Manchester United 3 – 0 West Ham United : Review | only 74mins of football

The below formation diagram shows United Lineing up 4-4-2 and Westham playing 4-2-3-1 but Westham played 4-1-4-1 with parker moving to front of the defense and Noble and Boa joining the forwards.

The first 30mins of the game is dull and it looked like United is playing after a long time, as they created less no of changes and game is off the pace. But in this period webstham defended very well . The 5 westham midfielders stuck the roles assigned to them. They tracked both fletcher and Scholes well and it looked like man marking at many times. With Parker moving deep, Boa marked Fletcher and Noble tracked Scholes. Parker took the role of sweeper in front of the defense.

Jonathan Spector had fouled Ryan Giggs with an unnecessary tackle in the penalty box. He opted to tackle even when some of the defenders are available to track Giggs. This resulted a penalty which Rooney took and scored. With that he ended his five-month wait for a goal.

United’s left and right backs pushed higher up the pitch as both Nani and Giggs are cutting inside. Just before half time. Vidic lofted a long diagonal ball over the West Ham defence for Berbatov, who knocked it back for Nani, whose shot was tipped onto the woodwork by Rob Green. Just after few minutes, Nani licked the ball over the crossbar when Giggs chipped the ball through for Nani for a one-on-one with Green.

The observations from the first half are: United opted to attack from the middle. Nani played inside and looked more comfortable on the right side. Berbatov dropped deep to, in front of the midfield. WestHam tried to stop the united attack higer up the pitch.

The second half started brightly for United. 5mins into the second half, Nani scored a brilliant goal to United 2-0 lead. The second  half Scholes looked more lively and played long passes to berbatov and Giggs more. In the second half it looked like Westham lost the plot. Their midfield didn’t tracked the united midfield properly, like they did in the first 30mins. This leaves Scholes and Fletcher to move freely and as a result united created more opportunities . Third goal came when a cross from Nani found Berbatov unmarked near the goal and his perfect airborne volly found the net.

Then United made 3 substitutions at 74th minute: Carrck for Scholes, Owen for Berbatov and Smallings for Evans. The main playmakers of the first 70mins Scholes and Berbatov were off suddenly and suddenly it looked like these substations killed the game. And nothing exciting happens for the next 15mins and the score line stayed 3-0.