Manchester United Sink Seasiders

Michael Owen

Manchester United demol­ished releg­a­tion bat­tling Black­pool 4–2 at Old Traf­ford on Sunday to con­demn the Bloom­field Road out­fit to the Cham­pi­on­ship. Although the determ­ined and hard work­ing Black­pool play­ers gave a good account of them­selves in their last match of the league cam­paign, Sir Alex Ferguson´s Manchester United team even­tu­ally proved much too strong for Ian Holloway´s troops in the end.

After 20 minutes of play, a mag­ni­fi­cent pass from Dim­itar Ber­batov found strong run­ning mid­field player Ji-Sung Park who clipped the ball into the corner of the net to edge Manchester United ahead. Scot­land inter­na­tional Charlie Adam then brought Black­pool level with a well taken free kick in the 40th minute of the encounter before Gary Taylor-Fletcher con­ver­ted a fine cross from David Vaughan 12 minutes into the second half to give the vis­it­ors a shock 2–1 lead. Five minutes later, how­ever, for­ward think­ing mid­fielder Ander­son powered the ball behind a help­less Matt Gilks in the Black­pool goal and into the back of the net to level the score. With 17 minutes left on the referee´s clock, unfor­tu­nate Black­pool cent­ral defender Ian Evatt turned a dan­ger­ous cross from sub­sti­tute Chris Smalling into his own net to make the sco­reline read 3–2 in Manchester United´s favour. Numer­ous excel­lent saves from Matt Gilks kept the score within respect­able lim­its, how­ever, as the Black­pool goal­keeper fought a one man battle against the inev­it­able dur­ing the clos­ing stages of the game. Sub­sti­tute Michael Owen even­tu­ally man­aged to score a fourth goal nine minutes from nor­mal time when he powered a fero­cious shot to give Manchester United a com­fort­able 4–2 win.

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