Saturday, 19 Dec 2009

Fulham Shock Manchester United

Fulham 3 Man Utd 0

MANCHESTER United’s pursuit of the Barclays Premier League title suffered a humiliating setback with a thrashing against Fulham at Craven Cottage.

Danny Murphy opened the scoring from 30-yards after capitalising on a blunder by Paul Scholes and Bobby Zamora continued his rich vein of form with the second a minute after the interval.

It was Zamora’s fifth goal in four games and a player who was the target of jeers from his own fans just three weeks ago heard his name chanted as he left the pitch to a standing ovation.

The former West Ham marksman - a menace all afternoon - had helped complete the rout of the champions by setting-up the third for Damien Duff in the 76th minute.

Just as worrying for an abysmal United side as their second Premier League defeat in three games was the knowledge they were overwhelmed in every department.

Lacking in imagination and confidence, their crippling injury list has clearly caught up with them as they missed the chance to draw level with Chelsea at the top of the table and suffered a fifth loss of the season.

Nemanja Vidic’s failure to recover from a calf strain forced Sir Alex Ferguson to once again field a makeshift defence, which was repeatedly exposed by Fulham.