P: United 4 - 0 Watford
PREVIEW
Victory tonight against Watford will leave United just 11 wins away from the title, Sir Alex has claimed.
“We have thrown away two games against Arsenal this season, but we are still in a strong position and the league starts now because we have 14 games to play and we have a six-point lead. We don’t have to play Arsenal again, so the only two major games we have against the top four are against Chelsea and Liverpool.
“The other three still have to play each other anyway, and Chelsea at Arsenal won’t be easy. So if we win 12 games, we think we will win the league. But you have to be careful with every game, and I’m echoing what I said after the Arsenal game – there are no more warnings now. It is down to the pure nitty-gritty, and the only way we’re going to do it is by saying ‘this game is going to be won’ and then we can move onto the next one.”
Amassing 36 points from a possible 42 will require a level of concentration that United appeared to lack in the closing stages of the team’s last Premiership outing at Arsenal. Sir Alex will hope for no such repeat in this evening’s confrontation with a side looking doomed to relegation but buoyed by two wins in its two most recent games.
Watford are a strong, hard-working outfit and as the away fixture at Vicarage Road demonstrated, will be no easy nut to crack. That said, the Premiership strugglers have not won away from home all season, undone by naiveté in defence.
Reports suggest that Louis Saha has failed to recover in time from a training–ground knee injury so the onus will be on the forwards on show in the Cup win over against Portsmouth plus Cristiano Ronaldo perhaps, to assure a goal fest. As urgent, will be a return to the gritty resolution and organisation that help United’s defence to clean sheets.
PREMIERSHIP RESULTS
Portsmouth 0 - 0 Middlesbrough; Sheffield U. 2 - 0 Fulham; West Ham U. 1 - 2 Liverpool; Reading 3 - 2 Wigan Athletic; Chelsea 3 - 0 Blackburn R.
Bolton W. 1 - 1 Charlton Athletic; Postp. Everton v Tottenham H.; Newcastle U. 3 - 1 Aston Villa
MATCH REPORT…
United 4 - 0 Watford
Ronaldo (20) Doyley o.g (61) Larsson (70) Rooney (71)
Times : Sir Alex Ferguson had declared beforehand that his Manchester United team were “going to give someone a hammering” and so, ultimately, it proved.
Maybe it was not quite as one-sided as Adrian Boothroyd, his Watford counterpart, had predicted when he likened it to a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Krankie, but it was a cruel mismatch all the same.
It took three goals in 11 second-half minutes to turn an uncomfortable evening into a rout for United, but that brief purple patch underlined where each of these teams is headed this season. If there was something tragi-comic about the first two goals, a penalty converted by Cristiano Ronaldo and an own goal by Lloyd Doyley, the third and fourth, from Henrik Larsson and Wayne Rooney, showed both the attacking flair that has kept United six points clear of Chelsea in the Barclays Premiership title race and the shortcomings of a Watford team who seem bound for relegation no matter their work ethic, spirit or organisation.
It is tempting to describe it as men against boys, if not in terms of age then in terms of experience and reputation. United’s outstanding players, Ronaldo and Rooney, are, remarkably, only 21 — older than Adrian Mariappa and Alhassan Bangura but considerably younger than Doyley and Tommy Smith. Both were born to play at the very highest level and it was the sight of those two arresting talents in full flow that led Boothroyd afterwards to suggest that Watford had been beaten by a team that “might possibly be the best in the world at the moment”.
Such an assessment sounded rather excessive — particularly based on last night’s line-up, which included John O’Shea, Kieran Richardson and an out-of-sorts Ole Gunnar Solskjaer — but this was United’s nineteenth victory in 25 Premiership matches this season, a record that stands up to any kind of scrutiny and leaves them margin for error as they head for a series of awkward away assignments that start against Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane on Sunday afternoon.
It was with that testing run in mind that Ferguson rested Edwin van der Sar, Patrice Evra, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs and, while not all of their stand-ins looked up to scratch, a United victory rarely seemed in doubt. The only uncertainty came in the opening 20 minutes, when Watford’s five-man midfield denied Rooney and Ronaldo the time and space to work their magic, but, once Ronaldo scored from the penalty spot, after a needless tug by Jay DeMerit on Solskjaer, it seemed to be a question of how many United would score.
For a while, though, United were stuck on one. Watford continued to flood the midfield with yellow shirts and even, on an isolated raid, hit the crossbar, albeit through an overhit cross by Chris Powell. “It was one of those games where they set their stall out and got behind the ball and it was difficult for us,” Ferguson said. “We thought it might open up a bit after the first goal, but it wasn’t until the second half, when they were a bit more positive, that it did.”
It was hardly gung-ho on Watford’s part, but the events of the second half vindicated their conservatism in the first. On the hour, the unfortunate Doyley headed a cross by Richardson past his own goalkeeper, Richard Lee, and with Larsson making an instant impact as a substitute for Solskjaer, Watford were suddenly concerned with damage limitation.
Within four minutes, Larsson scored United’s third, a typically measured finish after a neat exchange of passes with Rooney. Then, barely a minute later, came a sumptuous fourth as Ronaldo flicked the ball through to Rooney, who, showing wonderful improvisation as he did against Portsmouth on Saturday, sent an outstanding lob over the advancing Lee and just under the crossbar.
There could have been more goals after that, but United relaxed, Ferguson taking the opportunity to give brief run-outs to Wes Brown and Mikaël Silvestre. “Watford have had a hard season and there was no need to do any more,” Ferguson said, suggesting that he would have been unhappy had his team twisted the knife any further. In reality, it was probably more to do with preservation for the battles ahead, but, with Louis Saha returning to full training yesterday after a knee injury, United appear fighting fit. As for Watford, they are not quite Jimmy Krankie, but they are less than distinctly fandabidozi.
TEAM
Kuszczak, Neville, Ferdinand, Vidic (Silvestre 76), Heinze, Ronaldo, O’Shea,
Carrick (Brown 75) , Richardson, Rooney, Solskjaer (Larsson 65).
Subs: Van der Sar, Park.
POST SCRIPT
Sir Alex: “It was comfortable. It was one of these games where Watford set out to defend and it was very difficult at first because they put so many men behind the ball. I thought that the first goal might have opened things up, but it wasn’t until the second half that Watford had a more positive outlook. That opened the game up for us.”
“We missed chances,” the boss conceded. “But at 4-0 you have to be satisfied. It’s a good scoreline.There are 13 games left, it’s one game less and another goal better off than our rivals,” he told MUTV. “You can see with the team that they have the bit between their teeth. There is enthusiasm and confidence there.”
Aidrian Boothroyd: “We got beat 4-0, but I’m proud of my players tonight. We hold our hands up. We were well beaten tonight. We came here with a game-plan. We tried to be as solid as we could, but they’re a fantastic team.
“Beating Manchester United won’t dictate whether we stay up this year. Beating the teams around us will dictate that. We can walk out of here with our heads held high. I believe we’ll stay up.”
