I spent the whole day with a very bad feeling about this one. "Yes, but Arsenal have a great home record", everybody told me. "Yes, but apart from Chelsea (where we got stuffed), we haven't actually played a decent team at home yet this season". Not a good sign, and the fact that (excluding a routing of a very poor Portsmouth team), we scored a massive 1 goal in 5 league games in December.
But, it seems I underestimated how weak Manchester United actually are now - with Fletcher and O'Shea in the centre of their midfield, it seems hard to understand why they are anywhere above the bog standard normal for the Premiership. Van Nistelrooy and Rooney obviously make the difference for them usually, but they did not look like much above the dreary normal for a Premiership team these days.
A very cagey game, much like chess - neither team seemed to want to do anything rash, unless the other team caught them out and punished them for it. But, for a 0-0 draw, it was a surprisingly engaging game as it went on, as the breakthrough looked more likely to come from Arsenal, then United, then Arsenal, then United again, and then not at all, as both sides settled for the draw towards the end.
After the game, and back home watching Sky, it was amazing how much of a United perspective all of the studio pundits had - I miss all this usually, but they really are Man Utd fans!
A positive to end on, 4 clean sheets in a row since we lost to Chelsea, which is an encouraging sign. Now, if we could just see our way to score a couple of goals like we used to be able to, maybe recovery isn't that far away.
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