Ronaldo became United’s savior again by scoring the only goal of the match against Derby on Saturday.
Ronaldo scored on the 76th minute thanks to a nice run-and-cross from Wayne Rooney. That’s Ronaldo’s 22nd Premier League goal and his 31st in total of the season.
Both Rooney and Ronaldo scored a double to give Manchester United a 5-1 win against Newcastle at St James Park.
It was a good team performance from the Red Devils, but Newcastle really made MU’s victory a lot easier with their sloppy play. They seemed to lack confidence with the ball and made way too much mistakes. In fact, 3 out of the 5 goals could be prevented if they could show just a bit more steadiness when defending or when holding the ball.
It was a great game from Ronaldo though. He did well to assist Rooney with the game opener on 25th minute before bagging a goal on each half himself (45th and 56th minute), before Abdoulaye Faye crawled one back for Newcastle on 79th minute.
Rooney installed the lead just a minute later with his second on 80th minute. Saha then completed Newcastle’s misery in injury time.
The win closed the gap between the title racers, as Arsenal could only managed a draw against Birmingham in an earlier match. Manchester United are currently 3 points behind the Gunners.
Ronaldo scored his first hattrick for Manchester United, and led the team to demolish Newcastle 6-0 in Old Trafford. Carlos Tevez scored a double while Rio Ferdinand was on the score sheet as well.
MU dominated the game from the start but the scoreline was surprisingly kept at 0-0. In fact they could have gone a goal behind if Michael Owen’s goal was not wrongly ruled as offside… but then, United had 2 penalty claims (one was obvious foul in the box) denied as well.
The 2nd half was a different story though; Manchester United finally convert their dominance into goals. Ronaldo opened the scoring on 49th minute with a cleverly taken freekick, and scored the other two on 70th minute and 88th minute.
The hattrick takes Ronaldo’s goal tally to 22 for the current season, just one short of last season’s 23-goals.
Cristiano Ronaldo believes Manchester United will retain their Premier League title and win a third European Cup after a solid start to the season.
The Portuguese winger has scored six goals to help United to second in the domestic table and to win their opening three games in the Champions League.
And the 22-year-old said: “I believe we will win the Premier League and the Champions League this season.