of hearing about "the next Roy Keane or Paul Scholes" every time Utd sign a CM under the age of 25. In other news, it looks like Scotty Sinclair is edging closer to a move to Citeh. I suppose he has not heard of Adam Johnson. I also can't wait for the response to that move from a certain contingent on this board.
He is trying but per pete he has some wage issues. The point is that if one supposedly next England star winger did not make it, does that really bode well for Scotty?
Who else have you got for that position? Isn't Evans still in harness? I have to say, I was a bit surprised to see Carrick alongside Vidic who was only just getting back himself. It was always gonna be tough against Everton who have both good people to head the ball and some decent crossers of it too. I don't think too many sides will find it easy up there.
I thought his yellow card tackle was a straight red, tbh. Tackle from behind at full speed and force? Shocking!
Bit surprised that manutd signed Büttner, I've seen Vitesse games for past 2 years & all the games bar 2 last season, thanks to our lot being on loan. Decent attacking option but sometimes he's pants at defending. Early in the season he had made life difficult for Kalas quite a few times, solely by his habit of bad back passes. Which is why I wanted him to play as left midfield for them, when PVA moved there on loan in January. But VdB is a version of Owen Coyle, kept switching him between positions, mainly played as leftback though. Think he might be found out many times if teams really take the game to united. His most goals are, if I'm not mistaken, from penalty spot. He used to take penalties after Bony missed some & Van Ginkel did not take them.
Evans and Smalling are the main ones, Jones at a stretch as well. Essentially with Evans having a scheduled operation and Smalling being out for a while, we really did need Rio to be fit.
@dan_bu Rummenigge: These problems could be solved very easily, if Bilbao would accommodate us with a bit of help, but they don't. oh lolllllllllllllll *world's smallest violin playing so hard*