Posted by John on January 28, 2001 at 22:47:59:
Forstly, a very skilful game was played by two teams at OT who want to play attacking football and even though we rode our luck at times, 10 out of 10 for West Ham's defence..They were magnificent
But at no time in that game did we come to hold out for a draw. No, West Ham came to win and when oppotunities arose despite being under pressure for long periods, looked quite capable very early on of causing an upset
Sad then to see Alex Ferguson resort to this sad whingeing for which he is famous.
" The pitch was a disgrace" Err yes Sir Alex..It's your pitch, it's never been that good since 'The Theatre of Prawn Sarnies' became enclosed and both teams had to play on it and I think both teams made a good job of it.
"The referee was appalling. He(Durkin) played only 4 minutes of stoppage time at the end...There should have been more"
Oh dear...The return of the stopwatch is beckoning I fear. There was one nortable stoppage in the second 45 of a couple of minutes, so 3 to 5 minutes was right.
Paul Durkin generally had a good game, though he was clearly unsighted with the 2 penalty claims. However, what goes around comes around and how many vistors to OT have had clear penalties/free kicks denied by intimidated referees whislt the theatrics of Butt etc provide more than their fair share of goals ?
The bottom line with today's game is this..Whatever else Ferguson complains about, the reason why Man United are out of the FA Cup is because their back line stopped being professional, stopped doing the job they are paid a vast sum of money to do, spent a few seconds waving their arms in the air demanding an offside call whilst Paolo Di Canio got on with the game because there was no whistle.....They only have themselves to blame...Not the pitch. Not the ref. Not the prawn sandwich eaters...