Aston Villa Vs. Manchester United: Baby Villans Play United Scoreless To Halftime

While the initial moments of Aston Villa-Manchester United match looks like the Red Devils would dominate Villa's patchwork squad, the claret and blue played an even match with United for the last half hour. The 0-0 halftime scoreline is fair to each club.

Aston Villa has done very little in midfield to stop Manchester United, but strong play from the back (particularly from Stephen Warnock and Luke Young) combined with all-too-common United complacency has kept the Red Devils scoreless. That complacency has seen Nani give the ball away multiple times, Dimitar Berbatov and Javier Hernández drift out of the match, and United fail to show enough patience to exploit Villa's Barry Bannan-Jonathan Hogg central midfield.

Neither of those youngsters have been effective in their own half, but Bannan has placed a couple of nice balls, particularly one for Stewart Downing half-way through the period, forcing Wes Brown into a desperation block to prevent a chance. Villa has also been dangerous on corner kicks (thanks to Mike Dean having forgotten that going through somebody's back is not legal). Stewart Downing had a chance near half's end, Mark Albrighton skinned Patrice Evra to put in a dangerous ball, and Ashley Young has one of the match's few shots on goal.

But Manchester United has had the match's two best chances. The first came when Dimitar Berbatov was played behind a high Villa line, going in alone on Brad Friedel only to put an inexplicably poor ball three feet wide of Friedel's near post. The other chance came on a dead ball played cleverly by Nani to the left of Villa's wall. Evra ran onto the ball and, near the line, put a cross low through the six. Inexplicable, given the planning nature of the play, not United attackers were there to meet the pass, but that didn't stop a synchronized gasp from the Villa faithful.