Preston North End 1-3 Manchester United: And The Reds Go Stumbling On
They came, they saw, and eventually, with the assistance of a goal that had a none too subtle hint of offside about it and a penalty kick that may or me not have been partially justified, Manchester United are through to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. In knockout competitions few will remember how you got to there if you end up winning the competition, but none of this is to say that there was a considerable amount of glory about their win at League One Preston North End. If this team is expected to challenge for the Premier League championship again next season, coach Louis Van Gaal will have further work to do. His Manchester United team remains lumpen in its application, and the comfortable eventual scoreline last night only masks these potential cracks.
Van Gaal deserves credit for making a substitution that changed the course of his team's evening. Radamel Falcao, all £250,000 a week of him, didn't so much look like a fish out of water as a salmon who'd reached his spawning ground and was waiting to die. The coach replaced him with Ashley Young, another player who has borne his fair share of criticism as part of United's dysfunctional generation, and this decision turned out to change the team's evening. Young offered fluidity, width and pace. It was a tactical switch that Preston were too limited to be able to deal with.
Even so, Manchester United required a dollop of good fortune the secure their place in the next round of the competition. With Preston leading by a goal to nil and looking effervescent enough to threaten a second goal themselves, Herrera squeezed a shot in off the far post with Wayne Rooney, quite clearly in an offside position and quite clearly blocking the goalkeeper's view of the shot. Even taking into account generous changes to the offside law in recent years, to suggest that Rooney wasn't "interfering with play" seems a little fantastical.
With the second goal, a shot from a narrow angle from the frequently brow beaten Marouane Fellaini, the noise levels at a hitherto excitable Deepdale finally started to fall away a little, and in the closing stages of the match a little icing was added to United's cake when an onrushing goalkeeper Thorsten Stuckmann gave Rooney all the excuse he needed to take a swan dive in the vicinity of his outstretched leg and win – the word "earn" feels like a bit of a stretch, there – a penalty that he converted with a minimum of fuss. On the balance of play, it was a result that Manchester United just about merited, but if they are to win the FA Cup for the
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