Manchester Utd 4 Wolves 1

Man­chester Uni­ted 4 Wolver­hampton Wan­derers 1, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Dec­ember 10, 2011. Af­ter suf­fer­ing a dis­ap­point­ing 2-1 de­feat ag­ainst reign­ing Swiss Su­per Lea­gue Cham­pi­ons FC Basel in the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue, Man­chester Uni­ted si­lenced their crit­ics wi­th an em­phat­ic 4-1 Pre­mier Lea­gue win over Wolver­hampton Wanderers.

Sec­ond pla­ced Man­chester Uni­ted eased to a fully de­served and ul­ti­mately com­fort­able 4-1 tri­umph ag­ainst re­leg­a­tion can­did­ates Wolver­hampton cour­tesy of a double each from Lu­is Nani and Way­ne Roo­ney in a mat­ch which was more or less a one-sided af­fair as the con­fid­ent hosts dom­in­ated the pos­ses­sion of the ball and pro­duced the vast ma­jor­ity of goal scor­ing op­por­tun­it­ies dur­ing the ninety min­utes. The con­vin­cing vic­tory ag­ainst Wan­derers not on­ly gave Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s men the per­fect ton­ic fol­low­ing the em­bar­rass­ing and un­ex­pec­ted 2-1 group sta­ge loss to Swiss min­nows FC Basel in the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue three days earli­er, it also proved their abil­ity to lift them­selves up when they were down. And al­though Man­chester Uni­ted had to cope with­out the ser­vices of key play­ers such as de­fender Ne­manja Vid­ic; mid­field­ers Oli­veira An­der­son and Tom Clev­er­ley; and for­ward Javi­er Her­nandez for the Pre­mier Lea­gue en­counter ag­ainst Wolver­hampton, The Reds con­trolled pro­ceed­ings al­most through­out the ga­me and the vis­it­ors nev­er really stood a chan­ce ag­ainst a hungry and fired-up ho­me si­de des­pite a spir­ited come­back in the early sta­ges of the sec­ond half.

Typi­fy­ing his style, Nani help­ed Man­chester Uni­ted get their title hopes back on track fol­low­ing sev­en­teen min­utes of ac­tion as the cre­at­ive wing for­ward opened the scor­ing ac­count wi­th a well pla­ced low shot pa­st Wol­ves and Wales goal­keeper Way­ne Hen­nessey and in­to the bot­tom left-hand cor­ner of the net be­fore Roo­ney ad­ded a sec­ond goal ten min­utes la­ter. Scot­land in­ter­na­tion­al Ste­ven Fletch­er ma­naged to pull one back for The Old Gold and Black when he be­at Da­vid de Gea wi­th a head­er from a Matt Jar­vis cross a mere two min­utes in­to the sec­ond frame, but in the fifty-sixth min­ute of the clash the in­form Nani fou­nd the net ag­ain for Uni­ted as did Roo­ney a couple of min­utes pa­st the hour ma­rk. Fol­low­ing the 4-1 dis­mant­ling of Mick McCarthy´s troubled Wolver­hampton, Man­chester Uni­ted had now gain­ed thirty-six points from fif­teen mat­ches and were on­ly two points adrift of ta­ble top­pers Man­chester City who lost 2-1 ag­ainst Chel­sea at Stam­ford Bridge. Sir Al­ex Fer­guson: “Our at­tack­ing play was ter­rif­ic and we could have sco­red a lot more today. I tho­ught that our wide po­s­i­tions were a prob­lem for Wolver­hampton. Lu­is Nani and An­tonio Va­lencia kept their full backs oc­cu­pied the who­le mat­ch. They got right be­hind the young play­ers and that was good. You hope that it puts pres­sure on Man­chester City and Chel­sea, but the im­port­ant thing is to get our ga­me right. And if we get to New Year‘s Day in the frame we have a great chan­ce in the sec­ond ha­lf of the Pre­mier Leau­ge cam­paign.” Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Chris Small­ing, Rio Fer­dinand, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Phil Jones, Jon­ny Evans, An­tonio Va­lencia, Mi­chael Car­rick, Lu­is Nani, Way­ne Roo­ney, Dan­ny Wel­beck. Sub­stitutes: Zeki Fry­ers, Dar­ron Gib­son, Ash­ley Young, Ry­an Gig­gs, Ji-Sung Park, Fe­d­erico Ma­cheda, An­ders Linde­gaard. Wolver­hampton Wan­derers Te­am: Way­ne Hen­nessey, Ron­ald Zubar, Ro­ger John­son, Chris­tophe Berra, Steph­en Wa­rd, Jam­ie O’Hara, Da­vid Ed­wards, Karl Henry, Matt Jar­vis, Ste­ven Fletch­er, Kev­in Doyle. Sub­stitutes: Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, Nen­ad Mili­jas, Rich­ard Ste­ar­man, Ge­orge Elokobi, Ad­am Ham­mill, Steph­en Hunt, Dor­us de Vries.

Manchester United Quickfacts

Man­chester Uni­ted over­came Wolver­hampton Wan­derers 2-1 in a Pre­miership fix­ture at Old Traf­ford on the sixth of Nov­ember 2010 thanks to a brace by So­uth Korea in­ter­na­tion­al Ji-Sung Park. 

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