Wayne Rooney ended his goal drought as Manchester United turned on the style to down West Ham at Old Trafford.
Rooney, who hadn't scored for club or country since March, netted a first-half penalty after Ryan Giggs had been fouled in the box.
Slick second-half goals from Nani and Dimitar Berbatov sealed the victory as the Reds recovered quickly from last weekend's draw at Fulham.
United were soon into their stride with in-form Paul Scholes demonstrating his trademark awareness and passing range.
Nani was first to seriously threaten when he fizzed a free-kick just over the bar, and shortly after the winger's fierce shot thudded against the crossbar via the palm of Robert Green.
Rooney might have done better with a volley after a fine headed set-up by Berbatov, but the England man was soon to have his name on the scoresheet.
Scholes fired a long-range ball to Giggs wide on the left, and after a subtle trick he was brought down by Jonathan Spector in the box.
Rooney slotted the ball past Green, who dived the wrong way.
The lead should have been doubled before half time. Old stagers Giggs and Scholes simultaneously slide tackled Scott Parker in a moment that brought a smile to the faces of the Reds faithful, before Giggs pinged a glorious ball forward to Nani.
The winger, though, could only prod the ball over the bar when through on goal.
Five minutes after the break Nani did find the back of the net.
Fine interplay from Scholes and Rooney set the Portuguese star free, and after a neat sidestep he slammed a left-footed shot into the goal.
The Hammers kept going and Kieron Dyer, one of the visitors' more lively performers, hit the outside of the post.
But it was a brief moment of light for West Ham, as United poured forward at will with pace and movement.
Sure enough, the third came in exquisite style. John O'Shea cut the ball back to Nani in the box, who clipped a cross to the far post, where Berbatov slammed home an acrobatic volley from close range.
That goal effectively ended the game as a contest, and although the Hammers kept going, the victory was never in doubt.
What is your verdict on the action? Have your say.
United 3 West Ham 0
August 28, 2010
Comments
Login or Register to comment
Good result. West Ham offered little (apart from Dyer getting the better of JOS on few occasions) but before we scored I thought we looked off the pace and our passing looked quite labored. Controlled the game from the pen onwards but the triple subs disrupted our flow (all the subs made immediate contributions of mis-placed passes..strangely)
I still think we are shy of a midfield alternative to Fletcher, not only to cover him reg injuries and suspensions, but also to provide competition for him. Rodwell would be a dream, but Defour could be more realistic. I hope the next few days will produce a new signing. (I do not think Gibson or Carrick are realistic alternatives, though both decent squad players)
Berba motm for me, his lay-off balls are superb and his overall link-up play, great goal too. Scholes and Vidic with very good performances too.
Thanx lads! What a superb display. Nani has replenished the goal he squandered against Fulham. My MoM is -- who else -- Berbatov. And What a goal!!!!!! Blues be ware!@!
Nice efficient win topped with a superb goal by Berbatov. They aren't playing to full potential but it is early doors yet. Scholes once again excellent, Giggs in and out. In games like this I wish SAF would play someone like Rafael to give them more experience. All in all 3 points when not playing particularly well.
Great performance! Scholes, Nani and Berba were awesome. Now that Rooney has scored and played the complete 90 mins I wouldn't be surprised to see him go on a goal scoring run.
The best part was Giggs and Scholes tackling one player together. Great moment for that lad to be challenged by players with a combined experience of 1400 games!
United till I die!
wonderful, pure football at its finest by the masters of football. Giggs and Scholes are still absolutely brilliant, truly is my honour to have seen these two over last twenty years. nice for Wazza to score after so long, Berba is on fire and is finally showing he belongs at the worlds biggest club. Sir Alex Ferguson gets it right as usual, that is why he is the greatest and long may he reign as our boss. Manchester United 3-0 West Ham United, that's more like it. we want our title back.
Better by "The White Pele" (as some say)...good for him to score his 1st competitive goal since March (wow)...The FUNDAMENTAL difference between Wazza and the very very best, is he seems to lack "Confidence" now and again........some of his 1st time touches were still very poor today and a few wayward passes (which the commentators choose to ignore), whilst some of the touches between Nani and Berbatov were simply breathtaking!!! Why is Carrick a ManUnited player? ANOTHER POINT....How comes Ryan is'nt wearing the 'Armband' no more, Sir Alex has chosen Vidic INSTEAD mmmmmmmmmmm????? maybe Danny frm Wilmslow is right.....Sir Alex is getting too soft...LMAO
great team display, good performance again from scholes, nani also had a good game.
can some-one tell me why fergie's wasting a place on the sub bench by having owen there? why bring him on? wouldnt it be better to bring on macheda or hernadez to give them more experience? owen's a waste of space now, and all his doing is holding back younger players.i think the reason fergie plays him cuz his on a pay-as-you play contract and fergie wants him to get paid!
