Sometimes football just doesn’t make sense. However much credit Hull may deserve for their tenacity, the truth is that for long periods they were comprehensively, chasteningly, outplayed.

Manchester United were not exactly hanging on at the end, but on an afternoon on which Dimitar Berbatov was majestic and Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice, they should never have had to endure the moments of edginess they did.

That this ended up not being the cakewalk it twice appeared it would be was down in part to the excellence of Boaz Myhill in the Hull goal, in part to lax finishing, and in part to a slackening of the intensity – which, in the circumstances, was perhaps understandable.

In addition, Wayne Rooney had one of those afternoons on which, without playing particularly badly, nothing went right.

He fizzed a shot just over, had an effort ruled out for a tight offside, thought he should have had a penalty, was twice denied by Myhill and ended up being booked for a frustrated lunge of the sort to awake all those old questions about his temperament.

“We should have won by 10, not have been scrambling around at the end,” said the United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

“When you don’t take your chances it’s annoying. You’ve got to make sure you score, but you fritter them away and you end up in an embarrassing situation. I don’t know how many chances Berbatov set up. Ronaldo could have had four or five today.

"All we can take away from this game is that we’re playing some great football and creating some fantastic chances.”

It would be miraculous were Ronaldo even to approach the standards of goal scoring he set for himself last season – when he hit 42 in all competitions – but, having scored twice against West Ham on Wednesday, he added his sixth of the season after three minutes, dragging his shot in off a post after gathering Berbatov’s driven ball.

That seemed to have killed the game almost before it had started, but Daniel Cousin glanced in Andy Dawson’s free-kick midway through the half to shake it back into life.

Roused, United had the lead back within six minutes, a break that began with Nemanja Vidic in his own box ending with Berbatov laying in Michael Carrick to score his first of the season.

Ronaldo headed his 99th for the club from a Nani corner just before the break, and it was another right-wing delivery that created the fourth for Vidic.

“At 4-1 you just tend to close your eyes,” admitted the Hull manager Phil Brown. “We sat off in the first half and you can’t sit off against a side as good as Manchester United. But in the second we got in their faces, and got some pride back in the shirt.”

First Patrice Evra’s short back-header allowed in the substitute Bernard Mendy to loft over Edwin van der Sar and then, with nine minutes remaining, Rio Ferdinand brought down the former Bolton forward, and Geovanni converted the resulting penalty.

Ferguson felt Michael Turner should have picked up a second yellow card for a foul on Carrick with the score at 4-2, but the incident was at worst borderline and as excuses go it was less than convincing.

“You’ve got to credit Hull because they never gave in,” he said, “but they had two chances and scored three goals which is some achievement.”

That was perhaps needlessly curmudgeonly, but he had a point. United will play far worse than this and win with far more comfort.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footbal...tball.html