Manchester United Beat West Brom

Ash­ley Young

Manchester United kicked off their Barclays Premier League title de­fence with a nar­row suc­cess against West Brom­wich Al­bion at the Hawthorns on Sunday. Much to the great pleas­ure of the trav­el­ling fans, sum­mer sign­ing Ash­ley Young forced a late own goal in the 81st minute to give the reign­ing league cham­pi­ons a 2–1 win. 

Sir Alex Ferguson´s Manchester United dom­in­ated the first period from the first kick with de­cent pos­ses­sion and passing play. And it came as no sur­prise to any­one when Wayne Rooney opened the scor­ing ac­count in the 13th minute of the en­counter as the Eng­land cent­ral at­tacker ac­cep­ted a slick pass from former As­ton Villa player Ash­ley Young in­side the pen­alty area and hammered home to give the vis­it­ors a well de­served lead. The West Brom­wich play­ers hit back, how­ever, when Re­pub­lic of Ire­land in­ter­na­tional Shane Long man­aged to equal­ise for the Black Coun­try club only eight minutes be­fore the sound of the half time sig­nal thanks to a fatal mis­take from £18.3 mil­lion sign­ing David de Gea. It was a blatantly poor piece of goal­keep­ing from the pre­vi­ous At­letico Mad­rid net cus­todian who has in­deed got off to a very dif­fi­cult start to his Manchester United ca­reer. In the second period, the West Brom­wich Al­bion play­ers were en­thu­si­astic and pos­it­ive about their task and the match switched from end to end with both teams hav­ing ef­forts at goal. Then in the 65th minute, Sir Alex Fer­guson de­cided to re­place Danny Wel­beck with bat­ter­ing ram striker Di­m­itar Ber­batov whose pace and power made Manchester United´s at­tack more dir­ect. Some­how The Bag­gies were still level and the home sup­port­ers star­ted to be­lieve in their team but in the end they were worn down by the away side. With only nine minutes left, a low cross ball from new boy Ash­ley Young even­tu­ally found its way into the goal via full back Steven Reid and al­though the des­per­ate hosts pushed for­ward at the end of the match to try to force an equal­iser, the Manchester United de­fence held firm. All in all the vic­tory yes­ter­day was a bril­liant start to the new cam­paign for The Reds.

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