Routine win in weird conditions. Great goals from Nani and Berbs. I think we took too long to bring on the subs. Thirty minutes is better than less than twenty. West Ham didn't
really offer anything. I don't think they had a shot on goal in the first half. The last fifteen minutes were at training ground pace. We move on.
Anyone with anything negative to say about United's performance is a complete idiot, for me this performance was nothing short of world class!
Berbatov's goal was magnificent and every player pulled their weight.
Today is a proud day to be a red!
UTID!
Some great football at times, but why do take the foot of the pedal when the game is won........Chelsea go for 90 min ,thats the main reason why the score more goals than us........we seem to stop playing when the three points are secured rather than go for more goals...
A good performance from the whole team. Great that Rooney scored which will hopefully kickstart his season. He still doesn't look quite right yet but some of his lay-offs were top class. Berbatov was sublime and Nani is beginning to fulfill that potential that we all knew he had. Scholes and Giggs are how old ?? Both were outstanding today.
Wayne gets on the score sheet, Nani redeems himself with a fine goal followed by utter class by Berba. What more could you ask for? A brilliant display of football and a pleasure to watch. Well done lads.
Can we please play Nani on the right all season. It might be interesting if we moved Valencia into the middle, I heard that he's played this position before, although i have never seen him in centre mid, it might be interesting experiment to see Scholes vision and Valencias legs in the engine room. Well played lads.
didnt get out of first gear and still won comfortably. the boss said scholes can play on till hes 40 what must carrick be thinking!!!!
Happy to see the lads play out the full 90. Good performance. Very happy to see Rooney get the first of many.
Hit and miss
at times we looked great at other times we looked like we could'nt be arsed. same problem as last year a side their for the taking and some of our players still unwilling to step up the pace and give the opposition a real drubbing.
berbatov was outstanding ably and abetted by vidic scholes was again in cruise control nani scored a great goal and could eaily have had 3. rooney looks lke a very unhappy bunny indeed. fletch had his worst game for some considerable time and wanted to take six touches when one would do.
3 points is all that matters,the rest is.....well,who cares. im not going into the ins n outs of it all but scholes was ace again. what is he on? maybe he can carry on for 5 more years haha...you wouldnt bet against it..
Well done UNITED
you guys played well except for Oshea yet again !
mom was Berbatov and Schosley !!
I was reasonably content with our performance. There were some sublime moments, esp from Berbatov, but also, tbh, there were a few indifferent ones. Fortunately the positives far outweighed the negatives.
Delighted to see the Roonster open his account. He took the penalty with assured aplomb, inspite of the intense pressure that he must have been feeling. The other two goals came out of the "finest goals I have seen" section of my memory vault.
I can fully understand the reasoning as to why the triple substitutions were made, but unfortunately they didn't quite come off. I felt that we could have perhaps gone on to have doubled our goal tally without the substitutions, but SAF, quite rightly, has far more football no-how than me,
So on reflection, a satisfactory outcome, but we all know we can do better - and we will!
United 'til I die!
Good Result, enough said
Not a great performance but a good one. Still too many wayward passing especially Fletcher. Flop took his goal well, and Nani was much better second half. Still lacking quality in central midfield, Scholes apart. We need someone to drive through like Nani was doing on the wing. Why doesny he give Cleverley the last 15-20 mins in games like this.
I hate these sorts of games sometimes. It's early season, so there's not much to play for yet; you also know you should beat West Ham and you know the players know it. Plus you also have a small army of half-cut cockneys enjoying a day out and properly getting behind their team, versus 70,000 expectant fans. Then it started to rain.
WHU's fans were good today and the "Let's pretend to score a goal" routine should be given some credit.
"He's only gone for a burger, gone for a burger".
Kudos to the big lad in K who was VERY unfortunate to get kicked out for pretending to get his tackle out, in response to WHU's fans asking him if he'd ever seen it. He got a standing ovation from the whole East Stand, though, which is something to savour..... and perhaps he did get a burger?
Good result but still lacking a midfielder.
Great performance, although we started slow. Not sure if the pitch was up to scratch as passes along the ground seemed to be regularly under-hit. We played some exceptional football against a team with little ambition. No bad performances and plenty of good ones. I thought it was a shame that SAF made three substitutions at once because that seemed to send a signal, probably subconscious, that we'd done enough and they could take it easy from there. We didn't look the same after that and the game fizzled out as did the fans.
Berbatov : Out of the world . Vidic , Nani , Evra and Scholes excellent . Rooney : Improving he will go on a goal scoring RUN now . Oshea and Evans : I can PAY from my own money to gt rid of them as soon as TODAY . Carrick is FADING away by the second .
BERBATOV class act again all u two faced clowns who called him