United 3 - 1 Sunderland

DDG

Jones Rio(Vidic) Smalling Evra

Valencia Carrick(Scholes) Cleverley(Giggs) Young

Rooney RVP

And we get another three points as we head into the festive period enjoying a 6 point lead. The first half performance was probably the best football I've seen United play this season. It was truly a joy to watch. Usual suspects Rooney and RVP both got their name on the score sheet but the pick of the bunch was Cleverley's delightful curler. All three goals followed an excellent build up.

Beautiful Curling Effort by Cleverley

Young looks like he's hitting top form. He created another goal today and was threatening when attacking. On the other flank, Valencia wasn't bad either. However, I still expect more from him. It seems like Cleverley and Carrick have finally formed a very good partnership in the middle of the park. They've been quite composed in the games they've played together. As soon as this partnership was broken, that is when Scholes and later Giggs entered the field of play, our defenders had very little protection and we were all over the place. In fact, Sunderland managed to get a goal and were unlucky not to get another. De Gea was brilliant throughout. 

I also liked Jones' and Smalling's performance today and it was a quite a relief to see Vidic back in action. If he manages to hit top form we should be ok this season. Granted that he rediscovers his past form, him and Evans should be our first choice centre backs. 

The only downside to this game, apart from the total collapse after the 75th minute mark, was that our strikers were too wasteful in front of goal. We could have easily won this game by 2 or 3 more goals. But it's ok as long as we won. At least United managed to reinstate a smile to my face after a pretty miserable weekend. These boys rarely let me down.