Manchester Utd 2 Fulham 2

Michael Carrick

Man­chester Uni­ted 2 Ful­ham 2, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Feb­ruary 9, 2014. Man­chester Uni­ted could on­ly man­age a 2-2 draw ag­ainst Ful­ham. Robin van Per­sie and Mi­chael Car­rick fou­nd the tar­get for Uni­ted, whi­le Ste­ve Sid­well and Dar­ren Bent sco­red for Ful­ham who had lost ten of their pre­vi­ous el­ev­en away ga­mes ag­ainst The Reds.

Man­chester Uni­ted had stat­ist­ics on their si­de as they had emer­ged vic­tori­ous from each of their last nine Pre­mier Lea­gue en­coun­ters ag­ainst The Cot­tagers at Old Traf­ford. In the re­verse Pre­miership meet­ing on the 2nd of Nov­ember 2013, Uni­ted had com­fort­ably de­feated Ful­ham by a 3-1 score at Craven Cot­tage cour­tesy of fir­st ha­lf goals from An­tonio Va­lencia, Robin van Per­sie and Way­ne Roo­ney, and the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons were fa­vour­ites to win this time too. Man­chester Uni­ted entered this clash on the back of a 2-1 Pre­mier Lea­gue loss ag­ainst Sto­ke City at Brit­an­nia Sta­dium, where­as Ful­ham had suc­cumbed to a 1-0 FA Cup Fourth Ro­und Re­play de­feat at the hands of Lea­gue One te­am Shef­field Uni­ted at Craven Cot­tage in their pre­vi­ous mat­ch. Uni­ted had to man­age with­out with­out the in­jured Jon­ny Evans, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Lu­is Nani, and Phil Jones, but Ne­manja Vid­ic re­turned from a three-mat­ch sus­pen­sion. Ful­ham, mean­while, were mis­sing Mat­thew Briggs, Neil Eth­eridge, and Kos­tas Mitro­glou who were all side­lined wi­th dif­fer­ent injuries.

The West Lon­don club, who were bot­tom of the ta­ble, went in­to a sur­prise lead, when a lof­ted pass from Ger­many in­ter­na­tion­al Lewis Holtby fou­nd fel­low mid­field man Ste­ve Sid­well who bril­liantly vol­leyed the ball pa­st Man­chester Uni­ted goal­keeper Da­vid de Gea and in­to the bot­tom left-hand cor­ner of the net in the 19th min­ute of the Sunday fix­ture. Da­vid Moyes´s Red and White Army ma­naged to turn the ga­me ar­ound wi­th a goal each from Robin van Per­sie and Mi­chael Car­rick in the 78th and 80th min­utes re­spect­ively, but then, much to the ut­ter dis­be­lief of the ho­me sup­port­ers, As­ton Vil­la loanee Dar­ren Bent re­cor­ded the equal­ising goal for Rene Meulensteen´s men wi­th a well pla­ced head­er from a few yards out dur­ing stop­page time. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Ne­manja Vid­ic, Ra­fael da Silva, Chris Small­ing, Mi­chael Car­rick, Ju­an Ma­ta, Dar­ren Fletch­er, Way­ne Roo­ney, Robin van Per­sie, Ash­ley Young. Sub­stitutes: Rio Fer­dinand, Shinji Ka­gawa, An­tonio Va­lencia, Ry­an Gig­gs, Ad­nan Januzaj, Javi­er Her­nandez, An­ders Linde­gaard. Ful­ham Te­am: Maarten Stekelen­burg, Dan Burn, Johnny Heitinga, John Arne Riise, Kier­an Richard­son, Sascha Ri­eth­er, Wil­li­am Kv­ist, Ste­ve Sid­well, Ry­an Tunnicliffe, Lewis Holtby, Muamer Tankovic. Sub­stitutes: Brede Hange­land, Lar­nell Cole, Al­ex­an­der Kacanik­lic, Scott Par­ker, Dami­en Duff, Dar­ren Bent, Da­vid Stockdale.

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