When Manchester United left the Santiago Bernabeu stadium with a 1-1 draw with a headed goal from the home grown Danny "Welbz" Welbeck, the reds treble dreams were still well alive and with a Premier League tie with Norwich on the horizon before the second leg back at Old Trafford, few things were more vital than correctly rotating the squad and keeping important players fit and raring to go. United warmed up well for the second leg against Madrid and the FA cup tie at Old Trafford against Chelsea with a tidy 4-0 against a Norwich side that you could argue didn't turn up as well as they did at Carrow Road.
Many football fans finally got to see a glimpse of the Shinji Kagawa that few football fans seen at Dortmund against that Norwich side, with a hat trick littered with cheeky finishes with a MOTM performance and a rocket from Rooney that sealed the win against Norwich and everything was looking on track for the coveted treble that hasn't been seen for 14 years.
Then came the second leg against a Madrid side that have beaten Barcelona twice in two consecutive meetings beforehand so they hadn't warmed up too badly for this match you could say however, the team that Sir Alex Ferguson put out to face Madrid had nullified every possible threat that Madrid brought to the table at Old Trafford and managed to squeeze an own goal out of Sergio Ramos to put them on course to go through to the last 8 of the Champions League. Of course sticking with the team selection that the manager put out, more focus was on the fact that Wayne Rooney wasn't in the starting XI than the focus was on the actual starting XI. Most MUFC fans that watched the Norwich game could argue that, goal aside.. Rooney didn't particularly have a superb game and didn't use the game to stake his claim in the starting XI against Madrid in a way that most of the other players did. The Madrid game was a perfect example of how Sir Alex had rotated his squad correctly to keep the treble dreams alive and few people could argue otherwise despite him starting a 39 year old Ryan Giggs and giving him co-duty of keeping one of the top two best players in the world quiet for a full 90 minutes, but it worked up until Nani's unfortunate and wrong red card. Sir Alex had deployed Nani and Welbeck to play off Robin Van Persie and use their pace to hit Madrid on the counter attack as Madrid play such a high line in most high profile games ( most notably, football fans remember that being the cause of a 5-0 mauling to Barcelona in recent years).
On the bench for the Madrid game, United had Hernandez, Rooney, Kagawa and Ashley Young and that is a plethora of attacking players if ever you seen them and they would get into most Premier League first teams starting XI every Saturday so that proves the depth of Uniteds squad across them three important matches against Norwich, Madrid and Chelsea respectively. Now chances are against Chelsea, you will see all four of them players mentioned above start against Chelsea as they were rested/rotated correctly.
Despite rotating players for the Madrid game, only one tactician came out on top in that midweek game and that was Mourinho. He smelt blood after the red card and brought on Luka Modric who knows the English game all so well and he was the key that unlocked the ten men of Manchester United and got Madrid on the road to a win. Wayne Rooney was eventually brought on and few people could argue it was too little, too late as Sir Alex presumably felt his tactics would stick even with ten men.
All in all, we move on from the Madrid loss and with a squad with such harmony that cannot be rivaled in the Premier League, we trudge on to Sunday's match with Chelsea with a fully fit squad barring Mr Utility in Phil Jones and Chelsea really should beware of the wounded animal, not to mention a raring to go.. Wayne Rooney.
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