Manchester United V Norwich City 2–0

Ander­son

The Reds earned them­selves a fully deserved 2–0 tri­umph against newly pro­moted Nor­wich City at Old Traf­ford on Sat­urday. Paul Lambert´s Nor­wich play­ers defen­ded well before the sound of the half time whistle but goals from Oli­veira Ander­son and Danny Wel­beck in the second half saw Manchester United run­ning out 2–0 winners.

It was a much changed Manchester United side that took to the field, how­ever, as Old Traf­ford man­ager Sir Alex Fer­guson had made as many as seven alter­a­tions to the team from the match against Swiss Cham­pi­ons FC Basel at Old Traf­ford last Tues­day. Although The Manchester Reds were strong favour­ites to win against the Nor­folk club, the vis­it­ors never buckled in the face of the opponent´s repu­ta­tion and the home team struggled to make an impres­sion. The Canar­ies star­ted the match on a bright note and they should have taken the lead already in 17th minute of the con­test when Welsh flank­man Steve Mor­ison out­man­oeuvred North­ern Ire­land inter­na­tional defender Jonny Evans before he shot wide from the edge of the pen­alty area. The encounter was even­tu­ally brought to life twenty minutes into the second period as vet­eran player Ryan Giggs took a flag kick from the left side of the field which Brazilian mid­field dynamo Oli­veira Ander­son headed past a help­less John Ruddy in the Nor­wich goal to make the sco­reline read 1–0 in Manchester United´s favour. Finally in the clos­ing stages of the game, a dan­ger­ous low cross ball from unselfish work­horse Ji-Sung Park found second period sub­sti­tute Danny Wel­beck who tapped in the ball from close range to seal Manchester United´s 19th con­sec­ut­ive home vic­tory in the Eng­lish Premier League. Manchester United Team: Anders Linde­gaard, Phil Jones, Jonny Evans, Patrice Evra, Ant­o­nio Valen­cia, Luis Nani, Dar­ren Fletcher, Oli­veira Ander­son, Ji-Sung Park, Wayne Rooney, Javier Hernan­dez.  Nor­wich City Team: John Ruddy, Rus­sell Mar­tin, Leon Barnett, Marc Tier­ney, Kyle Naughton, Brad­ley John­son, Anthony Pilk­ing­ton, Wes Hoo­la­han, Steve Mor­ison, David Fox, Elli­ott Bennett.

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