Manchester U 1 Crawley T 0

Wes Brown

Man­chester Uni­ted 1 Craw­ley To­wn 0, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish FA Cup Fifth Ro­und, Feb­ruary 19, 2011. Man­chester Uni­ted could on­ly man­age a 1-0 win ag­ainst Blue Square Pre­mier pro­mo­tion chasers Craw­ley To­wn at Old Traf­ford. The on­ly goal of the meet­ing came two min­utes be­fore the ha­lf-hour ma­rk when Wes Bro­wn con­ver­ted a cross by Dar­ron Gibson. 

Blue Square Pre­mier min­nows Craw­ley To­wn had be­come the fir­st Non-Lea­gue out­fit since 1994 to make the last-six­teen of the FA Cup when they be­at Torquay Uni­ted by 1-0 at Plain­moor cour­tesy of a late fir­st-ha­lf goal from Matt Tubbs in the fourth ro­und of the com­pet­i­tion. Man­chester Uni­ted were mis­sing Jon­ny Evans, Rio Fer­dinand, Owen Har­greaves, Mi­chael Owen, Ji-Sung Park, and An­tonio Va­lencia who were all side­lined wi­th vari­ous in­jur­ies, whi­le Craw­ley To­wn had to cope with­out Scott Neilson due to a foot in­jury. El­ev­en times FA Cup win­ners Man­chester Uni­ted went in­to the lead in the 28th min­ute of the tightly con­tested ga­me as long serving stal­wart Wes Bro­wn head­ed ho­me a Dar­ron Gib­son cross. Uni­ted en­joyed sev­er­al de­cent scor­ing op­por­tun­it­ies as the fir­st ha­lf wore on and should have doubled their ad­vant­age a few min­utes ahead of the in­ter­val, but Fa­bio da Silva put his ef­fort wide. Craw­ley To­wn ap­peared to have little chan­ce on pa­per, but des­pite their lowly status the vis­it­ors proved to be more than a hand­ful for Man­chester Uni­ted. Sir Al­ex Fer­guson de­cided to re­place mid­fielder Oli­veira An­der­son wi­th born ag­ain goal scor­er Way­ne Roo­ney at the break, whi­le Chris Small­ing came on for de­fens­ive col­league Ra­fael da Silva shortly afterwards.

The West Sus­sex club, who were backed by 9,000 trav­el­ling sup­port­ers, threw every­thing at Man­chester Uni­ted in the sec­ond pe­riod and Ste­ve Evans´s hard work­ing te­am came clo­se to equal­ising in stop­page time when Rich­ard Brod­ie, who had come on for fel­low for­ward Craig Mc­Al­lister three min­utes pa­st hour ma­rk, head­ed ag­ainst the cross­bar. But even tho­ugh Craw­ley To­wn pro­duced a truly im­press­ive per­form­ance at Old Traf­ford, Ferguson´s sec­ond string si­de held firm to pro­gress thro­ugh to the next ro­und. Af­ter dis­patch­ing of The Craw­ley Reds, Man­chester Uni­ted would now take on either Ar­senal or Ley­ton Ori­ent in the FA Cup Quart­er-Fi­nals. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: An­ders Linde­gaard, Wes Bro­wn, John O’Shea, Ra­fael da Silva, Fa­bio da Silva, Oli­veira An­der­son, Mi­chael Car­rick, Dar­ron Gib­son, Ti­ago Di­as Cor­reia, Gab­riel Ober­tan, Javi­er Her­nandez. Sub­stitutes: Chris Small­ing, Dar­ren Fletch­er, Paul Po­gba, Ry­an Tunnicliffe, Joshua King, Way­ne Roo­ney, To­masz Kusz­czak. Craw­ley To­wn Te­am: Michel Kuipers, Kyle Mc­Fadzean, Pablo Mills, Dean How­ell, Da­vid Hunt, Dan­nie Bul­man, Wil­lie Gib­son, Ben Smith, Ser­gio Torres, Craig Mc­Al­lister, Matt Tubbs. Sub­stitutes: Glenn Wil­son, Sam Rents, Byron Nap­per, Si­mon Rusk, Rich­ard Brod­ie, Jam­ie Cook, Scott Shearer.

 

West Brown Quickfacts

Wes Bro­wn made his Pre­mier Lea­gue de­but for Man­chester Uni­ted in a 3-0 tri­umph ag­ainst Leeds Uni­ted at Old Traf­ford on the 4th of May 1998, com­ing on as a sub­sti­tute for Da­vid May.

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