Manchester Utd 2 Wolves 1

Ji-Sung Park

Man­chester Uni­ted 2 Wolver­hampton Wan­derers 1, Old Traf­ford Sta­dium, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue Fix­ture, Nov­ember 6, 2010. Two goals from Ji-sung Park saw Man­chester Uni­ted col­lect three vi­tal points at ho­me to Wolver­hampton Wan­derers. Park re­cor­ded the open­ing goal on the stroke of ha­lf-time and then hit a late win­ner as he leapt in­to the box and ham­mered the ball pa­st Mar­cus Hahne­mann wi­th less than a min­ute re­maining of the tussle.

Man­chester Uni­ted and Wolver­hampton Wan­derers had al­ready met once at Old Traf­ford in the 2010-11 cam­paign, wi­th a late goal from Javi­er Her­nandez se­cur­ing a nar­row 3-2 tri­umph for the hosts in the Fourth Ro­und of the Carling Cup on the 26th of Oct­ober. The Red Dev­ils had to cope with­out Lu­is Nani and Way­ne Roo­ney for the Pre­mier Lea­gue clash wi­th Wan­derers, whi­le Rio Fer­dinand re­turned for the ga­me af­ter be­ing left be­hind when Sir Al­ex Fer­guson’s squad had trav­elled to Tur­key to take on Turk­ish Su­per Lea­gue Cham­pi­ons Bursaspor in the UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue four days earli­er. Man­chester Uni­ted also wel­comed back for­mer Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al Owen Har­greaves af­ter his battle wi­th chron­ic tendin­it­is, but, un­for­tu­nately, the mid­fielder made a failed come­back as his fir­st start since the 21st of Septem­ber 2008 las­ted barely five min­utes. As for Wolver­hampton, man­ager Mick Mc­Carthy had made as many as sev­en changes to the start­ing line-up from their pre­vi­ous mat­ch ag­ainst Uni­ted. Des­pite of the fact that Man­chester Uni­ted were five points be­hind fierce rivals Chel­sea, the 2009-10 run­ners up were un­beaten so far in the 2010-11 sea­son, and af­ter hav­ing sor­ted out the Way­ne Roo­ney af­fair, the club now aimed to con­cen­trate on foot­ball when host­ing the West Mid­landers. And al­though The Old Gold and Black sought to ex­tract re­venge on Uni­ted for be­ing knock­ed out of the Lea­gue Cup by The Reds the week be­fore, it was Ferguson´s play­ers who pro­duced the open­ing goal.

Shortly be­fore the sound of the ha­lf time sig­nal, Scot­tish mid­fielder Dar­ren Fletch­er pro­vided a great split­ting pass which al­lowed So­uth Korean in­ter­na­tion­al Ji-sung Park to strike his fir­st goal of the con­test. Twenty min­utes af­ter the re­start, tho­ugh, for­mer Man­chester Uni­ted for­ward Sylvain Ebanks-Blake grabbed the equal­iser for the vis­it­ors as he ma­naged to out­man­euver Ser­bi­an stop­per Ne­manja Vid­ic be­fore he nut­megged ho­me goal­keeper Ed­win van der Sar. Wol­ves look­ed to be on their way to a fully de­served point, but a mo­ment­ary lapse of con­cen­tra­tion in the 93rd min­ute of the evenly con­tested en­counter han­ded Uni­ted the win­ning goal as Park floated over the gro­und like a ghost and ev­entually fired the ball in­to the back of the net to give Sir Al­ex an ideal 24th an­niversary pre­sent as man­ager of the Old Traf­ford club. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Ed­win van der Sar, Wes­ley Bro­wn, Rio Fer­dinand, Ne­manja Vid­ic, Pat­rice Ev­ra, John O´Shea, Dar­ren Fletch­er, Ji-sung Park, Gab­riel Ober­tan, Owen Har­greaves, Javi­er Her­nandez. Sub­stitutes: Paul Scho­les, Jon­athan Evans, Fa­bio da Silva, Chris Small­ing, Bebe, Fe­d­erico Ma­cheda, To­masz Kusz­czak. Wolver­hampton Wan­derers Te­am: Mar­cus Hahne­mann, Chris­tophe Berra, Kev­in Fo­ley, Rich­ard Ste­ar­man, Steph­en Wa­rd, Da­vid Ed­wards, Steph­en Hunt, Karl Henry, Matt Jar­vis, Nen­ad Mili­jas, Kev­in Doyle. Sub­stitutes: Way­ne Hen­nessey, Ge­orge Elokobi, Ste­ven Mouy­okolo, Mi­chael Man­cienne, Jelle Van Damme, Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, Ste­ven Fletcher.

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