Manchester United Draw At Stoke

Nani

Table top­ping Manchester United were held to a 1–1 draw by a well or­gan­ised and hard work­ing Stoke City team at The Brit­an­nia Sta­dium on Sat­urday. Por­tugal in­ter­na­tional winger Nani opened the score sheet with a breath­tak­ing in­di­vidual dis­play in the 27th minute of play be­fore a bril­liant headed goal from Stoke for­ward Peter Crouch seven minutes into the second half ended Manchester United´s win­ning streak.

It was clear to every­one present that Manchester United sorely missed Wayne Rooney who wasn’t risked due to a ham­string prob­lem. The vis­it­ors nev­er­the­less went into the lead in the 27th minute of the en­counter when Nani brought the ball into the pen­alty area be­fore the bandy legged flank­man powered a low strike into the bot­tom left-hand corner. The prom­ising start fizzled out, how­ever, and the home side al­most equal­ised a few minutes minutes later when a dan­ger­ous high cross ball from right winger Jer­maine Pen­nant even­tu­ally found its way to de­fender Andy Wilkin­son whose fe­ro­cious shot was mi­ra­cu­lously touched on to the bar by Manchester United keeper David de Gea. After 52 minutes of play, Stoke City fi­nally man­aged to level the score when £10 mil­lion sign­ing Peter Crouch headed a flag kick from left winger Mat­thew Eth­er­ing­ton past the help­less goal­keeper and into the back of the net from six yards out. The former Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur striker al­most scored a second goal for his new club but his ef­fort was su­perbly saved by David de Gea in the Manchester United goal. After drop­ping two points against The Pottters on Sat­urday, Sir Alex Ferguson´s Manchester United play­ers are now ahead of fel­low Premier League title chal­lengers Manchester City on goal difference.

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