Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Vidic's video nasty

Mon Mar 16 08:49AM

It is probably fair to say that Nemanja Vidic's performance against Liverpool on Saturday did not help his Player of the Year chances.

The Serbian, virtually immaculate all season, chose the worst possible moment to dust off his homage to Igors Stepanovs, as he plain forgot how to head a long ball away, then completed his set of home and away red cards against Liverpool with a ridiculous rugby tackle on Steven Gerrard.

Early Doors waxed lyrical a few weeks ago about Vidic's cynical side, but it seems that when this kind of 'intelligence' goes wrong you just look completely out of your depth.

For the first time ever, ED thought Vidic was a bit like Sarah Palin. People got very excited about both, probably without cause, and both actually looked like they might win something, be it Player of the Year or the US vice-presidency.

Then they both fell apart, spectacularly. Although ED reckons Vidic, if quizzed by Katie Couric, could still name more American newspapers than Palin.

While United are still four points clear with a game in hand, at least the Premier League title won't be settled by Easter, which is nice, ED supposes.

Of course, everyone went nuts for Steven Gerrard, after he followed up his successful penalty with the most famous on-screen kiss since Breakfast At Tiffany's.

As Stevie G planted a smacker on the TV camera, it was interesting to find out what it feels like to be Alex Curran. Next time Liverpool play, ED will bring its Louis Vuitton bag and squeeze into a Juicy Couture tracksuit, just in case.

After months of taunting from the United fans over his no-less-bonkers-this-morning rant about goodness knows what, Benitez decided to rub Old Trafford's nose in it by removing Gerrard in the 90th minute and bringing on Nabil El-Zhar - a huge piece of tactical showboating the football equivalent to Ronnie O'Sullivan playing left-handed.

However the ultimate indignity was still to come as the universally-scorned Andrea Dossena netted a brilliant lob from the edge of the box - the kind of goal that big kids score in the playground against much younger opponents.

Of course, Alex Ferguson was in no mood to accept that his side had just been schooled by their most bitter rivals, sticking by the insane assertion that: "I thought we were the better team."

The trail of broken cups and saucers, stray football boots and players' teeth that lay across the dressing-room floor at Old Trafford suggested that, privately, he was not saying the same thing.

The result means the number-crunchers will have to come up with a new trendy stat with which to bore everyone senseless.

Having contented themselves for several months with Edwin van der Sar's clean sheet record, they moved on to the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo had scored in 48 games at Old Trafford and Manchester United won them all.

We were bombarded with this nugget throughout Saturday's game and also United's Champions League game against Inter, when it obviously stood at 47.

That streak is now history, but why had we not heard about this before last week? Why was it only considered statistically significant once he neared his half-century?

What other amazing facts have the boffins got up their sleeves but refuse to divulge?

Has Michael Owen broken every bone, joint and ligament in his body? Has El-Hadji Diouf launched a dangerous two-footed challenge in each of his 159 Premier League appearances? And has Robinho never made a single useful contribution to Manchester City away from Eastlands? We must be told.

- - -

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "No, it was Andy, it was his effing fault." Gary Megson, when asked if the pitch was to blame for an Andy O'Brien gaffe that led to a Fulham goal on Saturday.

FOOL OF THE WEEKEND (third place): Every Aston Villa fan that jeered off Gabriel Agbonlahor in yesterday's game against Tottenham.

FOOL OF THE WEEKEND (second place): Donal MacIntyre, investigative reporter turned Dancing On Ice contender, for wearing a sleeveless outfit that clearly displayed the Chelsea tattoo he had done when he infiltrated the notorious Headhunters hooligan faction. Nobody likes a Chelsea fan, even a pretend one, so it is suicide in a public vote. Cover it up for the final, young man.

FOOL OF THE WEEKEND (first place): Morten Gamst Pedersen, for his ridiculous dive in Blackburn's defeat at Arsenal. How is it not possible for the FA to look at a tape and ban him?

FOREIGN VIEW: Italian third-tier side Reggiana had to buy plain white shirts for Sunday's match at Verona after the hired coach containing their kit was stolen. 

The match, which Verona won 2-1, went ahead as planned after Reggiana took a quick trip to the shops to solve their kit problem while police investigated the theft of the bus.

There is a spate of this going on - a few weeks ago Uruguayan side Nacional had to buy shirts from a sports shop before their 3-0 Copa Libertadores away win over Paraguayan side, er, Nacional, after their kit went missing.

Representatives from the club turned up at the shop, bought 16 red shirts, then had the players' names and numbers stamped on the back.

COMING UP: West Ham play West Brom in a Monday night Premier League match - that's live from 20:00 tonight. Plus there's a full round-up of all the weekend shenanigans.

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