Sunday's game - another perspective

This is my first article on here. I have actually followed the site since creation and I am quite impressed by most of the posters (even the WUMs do amuse me).

First, I'll like to apologize for yet another article on Sunday's debacle. I just thought I'd make my contribution in my own thread instead of passing the comment on one of the several articles already made.

Like any other United fan, I was disappointed by the result. In fact, I have switched off from all sports TV channel and papers since Sunday evening (I usually do this to avoid the mass overreaction that follows this sort of stuff). I'll like to give my take on some key issues.

1. Midfield issue - I still do not believe that our midfield is as bad as people are making it. In fact, I told my friend who joined the game 30 minutes into it that we were doing well and will go ahead to equalize and possibly win. My reason for this was that our midfield was doing quite well against City's and not being overrun as people were thinking it would before the game. Unfortunately, the Evans red changed the balance against us as Fletch had to move to RB to cover for a while. While I totally believe in SAF (you'd be very brave to doubt the great man) I found it strange that he didn't pull off Wellbeck (who was doing well, though) immediately for a defender and not disrupt the midfield immediately we lost Evans.
While I'll welcome an additional quality midfielder into the team, I do not believe that the midfield lost us the game as a lot of people on this forum seem to be implying.

2. Rooney - I am a massive Rooney fan, but I am amazed that nobody has mentioned how much possesion he gave away on Sunday. To me Rooney alonside Nani were the ones we were counting on for creativity on Sunday. With Nani actually forgeting to show up, it seems Rooney just laboured for a while and later gave up. Even with minimal supply to him, I thought it was one of his bad games. The less said about Nani's performance the better.

3.Evra - Another shocker on that day. Almost all the goals came from the left wing. I feel he is due some 'rest' to mentally recover. I know people have been saying that he has been poor since the world cup but I have never seen it that way but felt he was beginning to get exhausted. However, his discipline and positioning was unbelievably bad on Sunday.

4. The Carrick issue - Sunday shows exactly why Carrick (who I believe is underrated by United fans) is important in these sort of games. While he does slow down our game, he is a very disciplined player. He does the simple things well. For some reasons, he always seem to be the fall guy whenever we have a bad game.

5. Rio - In my opinion, probably among the best top 5 defenders that I have seen play the game. However, I am beginning to get worried about him. It seems injury and age are beginning to have a say on his play. Ironically, he was one defender that I actually thougth might be able to play into his late 30s at the top level ( a la Maldini) as his play is not really based on speed and tackles. Dont know whats gone wrong. May be, less tweeting might do the trick.

6. Summary - Sunday's result was bad, really bad. However, it should be taken into perspective. We'll need to improve in some areas which I am sure we will (it's still October). Human emotion is usually massively exagerrated. Remember the hysteria after the Arsenal game even though we were not outstanding as reflected by the result but just deadly in finishing. This is the exact opposite scenario; we were not woeful as reflected by the result but defended badly after the red and especially in the last 10 minutes. Let the blues have their day (they have earned and deserved it). It's a marathon and we'll be back.