Birmingham 0 vs Manchester United 1

We continue to look good in patches but ahead of our more mouth watering tie with Roma, things don't look quite right across the pitch. Full credit to Birmingham, they were a real handful. But much of their good stuff came from our inability to retain possession in the first half. There was too many unforced errors from players that should know better. Ryan Giggs was sloppy in possession, Scholes and Carrick were muted and again failed to consistently break the game line often enough to join in on attacks. Tevez and Rooney bustled around the pitch to good effect but both too often were forced to do too much from too far out. And at the back, even Van der Saar had a rare off day this season - most notably when he kicked an easy clearance straight to a Birmingham player. He was saved by Vidic who managed to stretch out a leg to stop the shot on target from going in. Ferdinand came to United's resuce with an excellent clearance of the line when Van der Saar was beaten by a McSheffrey header. It was an awful first half performance and the interval was needed to regroup and refocus on getting three points.

No sooner had the restart happened than United were able to celebrate from Birmingham's misfortune. With Quedrue indecisive Ronaldo stole the ball, rounded Taylor and finished well. It was a good goal and one this disjointed performance bearly merited. However, as per last season our ability to get 3 points from such games is all important. With Chelsea dropping more points at home to Fulham, and with Arsenal and Liverpool both winning, three points were a must.

The selection for the Roma tie looks more difficult than you might otherwise expect. Once again Saha played a brief cameo role from the bench - he appears to be being given the cotton wool treatment by Sir Alex. But with Giggs largely disappointing, and the return of Hargreaves a distinct possibility - we may see some changes. We can ill afford injury to Van der Saar. Kuszczak did well and pulled off a maginificent save to deny McSheffrey after his goalbound effort took a mean deflection off of Ferdinand. However, he doesn't look commanding, despite being a fine shot stopper. And we can't afford to have our central defensive partnership broken either as without Vidic and Ferdinand we won't be able to steal three points like this for much longer.