As the sixth fixture for the Barclays Premier League kicked off today, many Manchester United fans were hoping for a better result than what the team has provided so far this season. The Red Devils have won 2 games, tied 2 and lost 2 so far this season and have only tallied 8 points on the table, putting them in 7th place so far. There’s no one to blame for Manchester United’s slow start. David Moyes left a huge hole to fix at Old Trafford after he was sacked. With new arrivals of Angel Di Maria, Luke Shaw, Daley Blind, Radamel Falcao, Ander Herrera, Marcos Rojo and new head Coach Louis Van Gaal, it would take some time to adjust to the new tactics, formations, and the new head coach.
Today, we saw a different Manchester United team than what we saw against Leicester City last week. After coming from a 5-3 deficit last week, the Red Devils were able to pick up the 3 points from today’s game against West Ham United. Although injuries are haunting the team, that didn’t stop van Gaal from using younger players and were able to give a great performance. We saw De Gea start at his usual Goalkeeper position making his debut with Marcos Rojo, Luke Shaw, and Rafael da Silva making his debut, Patty McNair helped defend the back with Daley Blind right in front of them with Angel Di Maria, Ander Herrera, Wayne Rooney, Falcao and dan Persie helping in the attacking side of the team.
Manchester United took the 2-1 win over West Ham with Rooney opening up in the first 5 minutes of the game, putting them up 1-0 and making him the third highest scorer in Premier League history and Robin Van Persie joining the 50th goal club when he put up the Red Devils 2-0 in the 23rd minute.
At the back, United still looked vulnerable, though to be fair, van Gaal’s squad were struggling with injuries, that he had 19 year old Patty McNair debut for the first time in the senior squad. To make things even worse, if the Football Association says that the foul on Rooney was deemed violent conduct, that will make him miss 3 games which will rule out the skipper out of the next three forthcoming games against Everton, West Brom and Chelsea.
As Manchester United’s desire to put last’s weeks horrific loss in the grave was clear from the first whistle. They attacked and attacked until it was Wayne Rooney who opened up the scoring for Manchester United. Rafael sprinted down the right flank after dinking the ball over defender Aaron Cresswell and as he paused he crossed it to Rooney, who volleyed past Adrian after one bounce.
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United almost gave the lead away one minute after Rooney scored in which we saw Daley Blind miscue the clearance and the ball landed in front of Enner Valencia, but he blasted it off too wide on the left. Not a couple minutes, it was Robin Van Persie who put Manchester United up 2 goals to none. Adrian put Alex Song under pressure with a poor clearance and United took full advantage. Midfielder Ander Herrera picked the ball off and Van Persie angled his shot past Adrian after a clever pass from Falcao.
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Not a couple minutes later, we saw West Ham cut the lead to 1 from an error from De Gea. The Spaniard flapped at a corner as the ball then landed in front of Sakho, who headed the ball into the empty net.
This ended the first half and as the second half took off, it was West Ham who kept attacking and attacking and we saw the Defense of the Red Devils become more and more vulnerable. There was barely any attacking from Man United and to make matters worse, we saw Wayne Rooney receive a red card, his first in 5 years (Mar 2009), leaving Manchester United with only 10 men. The United captain, unable to catch Downing, kicked the midfielder from behind while he was at full pace. This allowed Referee Lee Mason stop the game and to the shock of the home fans and players, Rooney was shown the red card.
But that didn’t stop Manchester United from defending and keeping the lead until the final whistle. Though west Ham had a chance to tie it up in the 89th minute, Carl Jenkinson was called offsides and United was able to record their second win in Val Gaal’s tenure.
With injuries taking place and also seeing Ander Herrera hobble off with a back injury in the 74th minute as he was substituted by Antonio Valencia, who knows how Manchester United will be able to hold off their next three strong opponents and with Rooney out of the picture if he gets a 3 match suspension, we can only hope for the best and pray that Manchester United performs well.
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