Chris Samba may have headed in the winner from a corner. He may well also have flattened Fabianski on a number of other occasions
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I still don't understand why Vieira didn't hospitalise Gary Neville with a waist-high challenge during that game. We did rather roll over and take it, I'm afraid, despite the fact that that doesn't fit the accepted narrative of early Wenger teams were warriors / later Wenger teams all gaylords.
Of all the things that happened in that game it was the refusal to book that rat faced little weasel until about his 8th foul on Reyes that wound me up most. The other three were all one off incidents that a referee could miss (especially when he's a cheat).
But the deliberate targeting of Reyes was nasty and obvious and he let it go time and time again and then gave Cole a yellow for our first deliberate foul! At that point I seem to recall utterly losing it at a television, in a hotel, on holiday, with people around.
:-(
I assume its a reaction to what happened there the previous season. We got all the blame for the battle of old trafford and the club must have told the players to watch their behaviour. The Football reaction is to stick in plenty of fouls of your own but given Riley this wasnt possible. Every foul would have been a booking, anything resembling the challenges Neville was putting in would have been straight reds.
The same with any reaction or animated complaint to the ref.
Even Andy Gray, one of United and Neville's biggest admirers at one point says he would love to know why those tackles werent bookings. One in particular is terrible. The one he gets booked for is an absolute ****ing disgrace.
He didnt 'miss' Rio's foul on Freddie. He ignored it because he would have had to send him off. You simply couldn't send off a United player at Old TRafford in those days, or award a penalty. It was just unthinkable.
The thing people forget about the Keown nonsense at Old Trafford was that the only person there who looked willing and capable to dish out extreme violence was Lauren. He looked absolutely prepared to dismember Phil Neville when he grabbed him by the throat. :cloud9: