Today was the first game of the season for Manchester United and this is the 4th game I’ve been to in 12 months and it’s the 4th game we’ve failed to win, despite last season being our second most successful of all time I still failed to see us win, in fact we only scored 1 goal in all that time and I was outside the bloody stadium when it went in.

I thought today we were guaranteed to see a goal having scored 11 goals in our two matches against Newcastle last season, but we were lacking a lot of our first team players such as Anderson, Saha, Tevez, Neville, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo, so I wasn’t expecting an easy game.

If I’m being honest, the game itself should have been wrapped up within 20 minutes where we destroyed them but for Given who I rate as one of the finest keepers in the league who kept them in it, playing like a man possessed, first stopping Campbells header with his face and then double saving from Rooney and Scholes, then later saving again from Campbell’s long range effort. We also should have had a penalty, yet another turned down making it two in two games this season so it seems to be following on from the trend whereby we don’t get close to the penalties we deserve, but the season is long and there are 37 more games to go.

Campbell, Possebon and Rafael Da Silva all made their premiership debuts today, the latter two replacing injured players, adding to our woe. Campbell looked quite sharp but lacked the experience to make the best of his chances, as mentioned above he would have had a goal but for Givens face. Possebon came on late, but was played too deep, sitting in front of the back four – he only gave away one pass and was never tackled, so the future is bright as far as that’s concerned. Da Silva was a really late addition, unfortunately he wasn’t able to get involved which was a real shame, he could have given us the extra width we really needed.

Newcastle themselves had two debutants of their own, Coloccini the former Deportivo Centerback and Guitierrez, a pacy Argentinian wideman, both with great expectation on their shoulders. Coloccini looked slow, clumsy and unable to pick a pass. Upteen times he continued to pass us the ball with very poor clearances and almost got caught out by Wayne Rooney. Gutierrez was a different kettle of fish, in the first half he was none-existant, in the second half he was their star player and the Geordies have fallen over him claiming he was ‘beating our players left and right’, something which wasn’t true at all, it was merely a case of knocking the ball over the top and running really quickly. Sadly it caught Wes Brown out every single time.

We scored a rather lucky goal from a nice move, an equaliser to a goal we should have never conceeded due to woeful marking on a set-piece, leaving Martins unmarked three times on three consecutive corners. Terrible.

The highlight of the day was walking down the Munich Tunnel with my friend Stephen, arriving at the end where the staff carpark is and seeing a crowd form through which Cristiano Ronaldo walked right past me (literally right past – less than a foot). It’s not every day you’re stood next to undoubtedly the finest player on the planet right now. I gave him a cheer and my friend Stephen gave him a good old British pat on the back and a ‘Go on son’. A great experience.

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