w.t.f.
manU lost to liverpool 2-1 at anfield. and I could not believe what I saw.
first time Rafa Benitez smelled victory against SAF, and the first time Liverpool beat ManU in 7 games.
Tevez shot off United to a good start in under three minutes to make it 1-0, and assisted by Berbatov no less, but the remaining 88 minutes were just pure crap.
ManU suddenly was on the back foot against Liverpool the whole time. And to make it worse, near halftime, a Van Der Sar mistake got Brown an Own Goal...jeezus. Cue in the next half, and United were still undominant, far from the displays against Liverpool last season. Liverpool got the winning goal in 80 minutes, due to more defensive errors. what the hell...
Liverpool shoots ahead of Chelsea to the top of the table (surprisingly) while United (disappointingly) sits at 9th place. Arsenal and Chelsea are with Liverpool at the top, and even FUCKING MAN CITY is at the top. To make matters worse, United's next Premier League game is against Chelsea, and without Vidic as he got a last minute red card after getting his second yellow after a daft challenge.
last year also had United going with a shaky start, but they had room to recover themselves because battles with the big teams came late, but this time they face two giants back to back, and they HAVE to win it in order to make any chance of retaining the title.
this doesn't help my general uneasiness toward's United's season ever since the pre-season. the Madrid-Ronaldo debacle did not help team morale, there wasn't anything special with the pre-season friendlies, the only big name signing was Berbatov, who DIDN'T EVEN MAKE HIMSELF STAND OUT during this game, if not for the assist to Tevez' opening goal.
and the kits suck. well, they did re-use last year's home kit, but the new away kit doesn't even have half of the character last year's away kit had. the third kit, the blue "memorial" kit, with all due respect to the tribute, doesn't really look good. it's utter blah.
today's formation seemed weird, and it was definitely tailored to the addition of Berbatov, but blah. they lacked decent wingers. they had people like Rooney and Anderson work the wings, and I didn't like how Nani didn't start. imo, he's a needed winger, and a good understudy for Ronaldo's role. United looked weak. I missed the deadly 4-4-2's of last year, but who knows, maybe this whole Rooney-Tevez-Berbatov triple deal will work it's fangs someday.
I'm missing Ronaldo. There's this feeling of incompleteness without him on the pitch, I don't know, there's no one making those blistering runs and making fools of opposition defenders. And they don't have any threat on free kicks much without him. We'll have to wait until next month for him to start playing again. Until then...I'm seriously worried.
blah. United again sits at the bottom half of the table. will they be able to pull off a repeat of last year's rise to the top? I'm crossing my fingers
aaaaaand I again reviewed gameplay footage of FIFA 09 on the PC with max settings, and it really still looks nothing like the next-gen FIFA 09. still the old engine, with higher-res textures, but the models aren't the next gen models. just more polygons and texture. blah. one surprising addition though is the Be-A-Pro third-person tracking camera from the next-gen game, but it just doesn't have the same intensity for some reason...iunno, missed some visual effects? blah. here's hoping the PSP version of FIFA has that camera (they promised the Be-A-Pro mode and camera on it) since I'm really not sold on the PC version. I'd rather install CoD4 and PES2009 (definite sell for the PC and PSP versions, FIFA's just intermediary XD)
blah. blah. blah.
and I wanna play football nao.