Manchester United Win Comfortably

Wayne Rooney

Manchester United had no prob­lems in defeat­ing Otelul Gal­ati 2–0 at Old Traf­ford yes­ter­day. Ant­o­nio Valen­cia tucked away a hard and low cross ball from Phil Jones for 1–0 on eight minutes, while a deflec­ted shot from newly con­ver­ted mid­field player Wayne Rooney made the score 2–0 with just three minutes left of nor­mal time.

While there are never any easy matches in the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League, Manchester United were too much for the Romanian min­nows of Otelul Gal­ati. The home side went into the lead after eight minutes of play when Dim­itar Ber­batov fed ver­sat­ile defender Phil Jones who man­aged to swing the ball into the pen­alty area from the right flank. Former Eng­land for­ward Michael Owen missed the cross, how­ever, but winger Ant­o­nio Valen­cia was behind him to put it in. Unfor­tu­nately, Michael Owen had to leave the field injured shortly after and the ever­green player was sub­sti­tuted by fel­low striker Javier Hernan­dez after eleven minutes of action. Dor­inel Munteanu´s team had their chances to equal­ise before the sound of the half time sig­nal but the Romanian cham­pi­ons could not quite find that final touch to score the goal they needed. The Manchester United play­ers, who never really per­formed at their best at any stage of the game, con­trolled large parts of the second half play­ing the ball around con­fid­ently and dom­in­at­ing pos­ses­sion. Manchester United even­tu­ally sealed the vic­tory in the 87th minute of the clash when a fero­cious effort from Wayne Rooney from 30-yards out was deflec­ted behind Branko Graho­vac and into the net by unfor­tu­nate defender Cris­tian Sar­ghi. After Wednesday´s encounter with Otelul Gal­ati, The Reds are level on points with Ben­fica at the top of Group C.

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