Klaus wrote:
Can't decide whether it was United who were good at keeping him at bay or Ronaldo who got nervous and fell back into old habits.
Fuck me, had typed a long reply but lost it. 😆
Basically, Rafael was man-marking Ronaldo while we left it up to Arteta to stop Bale's forays into central midfield. The two effects of that were our midfield and particularly Arteta getting overwhelmed by runners and that Jenkinson was more 'free' than you would want such a limited player to be.
That also explains why Ferguson went with Giggs instead of Rooney, because he didn't want any overloading on that side; Giggs knows his role inside out and won't allow the opposition fullback to have the run of the wing. We could (should) have dropped Walcott for the same reason, but our goal threat is so limited that it isn't really an option, so we made do with what we had.
Interestingly, Mourinho made the same substitution and tactical change as Wenger did in order to get back into the game.
And yeah, some of Ronaldo's fuck ups were just Ronaldo being Ronaldo, but that mostly came in the second half when chances were coming quickly.
