The Reds Draw With Blackburn

Dim­itar Berbatov

Manchester United suffered a third major blow in the time span of only eight days as they could only man­age a dull goal­less draw against Black­burn Rovers at Ewood Park on Sunday. Sir Alex Fer­guson made as many as six changes to the team which star­ted the match against Bay­ern Munich at Old Traf­ford in mid­week but the encounter with their local rivals turned out to be an exceed­ingly bor­ing affair.

Black­burn barely threatened dur­ing the first 45 minutes and although they grew more into the game after the resump­tion, they were never as dan­ger­ous as the vis­it­ors. The Blue and Whites did have their scor­ing oppor­tun­it­ies, though, but poor fin­ish­ing let them down. With lead­ing goalscorer Wayne Rooney miss­ing after ser­i­ously injur­ing his ankle against Bay­ern Munich last Wed­nes­day, Manchester United star­ted the game with Dim­itar Ber­batov and Fed­erico Macheda up front but they both failed to break down the resi­li­ent defence of the oppos­i­tion. When Sir Alex Fer­guson even­tu­ally replaced Ryan Giggs with Dar­ron Gib­son 12 minutes into the second period, the blatantly cos­metic char­ac­ter of the change was shown in the fact that it changed noth­ing at all. The Reds should have scored in the 80th minute of the match when a cross from Gary Neville found Ber­batov but the striker shot straight at the goal­keeper. As a dir­ect res­ult of all this, Manchester United dropped two price­less points and their hopes of claim­ing a record break­ing 19th title are more or less about to van­ish into thin air.

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