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Ed: What’s all this fuss about Manchester United being on top form? They were good today, but no where near their best, and it showed in City’s second half display.

BEFORE THE MATCH:

There wasn’t alot of hype in this match, even though it was a Manchester local derby. Most people told me, this match should have been on Sunday, I disagreed, it should be today. Chelsea vs. Arsenal is getting loads of hype, reason being this match will decide, or as the media predicts, who will be fighting Manchester United for the title. If I was God, I would definetely would love Arsenal the blessing and hopefully handing them the win, but thats because I’m a die hard United supporter and want Chelsea to be as far back as possible.

This match was the 146th Manchester derby and it turned out to be a decent match. Manchester City also have to break a winless drought here at the Theatre of Dreams with never having won a game here at OT for 32 years. There was a real buzz around the pitch when both teams were read out. Here are the team lists for the 146th Manchester Derby:

Manchester United (4-4-2):

Van Der Sar

Neville, Ferdinand, Vidic, Heinze

Ronaldo, Carrick, Scholes, Giggs

Rooney, Saha

SUBS: Kuszczack, O’Shea, SIlvestre, Solskjaer, Fletcher

Manchester City (4-4-2):

Weaver

Richards, Dunne, Distin, Thatcher

Trabelsi, Barton, Reyna, Corradi

Vassell, Samaras

SUBS: Isaksson, Ireland, Dickov, Onuoha, Beasley

Ronaldo recieves League Award

Before the match, Cristiano Ronaldo recieved the Barclays Premiership Player of the Month, given to the player who performs best in all games in the month.

Ronaldo is the third United player to receive the award this year after Giggs and Scholes. Sir Alex has received the award 2 times out of a possible 4.

All players that recieved the award from United, happened to be midfielders, weird hey??? and yet Sir Alex is still trying to bring in midfielders. I know two of the midfielders we have are aging but they are still quality midfielders.

Anyway, congratulations to Cristiano for his award in November and we hope he gets many more…

FULL TIME REPORT:

MAN UTD 3 (G: Wayne Rooney 6′ Louis Saha 45′ Cristiano Ronaldo 84′ Y: Wayne Rooney 54′)

MAN CITY 1 (G: Hatem Trabelsi 72′ Y: Ben Thatcher 13′ Claudio Reyna 22′ Bernardo Corradi 60′ R: Bernando Corradi 90′)

Referree: Graeme Poll

From the word go, everyone knew that United were going to score early. A beautiful build-up play from Ronaldo running down the touchline unscathed and crossed it straight to Rooney’s feet and he smashed it into the net.

United were dominant for a short period after the goal until City clawed their way back into the game with alot more possession.

The first booking of the Manchester derby came after 13 minutes when Ben Thatcher pushed Ronaldo to the ground and the refferee just ran straight away to him and showed him the yellow followed by the second booking which went to Reyna for discent 9 minutes after.

The game started settling down in the 30th minute when both sides started taking it a bit easier.

It was all quite until the 1st minute of injury time when Saha absolutely demolished a mistake from City straight into the back of then net and even the faces of the City players looked like they wouldn’t come back into it.

Two changes at the break saw Manchester City swap Weaver (injury) and Reyna (tactical) swapped for Isaksson and Ireland respectively.

A replay of the first half occured in the first 4 minutes with United dominating in blocks and then City were dominating in blocks after that and then from the 53rd minute onwards it was mostly United, United, United.

In the 54th minute, Rooney was booked for an miss-timed hack on Dunne and got extremely angry claiming he had won the ball then 6 minutes later Corradi gets booked for an elbow into the back of Vidic’s head.

In the 65th minute, United made their first and last change taking Saha out of the frey and replacing him with John O’Shea, while City scored their first goal 8 minutes after the change through Trabelsi.

With Richards looking injured, City made their last change with 15 minutes remaining and Beasly came on.

Even though the goal was scored, United still had a huige amount of chances to score but could not capatalise.

With 10 minutes remaining, it was City attacking non-stop. With United having to clear the ball over 10 times but still City came back with the ball, hunting for the equaliser and then the break in traffic came along, with United going on the counter-attack and Ronaldo belted a shot from 6-yards out from goals and scored a cracker of a goal.

After the goal, the rest of the match was all United having a few miss-hit shots and smart plays.

Bernando Corradi was sent off in the final seconds for a second bookable offence with a dive in the box.

And at full-time, Manchester United have defeated Manchester City in the Manchester Derby 3 goals to 1 in an entertaining match and United have gone 9-points clear of Chelsea. How will Jose Mourinho react to this???