Manchester United suffered a shocking 2-1 defeat on the hands of Portsmouth at Fratton Park; allowing Chelsea to cut their lead at the top to three points.
United goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar was to be blamed for couple of blunders, but other United players were guilty of some poor performances as well.
Credits to Portsmouth players though, they worked hard on the game. Goalie David James was the hero of the match, making series of great saves.
Manchester United didn’t start the game on full strength; with Darren Fletcher and Kieran Richardson given their rare start. Both of them were pretty poor; Richardson in particular could see himself playing the last game for United.
It was his poor judgement on 30th minute that gave the ball away to Benjani, who fired a shot straight at Van der Sar. The goalkeeper could only parry it back to into the path of Matthew Taylor, who was quicker to response than Rio Ferdinand and tuck the ball into the net.
The goal was conceded in similar fashion from the 2nd goal Roma scored in the mid-week Champions League match; Van der Sar could have done better to prevent both goals.
Michael Carrick almost put United back on level terms just after Taylor’s strike, but his low shot went wide despite given acre of space.
Ryan Giggs came in for Richardson at the start of second half, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for Fletcher 15 minutes later. They managed to help United dominating the possession, but couldn’t find the goal they needed. As mentioned, David James was a rock in front of the line.
The game started to change in the final 10 minutes; with Portsmouth gaining confidence believing that they could win the game. It wasn’t really a surprise when Portsmouth got their second goal on 89th minute, but the way it was scored was rather unusual instead.
Rio Ferdinand and Van der Sar had some communication problem; both trying to solve a Portsmouth’s threat, but only to see Rio ‘passing’ the ball into an empty net. The goalie should take a larger blame for this, he should stay on his line and trust his defender to deal with the threat.
John O’Shea managed to score a consolation goal in injury time, but it was proved a little too late.
Btw, I haven’t mentioned about Ronaldo… he was not doing too badly, but he could not perform miracles this time. Ronaldo was closely marked, and the referee wasn’t a fan of Ronaldo, making lots of decision against him when he was clearly fouled.
With six more matches to go, the title chase is getting interesting.