Wigan Athletic V Manchester United 1–0

David De Gea

Barclays Premier League lead­ers Manchester United suffered a shock defeat to releg­a­tion can­did­ates Wigan Ath­letic at DW Sta­dium on Wed­nes­day.  The only goal of the match came in the 50th minute of the encounter as Shaun Malo­ney beat Manchester United goal­keeper David de Gea with a fierce shot from out­side the box.

Wigan Ath­letic went on to dom­in­ate large parts of the first period but The Lat­ics were unable to take full advant­age of their ball pos­ses­sion. Then in the 22nd minute of the close local derby, Manchester United defender Jonny Evans was duly yel­low carded by ref­eree Phil Dowd for a tough chal­lenge on Argen­tina U-20 inter­na­tional Franco Di Santo. After 29 minutes of the play, how­ever, Nigerian inter­na­tional winger Vic­tor Moses had the ball in the net from a Shaun Malo­ney corner but it was con­tro­ver­sially dis­al­lowed by the ref­eree to the utter dis­may of the angry Wigan sup­port­ers. Although Sir Alex Fer­guson even­tu­ally respon­ded to the pres­sure by mak­ing a sub­sti­tu­tion at the inter­val with dynamic mid­field play­maker Tom Clev­erly com­ing on for the anonym­ous Ash­ley Young, the hosts took the lead five minutes into the second period when Jean Beau­se­jour found Shaun Malo­ney who powered the ball from the edge of the pen­alty area behind goal­keeper David de Gea and into the back of the net. After 65 minutes, the Manchester United man­ager decided to replace Eng­land fron­trun­ner Wayne Rooney with Por­tuguese inter­na­tional Nani but the sub­sti­tu­tion made little dif­fer­ence as the home side held on to win the game.

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