Manchester Utd 2 Soton 1

Man­chester Uni­ted 2 South­ampton 1, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Jan­uary 30, 2013. Pre­mier Lea­gue lead­ers Man­chester Uni­ted nar­rowly edged out re­leg­a­tion can­did­ates South­ampton at Old Traf­ford. Jay Rodrig­uez gave the St Mary´s si­de an early 1-0 lead af­ter just three min­utes of play, but two goals from the in­form Way­ne Roo­ney in the ninth and twenty-sev­enth min­utes of the tussle re­spect­ively se­cured a clo­se 2-1 ho­me vic­tory for United. 

Man­chester Uni­ted were with­out ver­sat­ile de­fender Jon­ny Evans and wing­er Ash­ley Young for the ga­me, whi­le South­ampton had to cope with­out cent­ral de­fender Jose Fonte and stri­ker Guly do Pra­do. Uni­ted came in­to the fix­ture on the back of a com­pre­hens­ive 4-1 FA Cup Fourth Ro­und tri­umph over Ful­ham at Old Traf­ford where a brace from Javi­er Her­nandez and a goal each by Ry­an Gig­gs and Way­ne Roo­ney had made it six ho­me wins in a row. The So­uth Coast club, on the oth­er hand, had to settle for a goal­less Pre­mier Lea­gue draw ag­ainst Da­vid Moyes´s Ever­ton at St Mary´s Sta­dium in their pre­vi­ous ga­me. In the re­verse Pre­miership meet­ing of the 2012-13 sea­son, Man­chester Uni­ted had edged out re­cently pro­moted South­ampton by the nar­row mar­gin of 3–2 in front of a bois­ter­ous and en­thu­si­ast­ic ho­me crowd at St Mary´s cour­tesy of a spec­tac­u­lar hat-trick from new­ly sig­ned Neth­er­lands in­ter­na­tion­al stri­ker Robin van Per­sie. Not sur­pris­ingly, The Man­cuni­ans were red hot fa­vour­ites to de­feat The Saints who had not ma­naged to over­come The Reds at Old Traf­ford since the 16th of Jan­uary 1988 when a double from North­ern Ire­land front­man Co­lin Clarke han­ded Chris Nicholl´s men a shock 2-0 Fir­st Di­vi­sion vic­tory over a star stud­ded ho­me si­de. The So­uth Coast­ers nev­er­the­less star­ted the even­ing mat­ch ag­ainst Man­chester Uni­ted on the front foot, and the vis­it­ors from Hamp­shire took a most un­ex­pec­ted early lead when Jay Rodrig­uez took ad­vant­age of a de­fens­ive mis­take from usu­ally re­li­able Three Li­ons mid­fielder Mi­chael Car­rick and roun­ded Spain U21 goal­keeper Da­vid de Gea and calmly rolled the ball in­to the back of the empty net al­ready in the third min­ute of the tie. A mere six min­utes la­ter, tho­ugh, Man­chester Uni­ted mid­field or­ches­trat­or Shinji Ka­gawa mag­nificently flicked the ball over the South­ampton rear­guard for the con­stantly dan­ger­ous Roo­ney to ham­mer it pa­st help­less Pol­ish shot stop­per Ar­tur Boruc and in­to the goal. And in the 27th min­ute of the fir­st ha­lf, Uni­ted ul­ti­mately went ahead as Pat­rice Ev­ra head­ed a long free-kick from Van the Man back to the wait­ing Waz­za who sco­red an easy goal from clo­se range.

South­ampton su­premo Maur­i­cio Pochet­tino de­cided to make a double sub­sti­tu­tion dur­ing the ha­lf-time break, re­pla­cing Gaston Ramirez wi­th Ad­am Lal­lana, and Ja­son Puncheon wi­th Ste­ve Dav­is. And as the mid­week tussle at Old Traf­ford pro­ceeded, Man­chester Uni­ted man­ager Sir Al­ex Fer­guson sub­sti­tuted Chris Small­ing, Ra­fael da Silva, and Shinji Ka­gawa wi­th Rio Fer­dinand, Oli­veira An­der­son, and Lu­is Nani re­spect­ively. Then, wi­th on­ly fif­teen min­utes re­maining of nor­mal time, Man­chester Uni­ted had the ball in the net once ag­ain, but the goal was dis­al­lowed by mat­ch of­fi­cial Lee Ma­son as Robin van Per­sie was ad­judged to have be­en in an off­side po­s­i­tion. And al­though the in­creas­ingly des­per­ate So­ton play­ers pressed hard for an equal­ising goal dur­ing the clos­ing sta­ges of the clash, the away te­am fi­nally had to ac­cept a mar­gin­al 2-1 de­feat. Lowly pla­ced South­ampton began the en­counter wi­th high rid­ing ta­ble top­pers Man­chester Uni­ted on a pos­it­ive note wi­th a string of per­fectly good scor­ing chances com­ing their way and they sur­prised every­body, in­clud­ing their own sup­port­ers, by play­ing well and keep­ing the re­mainder of the con­test reas­on­ably clo­se. But in the end it was a well de­served vic­tory for Fer­guson’s per­petu­al mo­tion ma­chine who ma­naged to cre­ate more op­por­tun­it­ies than the op­pos­i­tion. Af­ter beat­ing the So­uth Coast­ers, Uni­ted were now sev­en points above sec­ond pla­ced Man­chester City, who could on­ly man­age a goal­less draw ag­ainst re­leg­a­tion strug­gling Queens Park Ran­gers at Shepherd´s Bush. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Phil Jones, Chris Small­ing, Ne­manja Vid­ic, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Dan­ny Wel­beck, Mi­chael Car­rick, Oli­veira An­der­son, Shinji Ka­gawa, Way­ne Roo­ney, Robin van Per­sie. Sub­stitutes: Ra­fael da Silva, Rio Fer­dinand, Lu­is Nani, Al­ex­an­der Buttner, An­tonio Va­lencia, Tom Clev­er­ley, An­ders Linde­gaard. South­ampton Te­am: Ar­tur Boruc, Nath­aniel Clyne, Maya Yoshida, Dan­iel Fox, Mor­gan Schneider­lin, Jos Hoo­iveld, Jack Cork, Gaston Ramirez, Jay Rodrig­uez, Ja­son Puncheon, Rick­ie Lam­bert. Sub­stitutes: Ad­am Lal­lana, Ste­ven Dav­is, Lu­ke Shaw, Rich­ard Chap­low, Tadanari Lee, Frazer Richardson.

Wayne Rooney Quickfacts

Way­ne Roo­ney hit his fir­st goals of the 2012-13 cam­paign in a 4–2 Pre­miership win over Sto­ke City at Old Traf­ford on the 20th Oct­ober 2012. He fin­ished the sea­son wi­th 16 goals in 37 matches.

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