Never A Frown With Wes Brown

Wes Brown

Manchester United could only man­age a nar­row 1–0 vic­tory against Blue Square Premier pro­mo­tion con­tenders Craw­ley Town in the FA Cup Fifth Round tie on Sat­urday af­ter­noon. Sir Alex Ferguson´s Manchester United team went into the lead in the 28th minute of the tightly con­tested match when for­ward think­ing right full­back Wes Brown headed home a mag­ni­fi­cent cross from North­ern Ire­land in­ter­na­tional Dar­ron Gibson.

Manchester United had sev­eral de­cent op­por­tun­it­ies dur­ing the first half and the hosts should have doubled their lead shortly be­fore the in­ter­val, but Fa­bio da Silva put his ef­fort wide. Craw­ley Town ap­peared to have little chance on pa­per but des­pite their lowly status were more than a hand­ful for Manchester United. Sir Alex Fer­guson de­cided to re­place at­tack­ing mid­fielder An­der­son with born again goal scorer Wayne Rooney at the half time break, while Chris Smalling came on for Ra­fael da Silva shortly af­ter­wards. The vis­it­ing side threw everything at Manchester United in the second period and Steve Evans’ hard work­ing team came close to equal­ising in stop­page time when second half sub­sti­tute Richard Brodie headed against the cross­bar. Even though the am­bi­tious West Sus­sex out­fit pro­duced a truly im­press­ive per­form­ance at Old Traf­ford, Sir Alex Ferguson´s second string side held firm to go through to the FA Cup Sixth Round. Manchester United will now play either The Ar­senal or Leyton Ori­ent in the FA Cup Quarter Finals.

The Of­fi­cial Il­lus­trated His­tory of Manchester United