Man United 3 Aston Villa 1

Af­ter an in­ter­na­tion­al break, The Reds played host to re­leg­a­tion strug­gling As­ton Vil­la at Old Traf­ford in the Pre­mier Lea­gue. Man­chester Uni­ted had to make do with­out the play­ing ser­vices of Dutch stri­ker Robin van Per­sie and for­mer South­ampton left full­back Lu­ke Shaw be­cause of in­jury prob­lems, whi­le North­ern Ire­land in­ter­na­tion­al Jon­ny Evans re­mained sus­pen­ded. The Old Traf­ford club had de­feated Sun­der­land 2-0, New­castle Uni­ted 1-0, Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur 3-0, and Liver­pool 2-1 in their four last Pre­mier Lea­gue fix­tures and they were ex­pec­ted by most pun­dits to over­come The Vil­lains on their own soil. The Man­cuni­ans dom­in­ated early on and Ar­gen­tine in­ter­na­tion­al Mar­cos Rojo al­most put the red shirts ahead wi­th a long-dis­tance rock­et in the 23rd min­ute of pro­ceed­ings. The Mid­lands si­de also had their scor­ing op­por­tun­it­ies dur­ing the open­ing forty-five min­utes, but their leth­ar­gic for­wards failed to find the tar­get. Wi­th the fir­st frame tick­ing down, Man­chester Uni­ted ul­ti­mately took the lead in the en­counter when a pull-back from ver­sat­ile de­fender Da­ley Bli­nd fou­nd pre­vi­ous Ath­let­ic Bil­bao mid­field ace An­der Her­rera who ma­naged to be­at ex­per­i­enced As­ton Vil­la and Uni­ted States net­mind­er Brad Guz­an wi­th an ac­cur­ate low shot from twelve yards out which went in­to the far bot­tom cor­ner of the goal a mere two min­utes ahead of the ha­lf-time whistle be­ing blown.

Fol­low­ing the re­start, Way­ne Roo­ney re­gistered the sec­ond goal of the af­ter­noon for Man­chester Uni­ted as The Three Li­ons marks­man re­ceived a bril­liant pass from Ash­ley Young re­place­ment An­gel Di Mar­ia be­fore ham­mer­ing an un­stoppable ef­fort from in­side the eight­een-yard box pa­st Guz­an and in­to the top cor­ner of the net in the 79th min­ute of the con­test. Bel­gian at­tack­er Chris­ti­an Ben­teke pulled one back for The Claret and Blue when he sco­red wi­th a some­what lucky strike strike that went un­der Spain shot stop­per Da­vid de Gea and in­to the onion bag just one min­ute la­ter, but Her­rera ev­entually com­pleted his double as he met a clev­er cut-back from fel­low mid­field man Ju­an Ma­ta to put the ball in­to the net in sec­ond ha­lf stop­page time, ma­king the fi­nal score 3-1 to Uni­ted. A strong run­ning play­maker wi­th an eye for goal too, An­der Her­rera had now notched up five goals in nine­teen Pre­miership ap­pear­ances for Man­chester Uni­ted since his ar­rival in Eng­land at the start of the 2014-15 cam­paign. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Phil Jones, An­tonio Va­lencia, Mar­cos Rojo, Da­ley Bli­nd, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Ju­an Ma­ta, Mi­chael Car­rick, An­der Her­rera, Ash­ley Young, Way­ne Roo­ney. Sub­stitutes: Ra­fael da Silva, An­gel Di Mar­ia, Ra­damel Fal­cao, Ad­nan Januzaj, An­dreas Pe­reira, Pad­dy McNair, Vic­tor Valdes. As­ton Vil­la Te­am: Brad Guz­an, Alan Hut­ton, Matt Low­ton, Jores Okore, Ciaran Clark, Fa­bi­an Delph, Charles N’Zo­g­bia, Car­los San­chez, Andi Wei­mann, Gabby Ag­bon­lahor, Chris­ti­an Ben­teke. Sub­stitutes: Shay Giv­en, Nat­han Baker, Ron Vlaar, Le­andro Ba­cuna, Carles Gil, Joe Cole, Jack Grealish.

UNITED FEATURES UNITED REPORTS UNITED REVIEWS UNITED STORIES

Front Page