FA Cup 5th Round

Liverpool 1 - 0 Manchester United
So...the Carling Cup it is, then. Woo.

I don't know if I'd say that Liverpool deserved the win, because it wasn't their best game, but United certainly deserved to lose. Liverpool were all over them in midfield, even with Xabi Alonso missing through injury. (Which should have been good for United's chances, but was bad news for those of us who enjoy the eye candy, especially when dragging ourselves out of bed for a 7:30 a.m. kickoff.)

It didn't help that I spent the first 10 minutes of the game trying to figure out United's lineup, with Fletcher, Giggs, Richardson and Ronaldo across the middle of the pitch. Which means they had a centre midfielder on the right, two left wingers in the centre, and a right winger on the left. Has Sir Alex totally lost the plot? Or maybe he was hoping that Liverpool would be as confused by this as I was. Either way, it didn't work.

United gave up the midfield battle in the second half and just started punting the ball up to the strikers, which worked marginally better, but Liverpool's defence was solid. United, on the other hand, apparently decided that Peter Crouch has been so awful in front of goal recently that they didn't actually need to mark him. And, of course, that came back to bite them in the ass. (Although at least they didn't concede an own-goal -- take a bow, Ricardo Carvalho.)