| Birmingham City 0-2 Everton | Premier League match report Everton's first win of the season lifted them off the bottom of the table and ruined Birmingham's unbeaten home record, which stretched back 12 months. David Moyes's men were much the better team and deserved the good fortune handed to them when Roger Johnson turned a right-wing cross from Leon Osman into his own net. Tim Cahill headed in the second, from Leighton Baines's cross, in added time.Birmingham were poor and were abused by their own fans at half-time and again at the end.Everton hadn't scored away from Goodison, Birmingham had failed to find the net in their previous two matches at home. It was unlikely to be a goalfest, and there was even less chance of one with Birmingham's leading scorer, Craig Gardner, starting a three-match suspension. His place in midfield went to Keith Fahey. Everton were also forced to make one change – Osman, who was fit again, taking over from Steven Pienaar, also in midfield.Everton had much the better of the first half, making good progress down the left through Osman and Baines. They would have been rewarded with the lead after 26 minutes but for a goal-line clearance by Liam Ridgewell after Ben Foster could only get an ineffective touch to a shot by Yakubu. The opportunity had been created by Johnson's slip, which let in the burly Nigerian.Osman, too, might have scored but, played in by Yakubu, he fired over on the half-turn. Birmingham's only goal attempts before the interval fell to Cameron Jerome, who made a poor fist of both, shooting wide from the edge of the penalty area and heading Stephen Carr's cross on to the roof of the net.The goal Everton's superior football deserved finally arrived, gift-wrapped, in the 54th minute, when Osman's centre from the left was taken virtually out of Foster's hands and diverted into the net at the near post by Johnson.Birmingham sent on Matt Derbyshire in place of the blunt instrument they call Jerome but, with Alexander Hleb anonymous, they were not good enough to reply. Instead it was Everton who doubled the margin in the third minute of added time, when Cahill headed home from four yards.Premier LeagueBirmingham CityEvertonJoe Lovejoyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Didier Drogba: signing for Chelsea rather than Arsenal was my destiny Didier Drogba says fate saw him end up at Chelsea rather than Arsenal. telegraph.co.uk |
Everton v Liverpool: David Moyes says rivals helped by recent takeover turmoil Liverpool's off-field problems have taken the focus away from poor start to the season, claims Everton manager telegraph.co.uk |
WBA fightback stuns Red Devils Manchester United draw 2-2 with West Bromwich Albion as Sir Alex Ferguson's decision to leave Wayne Rooney on the bench backfires. foxsports.com.au |
Rooney winning the struggle for now Keane was run out of town, Van Nistelrooy too disruptive and Beckham upgraded but Rooney appears to be dictating eventsSir Alex Ferguson always argues that control is achievable only through success. Winning trophies bestows power. So now we see a struggle between 11 Premier League titles and two European Cups and a morose 24-year-old who is at present unable to control the ball when it reaches him in a home game against West Bromwich Albion.Statistics demonstrate that neither Manchester United nor England would be much worse off had Wayne Rooney stayed at home. A player who used to excoriate team-mates for lack of industry (shades of Roy Keane) is now a passenger himself. By any objective definition Rooney has detached himself from the great collective effort that distinguishes Ferguson's teams.So far attention has been locked on his poor form and questionable fitness. With the news from his camp that Rooney is not seeking to renew his United contract when it expires in the summer of 2012 the gaze shifts to questions of attitude. Supporters halt the pub debate about "what's eating Wazza" and observe an unpalatable truth. Rooney, we discover, would rather be somewhere else.This is the point where the most gifted English footballer since Paul Scholes or Paul Gascoigne steps into the light to be judged. No longer can he hide behind turmoil at home, knocks and strains that date back to his injury at Bayern Munich in March or Ferguson's supposed hard line on drinking, smoking and urinating in the street. Victim-status is denied to a footballer who lopes around the pitch and elects not to stay and fight for his place, pursuing instead a huge-money move to Spain or even Manchester City.This unilateral declaration of war hands the moral advantage to Ferguson. For the decision to be announced in this way is a violation of protocol. Ferguson can say he has protected Rooney through many scrapes and scraps only to have his star player go awol on him just as United have started the season slowly and desperately need his goals. After eight games they are already five points behind Chelsea.A boisterous, barnstorming Rooney who returned from the World Cup reinvigorated would be a grievous loss to last season's Premier League runners-up. But the listless figure who muttered "I don't know" in the Wembley mixed zone when asked why Ferguson had said he was carrying an ankle injury starts to look more like an agent provocateur of the sort the United manager has purged many times down the years.There remains time, of course, for these two combustible characters to lock antlers, purge resentments and unite once more after an hour or two in a locked room. But the odds are against it. Their relationship is speeding to a sad end. When Rooney signed from Everton for £27m in September 2004, Ferguson identified him as the kind of rough-hewn starlet on whom he might exert paternal influence. The theory was that Rooney, a passionate Evertonian, was really a classic Manchester United player. He just didn't know it yet.Ferguson is always on the look-out for players who will carry his own spiritual torch. The young United footballer must embrace the team's socialist ethic and obey the manager. Rooney went along with this for as long as it suited him but reverted to outsider status when his relationship with Ferguson fractured and the scent of a bigger salary wafted past his nose.The weekend's escalation will be written up as football's Last Conflict. Some will even frame it as the greatest power struggle of Ferguson's career. Keane was crunching to a halt and had become poisonously dismissive of some of his colleagues when Ferguson ran him out of town. Ruud van Nistelrooy too had become disruptive. David Beckham was replaced in the No7 shirt by Cristiano Ronaldo: an upgrade. Rooney is only 24 and was bought to be a United player for life. He is the one dictating events.For Ferguson the timing could be no worse. United have surrendered two-goal leads against Everton and West Brom. A run of mediocre results is bound to re-ignite fan hostility to the Glazer family, with their mountain of leveraged debt.Ferguson and David Gill, the United chief executive, will know Rooney's flounce is bound to be confused in some minds with the Glazer problem. They have spent more than a year reassuring supporters that a lack of "value" in the market has kept most of the £80m from Ronaldo's sale to Real Madrid on ice. Now this.If Rooney leaves there will be a hue and cry to spend the £50m they would expect to receive for him straight away on a proven world-class striker. In retrospect the renewed faith invested by Ferguson in Dimitar Berbatov from the start of the season points to longstanding uncertainty about Rooney's intentions. His professional indiscipline off the pitch alerted the whole of football to the likelihood that he will be a busted flush by 30: hence his own urge to chase the dollar now, while he still can.The ruinous modern cult of celebrity works in Rooney's favour because there will be United supporters who persuade themselves there can be no life without him and that his loss would lead straight to perdition. On the other hand there is a competing desire to see the authority of the manager defended at all costs. Ferguson and Arsène Wenger are its two custodians. The mantra that a great football club is always bigger than any individual was asserted by Wenger in the cases of Nicolas Anelka, Patrick Vieira, Mathieu Flamini and most obviously Thierry Henry.In an interview with the Observer this year Ferguson said of Rooney: "He's a one-off in terms of the modern type of fragile player we're getting today, cocooned by their agents, mothers and fathers, psychologists, welfare officers. Rooney's a cut to the old days." He might not say this now. He also said: "What we're seeing now is a terror of a player." Terror still sounds right.Wayne RooneySir Alex FergusonManchester UnitedPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |