Stoke 1 - 1 United

DDG

Smalling Jones Evans

Young(Rafael) Carrick Mata Rooney Shaw(Januzaj)

RvP Falcao(Januzaj)

More points dropped away from home. We've come to expect that now, haven't we? We seem incapable of winning the three points away from home.  We've only won twice on the road, which is very poor if you ask me. The ironic thing is that the two games we've won away from home were probably our worst away performances this season. Anyway, we weren't particularly brilliant today either. There were too many players who failed to perform. To be fair, the weather conditions were probably the worst conditions to play football in. The combination of torrential rain and wind won't let you play football and we've seen that during today's game. Some of the basic stuff the players got wrong today is all down to the difficult conditions. 

Stoke away is always a tough game. We didn't do ourselves any favour when we left two Stoke men unmarked inside the first two minutes of the game. This led to their first goal and it was always going to be a struggle to attack a very physical Stoke side. In fact we created very little chances. Thankfully, Falcao managed to score his third of the season after some poor defending by Stoke. I thought Falcao was having a decent game and I, as well as Falcao himself, was quite surprised to see him subbed off. Falcao was fighting for balls while van Persie was completely out of the picture all game long. That was a puzzling decision by van Gaal. 

Anyhow, we've dropped two more points but Arsenal dropped three, which makes today a little bit better. They've lost to Southampton who are now one point behind us. I've said it time and again that I'm not particularly worried about Southampton being just behind us in the league. They won't make the top 4. It's Arsenal that worry me because they've become pros in making it to the top four at the right time of the season. We've got to keep an eye on them. 

I'm off to indulge myself in more food to cap off a busy festive period for my stomach. Meanwhile, our players should start thinking about getting an away win this Sunday vs. Yeovil Town. It's the FA Cup, our only chance of silverware this season, so we better take it seriously.

p.s. Evans had another shocker and it was sad to see Young succumb to injury, just when he had established himself as a very important first team player.

Happy New Year To You All :)