Chicharito Brace Sees Manchester United Into Champions League Quarterfinals

Right now, United are under some pressure. If they can get a second goal - which they really should have done at some point while they were completely dominating - they’re home and dry, but while the score stays 1-0, there’ll always be some danger of Marseille snatching a hugely important away goal.

The visitors eventually earned a corner after applying some pressure to the Manchester right, but the ball broke straight back upfield, where it looked for all the world like Javier Hernandez was cut down off the ball inside Marseille’s penalty area. There was a big shout from the home crowd for a penalty, but we haven’t seen any replays just yet.

Manchester United, Starting XI: Van der Sar / O’Shead, Smalling, Brown, Evra / Nani, Scholes, Carrick, Giggs / Rooney Hernández

Bench: Kuszazck, Rafael da Silva, Fabio da Silva, Gibson, Obertan, Valencia, Berbatov

Between the headline of this post and the information laid out in this one, our regular readers are probably starting to think there’s some kind of editorial bias against Manchester United here. And to that I say: Just because this site is run by a Chelsea fan, an Arsenal fan, a Wigan fan, a couple of Tottenham Hotspur fans, a couple of Aston Villa fans, and one neutral doesn’t mean that’s true. Come on, United fans. You’ve all seen Paul Scholes tackle. He’s really, really bad at it. And I assume you’ve seen Mathieu Valbuena play. He’s like 5’3”. He makes Messi look like Godzilla. Paul Scholes could breathe on him and he’d go flying.Scholes is going to get sent off for hacking him down.This is going to happen. I’m sorry.

The best part is that Valbuena won’t be starting for Marseille. He’ll come in around the 60th minute, at which point Ferguson will have been contemplating subbing Scholes off. As Darron Gibson walks up to the fourth official, Scholes will chop at Valbuena, two-footed, from behind. Just two minutes after Valbuena came into the game. Without Scholes on the pitch, United puts all ten men behind the ball and holds off Marseille, sealing a 0-0 result after 90 minutes that sends us to extra time.

It’s as if a bicycle with one flat tire just saw the tube pop on the other. Now Alex Ferguson is like David in American Flyers, left to carry his crippled machine across the finish line just to quality for the race’s next stage. The good news, if you believe in the universal truth of movie analogies: David went on to win the The Hell of the West, though he almost lost his brother along the way.

Wait. Where was I? Oh, yes. United and Marseille.