Tom Doyle :: TALK

Last night must have been one of the most hillarious moments in Irish soccer on TV since this….

The panel, made up of the usual suspects, Johnny Giles, Liam Brady and Eamonn Dunphy completely lashed Manchester United and Ronaldo ahead of their game against Roma in Old Trafford last night.

Not one of the panel believed that United could even scrape a one goal win that would secure them a place in this years champions league semi-final.

At half time, when United had gone 4 goals ahead of Roma, I think the panel looked more shell shocked than Roma themselves. Johnny Giles, looked so embarrassed and came out with a statement such as “I’ve never seen United play like that before”.

After they all agreed before the game that Ronaldo would have to show his talents in game as big as this to prove he is a world class player, they rebuked the comments at full-time by saying that he must prove it more often.

Lads face it, you’ve made complete arses of yourselves and got it completely wrong again!!! But I don’t think you’ve ever been this wrong before…. To use the excuse that “if we had of known United would play like that…” - What way did you expect them to play?

Anyway, my analysis of the game is a bit different than all our pundits. I personally believe United have been playing like this most of the season. The one major factor between last nights performance and any other of the season is that United took their chances!!

Every shot we had last night, seemed to have that midas touch. If you look closely at Rooney’s goal, he even scuffed it, but it went in last night. (p.s. I’m not knocking the fact that he made an amazing run to get into that area!)

One point that annoyed me about the Irish pundits was the fact that “Carrick is never usually in that position”. They were talking about his positioning for his two goals.

They were ignorant enough to ignore the starting line up, in which it was obvious with the introduction of Fletcher, that Carrick would in fact be taking up Scholes position and playing in a more advanced role than his typical holding midfielder role.

Ronaldo - well - I can’t really disagree with them much on this. I’m not a huge fan of Ronaldo, he’s a selfish player and ignores the game of football in favour of self glory. HOWEVER!! Last night he was fantastic and he even tried to play football at times. I don’t think he’s far off being a world class and top player, but he still has some work to do.

All in all, 7-1 was a great win for us last night, I always thought United had it in them to get at least a 1-0 win over Roma. I never expected the result we got last night…. LONG MAY IT CONTINUE!! :):)