Wolfsburg, the German champions arrived at Old Trafford, full of confidence and that was quickly put into their play, as for the first 20 minutes there won’t be many teams coming to Old Trafford this season and enjoying that much possession.
Michael Owen with his first start in a European game for 5 years, was quickly brought to halt having limped off with a groin strain, being doubtful before the game anyway, with a groin niggle, must have been very frustrating for the Reds striker, probably seeing this would be a great chance to make a stake for a first team place.
It was a fairly quiet start from Manchester United. The German champions had a couple of decent half chances to take a sort of shock early lead against United.
The conditions weren’t perfect, with rain lashing down at Old Trafford. They started finding their feet, Michael Carrick who at best has been a bit part player this season, was starting to boss the midfield, his passing looked crisper, his energy was much better, his tackling and timing was excellent.
The same as Classy Ryan Giggs started to come to the fold as well and again Antonio Valencia had another indifferent game looking pacey and strong on the ball, for me he still lacks that cross to pick out a United head in the middle, like against Besiktas he got in excellent positions to the byline, but every cross that came in just found a Wolfsburg defenders.
After a fairly quiet first half, with not too many chances, the German side came out the traps again very quickly and after 56 minutes they struck first with a strong header from the Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko that brought a silence around Old Trafford apart from the German corner of the ground.
This only seemed to kick us into gear, we had a quicker tempo to our game. Carrick and Giggs started to control the game and the midfield once again. On the 59 minute, Anderson took the ball just outside the box but was brought down for a free kick.
We all sort of knew that Giggs was going to smash this into the top corner, but not this time, with a nice deflection off the side of the wall it found the bottom corner, much to our relief 1-1.
Man United continued to create chances, Wayne Rooney looking lively trying to make that yard of space for a shot.
Then on the 78th minute a ball from Rooney to Berbatov to Giggs who then laid it off to (for me the man of the match) Michael Carrick and he side footed a beautiful shot past the German keeper.
All in all I think a good result 2-1 against a well organized German team, who’s strikers alone got them more than 65 goals in all competitions last season, even Mr. Berbatov had one of his better games in a United shirt, but his stats still read 3 goals in 24 games, even his goals created, he was only 2nd last season with Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard who as attacking midfielders have scored an abundance more goals then he has.
He still has a lot of doubters at Old Trafford, who think for £30 million a few flicks and fancy turns are not enough to warrant the transfer fee paid, when you think he fell in the same price bracket as Fernando Torres or Benzema who would you rather have????
