Manchester United V Arsenal 8–2

Wayne Rooney

Manchester United and Eng­land sharp­shooter Wayne Rooney man­aged to record a treble as the reign­ing Barclays Premier League Cham­pi­ons out­classed and out­played their long­time adversar­ies and fel­low league title chal­lengers Arsenal to the highly con­vin­cing tune of 8–2 at their Old Traf­ford fort­ress on Sunday. The Red Dev­ils found them­selves 3–1 up at half time and the home play­ers con­tin­ued to dom­in­ate the pro­ceed­ings in the second period adding five fur­ther goals to even­tu­ally run out com­fort­able win­ners in the end. The res­ult was The Arsenal’s heav­iest defeat since suf­fer­ing a 8–0 defeat at the hands of Lough­bor­ough Town in a Second Divi­sion game back in Decem­ber 1896.

There were plenty of goals and plenty of action as Manchester United demol­ished Arsene Wenger´s Arsenal team yes­ter­day after­noon. Not even pro­du­cer and stage designer Sir Alex Fer­guson could have fore­seen the deluge of goals that would flow at The Theatre of Dreams. The first goal of the eagerly anti­cip­ated encounter between the two Barclays Premier League giants arrived in the 22nd minute of the play when a long and lofty pass from dynamic area-to-area mid­field play­maker Oli­veira Ander­son found Danny Wel­beck who headed the ball over the hands of Poland inter­na­tional goal­tender Woj­ciech Szczesny and into the net. An aggress­ive chal­lenge inside the the eighteen-yard box from North­ern Ire­land defender Jonny Evans on Arsenal and Eng­land fron­trun­ner Theo Wal­cott res­ul­ted in a pen­alty to the hosts shortly after, but the spot kick from Robin van Per­sie was magic­ally saved by sum­mer sign­ing David de Gea. The Manchester United play­ers respon­ded instantly, how­ever, as former Villa Park favour­ite Ash­ley Young curled the ball behind the help­less away goal­keeper in the 28th minute of the excit­ing and pulsat­ing game. A mere seven minutes later, a ham­string injury brought Danny Welbeck´s after­noon to an abrupt end and he was replaced by his fel­low striker Javier Hernan­dez. Wayne Rooney net­ted a third goal after 41 minutes with an abso­lutely aston­ish­ing free-kick before Theo Wal­cott pulled one back for The Gun­ners a few minutes later. Nine minutes after the break, Wazza´s bravado sur­faced again when the born again goal plun­derer scored with a second free kick before Luis Nani chipped the ball over the Arsenal net cus­todian in the 67th minute of the one-sided clash to make the sco­reline read 5–1 in the favour of home team. Second period replace­ment Ji-sung Park then made Manchester United´s sixth goal of the after­noon after con­vert­ing a fine pass from the ever dan­ger­ous Ash­ley Young. Dutch mas­ter Robin van Per­sie man­aged to net a con­sol­a­tion goal for the Emir­ates Sta­dium club in the 74th minute of action but the North Lon­don­ers were reduced to ten play­ers soon after when pre­vi­ous Charlton Ath­letic right back Carl Jen­kin­son was right­fully ordered off for a mind­less and unne­ces­sary tackle on trig­ger happy sharp­shooter Javier Chicharito Hernan­dez. There was more drama to come as Arsenal and Eng­land mid­field bat­tler Theo Wal­cott employed boot force and ignor­ance to bring down attack minded left wing­back Patrice Evra inside the the pen­alty area in the 82nd minute of the high scor­ing affair. With the con­fid­ence of a Zen mas­ter, Wayne Rooney blas­ted his spot kick into the right corner of the net to com­plete his tre­mend­ous treble before the irre­press­ible Ash­ley Young recor­ded the last and tenth goal of the after­noon in stop­page time with yet another curl­ing shot. After inflict­ing The Arsenal’s biggest defeat for well over 100 years, The Manchester Reds climbed to the very top of the Barclays Premier League table for the first time this cur­rent cam­paign. Appar­ently, Manchester United Head Coach Sir Alex Fer­guson is not ready to ride his white horse into the sun­set quite yet. Manchester United Start­ing Lineup: David de Gea, Chris Smalling, Patrice Evra, Phil Jones, Jonny Evans, Tom Clev­er­ley, Oli­veira Ander­son, Luis Nani, Ash­ley Young, Wayne Rooney, Danny Wel­beck. Manchester United Sub­sti­tutes: Javier Chicharito Hernan­dez, Ji-sung Park, Ryan Giggs, Rio Ferdin­and, Fabio da Silva, Dim­itar Ber­batov, Anders Linde­gaard. Arsenal Start­ing Lineup: Woj­ciech Szczesny, Carl Jen­kin­son, Johan Djourou, Laurent Kos­cielny, Armand Traore, Fran­cis Coquelin, Aaron Ram­sey, Tomas Rosicky, Theo Wal­cott, Andrey Arshavin, Robin van Per­sie. Arsenal Sub­sti­tutes: Alex­an­der Oxlade-Chamberlain, Mar­ou­ane Cha­makh, Ignasi Miquel, Henri Lans­bury, Lukasz Fabi­anski, Oguzhan Ozyakup, Gilles Sunu.

Manchester United Books