The best time to face a Harry Redknapp side is generally just before the transfer window closes. This season, as usual, Harry is playing another game of brinkmanship with his chairman and as such, Modric was out of the line up for Old Trafford and the 23 stone Rafael Van der Vaart started. United are having midfield issues of their own and this entertaining game saw both sides line up in the visionary 4-0-6 formation.
The way you read about the United Spurs fixture it is almost as if the Londoners needn’t turn up. With their last winner at Old Trafford coming off Gary Linekar’s boot, it is almost the only mention we get nowadays that Match of Day’s answer to Ron Burgundy actually played the game.
I was there on that cold December night in 1989, when England’s second finest striker scored his only ever goal from outside the box. More for the fallibility it showed in Jim Leighton’s goalkeeping than anything else, I remember the goal well.
Whilst there is much to cheer from the performances of Wellbeck and Jones in particular, not to mention the clean sheet, for the first 70 minutes of this game a nagging feeling wouldn’t leave me. We need a midfielder, a good one.
This is to take nothing away from the sterling efforts of people like Tom Cleverley, but last week also saw me watch the second leg of Spain’s Supercoppa. I’m afraid, at the moment, either Real or Barca could properly murder us unless we stregthen in the middle of the park.
Three late goals tend to gloss over these things and the scoreline flattered us slightly. It was noticeable that Ryan Giggs took all of two minutes to set up a goal after he came on. The guy is pure class and makes the rest of our players look like Scrappy Doo.
Spurs were there to hustle us and in the first half they chased down every ball with vigour, which was admirable. However, I’m not sure there were any players at all in centre midfield for either side, everything was down the flanks. De Gea's distribution was superb and the way we turned defence to attack for the second was entirely down to him.
Tougher challenges await than this one, but all in all, United can be pretty pleased with where they are right now.
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