The Cup runneth is over

By: timmyg | March 7th, 2009

United are no longer a football club. They’re an unstoppable machine. Skynet. High fructose corn syrup. Obama’s presidential campaign.

Everywhere. Unavoidable. Undefeatable.

So its no surprise they demolish Fulham 4-0 in the FA Cup right?

Honestly, I think otherwise.

Fulham played quite possibly their worst game all season, second to, well, that first affair against Manchester United.

Coincidental? Most likely. But I’m not going to give a club like United the credit they “deserve” because they don’t deserve anything in my mind. Any club can be good, or I could probably be a good manager, if it/I was able to acquire any player it/I wanted (through mainly illegitimate means). But thats a rant/conspiracy theory for another day.

Trying to work the ball through the center, United closed down all gaps in our midfield. Which didn’t help because they seemed more than content to hang out just outside the center circle when we were attacking, and the passing overall was just atrocious. Dickson Ethuhu had another howler of a match, having a hand in half of United goals — falling down to allow Tevez to score his second, and his terrible first touch allowing Rooney to slot home United’s third.

Some may say the lads didn’t give up, but it was evident after the 50th minute or so they did. They were tired. Overwhelmed. Outclassed. Frustrated. Substitutes Gera, Kamara, and Dacourt were each equally as useless against the tide.

When I was a senior in high school, the lacrosse team I captained was terrible: combination of bad coaching and ‘rebuilding’. We won two games all season, against a first year varsity team. And whenever we had to play the “big boys” that were light years ahead of us that year, it was essentially pointless. We tried, we hustled, we harried. But in the end nothing was different.

And I felt the same way about this match, watching as each pass was sloppily turned over or a step behind, and the defense buckled when first pressured.

It was over before it began.