Manchester U 4 Everton 4

Man­chester Uni­ted 4 Ever­ton 4, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, April 22, 2012. Man­chester Uni­ted were held to an un­ex­pec­ted draw by a de­term­ined Ever­ton te­am at Old Traf­ford. Uni­ted had a com­fort­able two goal lead late in the sec­ond pe­riod, but the blue shir­ted men ma­naged to score twice in the clos­ing mo­ments of the mat­ch to snatch a 4-4 draw. 

Pre­miership lead­ers Man­chester Uni­ted played host to sev­enth pla­ced Ever­ton in their pen­ul­tim­ate ho­me ga­me of the 2011-12 cam­paign. In their pre­vi­ous fix­ture, Uni­ted had de­mol­ished As­ton Vil­la by 4-0 at Old Traf­ford in the Pre­mier Lea­gue cour­tesy of a double from Way­ne Roo­ney and one goal each by Dan­ny Wel­beck and Lu­is Nani, where­as Ever­ton had suf­fered a dis­ap­point­ing 2-1 de­feat ag­ainst cross-city ad­versar­ies Liver­pool in the FA Cup Semi Fi­nal at Wemb­ley Sta­dium where Nikica Jelavic had sco­red for The Blues, and Lu­is Suarez and Andy Car­roll for The An­field­ers. In the cor­res­pond­ing meet­ing of the 2010-11 sea­son, a late sec­ond ha­lf goal from for­mer Club De­port­ivo Guadala­jara marks­man Javi­er Her­nandez had giv­en Man­chester Uni­ted a 1-0 win over Ever­ton, and Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s title chal­lengers were fa­vour­ites to over­come the Liv­er­pudli­ans who had failed to be­at The Reds at Old Traf­ford since the 19th of Au­gust 1992 when Pe­ter Beard­s­ley, Ro­bert War­zycha and Mo John­ston all made the score­sheet for the vis­it­ors in a 3-0 Pre­miership triumph.

The en­counter at The Theatre of Dreams was in­deed a thrill­er, wi­th bo­th Man­chester Uni­ted and Ever­ton giv­ing every­thing they pos­sibly had to give. The Mer­sey­siders, who were wear­ing an all-blue kit for the oc­ca­sion, un­ex­pec­tedly went ahead ag­ainst the flow of play when Liver­pool born right wing­back To­ny Hi­b­bert cros­sed for Jelavic who­se head­er sailed in­to the net via the in­side of the far up­right in the 33rd min­ute of the bizarre clash. Four min­utes be­fore the sound of the ha­lf-time whistle, how­ever, Nani fou­nd Waz­za who nod­ded the ball pa­st Ever­ton and Uni­ted States in­ter­na­tion­al net­mind­er Tim How­ard and in­to the goal from just a mere six yards out. And twelve min­utes in­to the sec­ond pe­riod of pro­ceed­ings, Man­chester Uni­ted push­ed them­selves in­to the lead as Wel­beck tricked de­fens­ive mid­fielder John Heitinga be­fore the twenty-one-year-old front­man ex­pertly curled his shot bey­ond the reach of How­ard and in­to the top right cor­ner of the goal. Uni­ted car­ried on at­tack­ing and they were re­war­ded on the hour ma­rk when hard run­ning mid­field work­horse Mi­chael Car­rick fou­nd the om­ni­present Wel­beck who flicked the ball onto Nani who coolly dinked the ball pa­st How­ard and in­to the back of the net to make the score­board read 3-1 in fa­vour of the Old Traf­ford men.

Af­ter the mor­ale sap­ping Man­chester Uni­ted charge, Da­vid Moyes´s Ever­ton main­tained enough com­pos­ure to re­duce the de­fi­cit as Bel­gi­um in­ter­na­tion­al Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini vol­leyed ho­me a whipped cross from Hi­b­bert in the 67th min­ute of the pul­sating con­test, on­ly for the hosts to re­store their two goal ad­vant­age when Roo­ney and Wel­beck ex­changed passes for the for­mer to re­cord his 180th goal in 362 fir­st class ap­pear­ances for his club. Then, in the 83rd min­ute, The Tof­fee­men sco­red their third goal of the af­ter­noon as Fel­laini fou­nd Jelavic who struck an ac­cur­ate ef­fort pa­st Spain U21 shot stop­per Da­vid de Gea and in­to the bot­tom cor­ner of the net. And wi­th five min­utes re­maining on ref­er­ee Mi­ke Jones´s watch, So­uth Afric­an flank for­ward Ste­ven Pien­aar ev­entually ma­naged to net the last goal of the ac­tion packed mat­ch to make the fi­nal score 4-4. As a res­ult, the gap to sec­ond po­si­tioned Man­chester City had now be­en cut to three points wi­th on­ly three more ga­mes left of the 2011-12 term. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Ra­fael da Silva, Jon­athan Evans, Rio Fer­dinand, Pat­rice Ev­ra, An­tonio Va­lencia, Mi­chael Car­rick, Paul Scho­les, Lu­is Nani, Way­ne Roo­ney, Dan­ny Wel­beck. Sub­stitutes: Chris Small­ing, Phil Jones, Ash­ley Young, Ry­an Gig­gs, Ji-Sung Park, Javi­er Her­nandez, Ben Amos. Ever­ton Te­am: Tim How­ard, Sylvain Dis­tin, Johnny Heitinga, To­ny Hi­b­bert, Phil Ja­gielka, Phil Ne­ville, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Dar­ron Gib­son, Le­on Os­man, Ste­ven Pien­aar, Nikica Jelavic. Sub­stitutes: Ross Barkley, Magaye Gueye, Tim Ca­hill, Ja­mes Mc­Fad­den, Vic­tor Anichebe, De­nis Strac­qua­lursi, Jan Mucha.

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