5 thoughts on the 5-0 win over Fulham

United kept up the pressure on Man City by thumping Fulham 5-0 at Craven Cottage.

The West London ground hadn’t been kind to us in recent times with 2 losses and a draw in our last 3 visits, but thankfully we were in no mood to be handing Martin Jol’s men gifts this time around.

For a team that was struggling to score goals, we now have 11 in 3 and have conceded just once in that time. We are looking rejuvenated and Man City will definitely know they have a fight on their hands to win the title with us in such form.

The injuries suffered by Young and Jones will take some lustre off the result but hopefully we can continue to cope with the absences.

Here are 5 thoughts from the game:

Away form

Winning the title last season would have been a lot easier had our away form been better.

We struggled on the road and it could have cost us, we let vital points slip against smaller teams as well as losing to Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool on the road.

This year we aren’t messing about and have the best away record in the league. We have 23 points from a possible 27 with draws at Stoke and Liverpool the only blemishes and have scored 19 and conceded 3.

We are one win away from equalling our grand total from last season and this is important especially as the task of catching City will take diligence both at Old Trafford and on the road.

Lindegaard

At the start of the season there was a real movement to have Anders as our #1.

Whilst this may have abated somewhat there are still a number of people that think he should be given a chance, and performances like tonight’s will add to this.

There is a confidence in Lindegaard’s goalkeeping that wouldn’t make him look out of place if he was our #1. He made a number of good saves today including holding on to the Johnson shot in the second half.

United have previously had problems with goalkeepers but we appear to have two solid keepers on our hands and the battle will bring the best out of both of them.

More injuries

After the game Sir Alex revealed that Rio Ferdinand missed the game with a foot injury that will see him miss the Wigan game but in play we saw both Phil Jones and Ashley Young come off with injuries.

An elbow from Clint Dempsey means Jones will go for an X Ray later today whilst a robust challenge from Dickson Etuhu means Young will be out until January.

It seemed our injury problem was easing up with the returns of Berbatov, Hernandez and Rafael but the revolving door was just going round.

We will anxiously await news of Jones’ injury, as a lengthy spell out would be a further knock especially with Rio set to miss the next game.

Antonio Valencia

I had complained about Valencia previously but recently he has been putting in a real shift.

He had looked slightly out of sorts but he has really stepped it up. We saw the devastating effect he had against Wolves and grabbed assists against QPR and Fulham to make it 5 in 3 games.

He linked extremely well with Nani and it appears his confidence is back as everything seems to be going right for him, in terms of touch, taking players on and his end product.

We hope it can continue!

Goals galore

Last match if we could pick one fault, it was that we were wasteful in front of goal. Against Fulham there was no such problem as we tucked away 5.

It was good to see Welbeck score again after a brief barren spell whilst Nani kept his productivity up by getting one too.

Giggs carried on his record of scoring in every Premier League season as well as scoring the Premier League’s 19,999^th goal. Rooney continued his scoring spell to make it 4 in 3 games and the ever-cool Berbatov put the icing on the cake with a delightful goal.

It’s in games like these that we need to be getting our goal difference up and with Wigan and Blackburn to come we have further chance to slash the deficit, so hopefully we keep this ruthlessness up.