How eerie is this. Matt Taylor's goal for Pompey against Man Utd was reminiscent of Vucinic's winner for Roma in the CL match this week. Van Der Saar has a problem parrying the ball effectively away from the field of play and it has happened now twice this week. Mancini's blast had VDS pushing the ball back into play onto the path of a rushing Mirko Vucinic who made no mistake. In the Pompey match Van Der Saar had problems stopping Benjani's shot on goal and Matt Taylor muscled the rebound into the back of the net.
Ben Foster is going to get the starting position once he returns from Watford.
And add Matt Taylor to the list of defenders who love to attack. 7 goals now. He leads the Premiership in defenders scoring goals. Naldo is doing the same in the Bundesliga. He has 6 for Werder Bremen.
Seeing Pompey play Man Utd, one is struck by the number of really ordinary players in the Red Devils squad. John O'Shea, Darren Fletcher, and Kieran Richardson. Add to them players approaching their shelf lives, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, Solsjaer, and Ryan Giggs and you do have a bit of a midlife crisis in the squad. Man Utd also does not have a great pool of homegrown talent. Sometimes success in the Premiership and the CL can obscure the fact that this squad might be running on fumes in the future. You have to wonder how far Sir Alex can push them.
Hardly surprising that the 1st team doesnt look too amazing with the array of talent on the injury list.
You question the level of talent from homegrown players that ManU are producing...are you aware that ManU are in the youth cup final? Safe to say that Wes Brown would walk into most teams, O'Shea and Richardson has been targetted by a range of mid-table teams...not bad for back ups. Not all teams can spend £100m a year on squad harvesting