The Reds Beat The Black Cats

Sir Alex Ferguson

An own goal from unfor­tu­nate defender Wes Brown handed Manchester United a nar­row 1–0 tri­umph against a strug­gling Sun­der­land team at Old Traf­ford on Sat­urday. Shortly before the sound of the half time sig­nal, the former Manchester United and Eng­land favour­ite man­aged to deflect a header from Danny Wel­beck into the back of his own net to give Sir Alex Ferguson´s play­ers their fourth con­sec­ut­ive win.

Sun­der­land suffered an early blow when Con­nor Wick­ham was injured within the first two minutes and had to be replaced by Ji Dong-wan. Steve Bruce´s play­ers star­ted the match on a bright note with a couple of decent oppor­tun­ites, though, but they were gradu­ally pushed back by the home side who star­ted to knock the ball around con­fid­ently. Towards the end of the first half, Javier Hernan­dez screamed for a pen­alty after tum­bling under Sebastian Larsson´s chal­lenge but his appeals for a spot kick were right­fully waved away by ref­eree Lee Mason. The red shirts even­tu­ally went into the lead in first half injury time when Wes Brown deflec­ted a Danny Wel­beck header into his own net. There was con­tro­versy in the 67th minute of the clash, how­ever, when the ref­eree blew for a delib­er­ate hand­ball from mul­ti­func­tional defender Phil Jones inside the 18-yard box only to change his mind after a lengthy con­sulta­tion with lines­man Jake Colling. As the game went on, The Reds looked com­fort­able with their lead and they were con­tent to play out the remainder of the second half. After 25 years as man­ager of Manchester United, Sir Alex Fer­guson was given a sur­prise ahead of the game when Old Trafford’s North Stand was unveiled as the new Sir Alex Fer­guson Stand. It was also announced that Manchester United had com­mis­sioned a statue of the legendary man­ager to be unveiled out­side the newly named stand before the start of next season.

Manchester United Books