Manchester United Rule

Wayne Rooney

Manchester United came from be­hind to de­feat As­ton Villa 2–1 in the Fooot­ball League Cup at Wemb­ley Sta­dium on Sunday. James Mil­ner gave The Vil­lains an early lead from the pen­alty spot after only four minutes of play but goals from Mi­chael Owen and Wayne Rooney even­tu­ally gave Sir Alex Ferguson´s men a well de­served victory.

Wayne Rooney was sur­pris­ingly left on the sub­sti­tutes’ bench as Old Traf­ford su­premo Sir Alex Fer­guson made as many as seven changes to his Manchester United team for the Carling Cup Fi­nal with As­ton Villa. The ex­per­i­enced man­ager also left out An­der­son, Wes Brown, Ben Foster, Dar­ron Gib­son, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes and re­placed them with the messieurs Mi­chael Car­rick, Jonny Evans, Dar­ren Fletcher, To­masz Kuszczak, Ji-sung Park and Ra­fael da Silva re­spect­ively. And al­though As­ton Villa boss Mar­tin O´Neill had high hopes for the 2010 Foot­ball League Cup Fi­nal, Manchester United man­aged to edge out The Vil­lains by 2–1 to clinch the trophy for the fourth time. A pen­alty from Eng­land in­ter­na­tional James Mil­ner put the Birm­ing­ham out­fit ahead already in the fourth minute of the match after Gab­riel Ag­bon­lahor had been brought down by Ne­manja Vidic. The Reds hit back in­stantly as ever­green Mi­chael Owen man­aged to fire Manchester United level with a low shot after re­ceiv­ing the ball from Di­m­itar Ber­batov in the sixth minute of play. A mere five minutes be­fore the sound of the half time sig­nal, how­ever, left full­back Patrice Evra be­came the first Manchester United player to go into the referee’s note­book when the French­man was pun­ished for at­tack­ing As­ton Villa winger Ash­ley Young. In the 42nd minute, goalscorer Mi­chael Owen was sub­sti­tuted when the vet­eran at­tacker pulled up sud­denly and he was re­placed by Wayne Rooney. And it was Rooney who was to be­come the hero of the day as the goal poacher ex­traordin­aire headed home a mag­ni­fi­cent cross ball from bandy legged winger Ant­o­nio Valen­cia into the back of the net with only 16 minutes re­main­ing on the clock. As the des­per­ate As­ton Villa play­ers failed to threaten a late equal­iser, Manchester United went on to win the Foot­ball League Cup for the third time in the club´s his­tory. For the sake of the re­cord, Manchester United won it for the first time in 1992 when Sir Alex Ferguson´s side over­came Brian Clough´s Not­ting­ham Forest in the fi­nal thanks to a goal from in­dus­tri­ous centre for­ward Brian McClair.

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