United 3 - 1 West Ham

DDG

Rafael Smalling Evans Evra(Buttner)

Valencia Cleverley Jones Januzaj(Young)

Welbeck(Chicharito) Rooney

This was our fourth straight win in all competitions and perhaps the best home performance we've had for quite some time. We attacked brilliantly but were let down by some of the finishing and a handful of poor decisions by our players. Welbeck and Januzaj scored two decent goals but the pick of the bunch was definitely Young's beauty. If he keeps on scoring such goals, there's a good chance he could win back the United faithful. But there's still a long way to redeem himself.

We started the game brightly and inside the first couple of minutes West Ham's goalie performed a miracle which kept Cleverley's name off the scoresheet. West Ham barely troubled our defence and it was really a matter of when United were going to score. And score they did. Rooney and Welbeck combined well and the latter scored from a difficult position. To be honest, the Hammers' goalie should have done better there. The second was scored after some brilliant work by Januzaj. Now, this Januzaj kid is an excellent prospect but he's dangerously close towards being labelled a diver. He dived twice today. The second dive was very blatant and Adnan was justly yellow carded. That's his second yellow card for diving this season. Not a nice stat that. True, he might not be getting the protection he needs from the refs but such play ain't going to get him any protection. Other than that, he had a very good game on the left. 

Smalling and Evans were excellent once again. DDG had a good game but must be extremely pissed off he didn't get a cleansheet. West Ham's goal could have easily been avoided had Buttner not gone daydreaming and kept himself in line with the other defenders. Anyway, at the front Roo was absolutely everywhere spraying passes and even defending when necessary. What a player. The one big negative of the game, apart from the goal conceded, is the fact that Valencia managed to get himself in very good positions but then made a lot of incorrect decisions. Had he been more consistent, we would have easily won the game by a larger score. 

So, another three points as we try to claw our way back towards the summit. The team at the top is 8 points ahead of us. Call me a dreamer, but sometimes I do think that an 8 point gap isn't much of a big margin to overhaul. Hull next.