Hello!! So, wanna know if Man U lost to Arsenal?? Was the score 1-0?? Or 2-1?? Or a lousy draw of 0-0??

Wrong on all counts!! It was a freakin' 2-0, baby!! And no, it wasn't Arsenal who went glory, glory!! Yep, Man U wooonnnn!!! We won!! We freakin' won the match. And finally, FINALLY, after a long unboken run, Arsenal's unbeaten streak of 50 games is breached by none other than the Reds themselves.

The reason I didn't write this sooner is because of the controversy that surrounded the aftermath of the match. Which got pretty ugly before & after referee Mike Riley blew the whistle.

I won't go into a really detailed info on how the match went -although I'm tempted to- but I'll just say that the first goal was a peanalty scored by...Van the Man!! Woo-hoo!! At long last, the ghosts that have haunted him for the past 13 months have been banished along with the embarrassment & anguish he felt when he missed the same penalty & hit the crossbar that fateful day a season ago.

What caused the penalty?? The tripping of Sol Campbell on Wayne Rooney. Some might say it was barely a touch & that Sol hadn't had any contact with Rooney's knee, but hmmm...we'll just let the pros do their jbob. Apparently a lot went on even after the match in the players' tunnel where Sir Alex was pelted with soup & pizza.

Another doubt was Rio Ferdinand, the stand-in captain for the day, bodychecking Freddie Ljungberg which denied him from a free-kick that might've been a goal since Referee iley waved play on. The other incident was from Ruud who allegedly raked his boot studs over Ashley Cole's shin. Ruud is now facing a hearing that's happening on Thursday by the FA. Even though Ruud denied that it was deliberate, I definitely think he'll get a 3-match ban for what he did, accidental or not.

To sum it up, Sunday's match featured virtually everyone on that field trying to maim whoever who was having the ball at their feet. Not a player was spared, especially not Jose Antonio Reyes, who was kicked more times than any match he'd played in. And the kicks came from 2 fello brother, Phil & Gary, both of whom got a yellow card each for it. Patrick Vieira was hounding the referee the whole match through everytime one of his players went down. Ruud got his fair share of tussles, including giving some of his own back. But no one deserved to be stamped on with football studs like what Ashley Cole got. It wasn't malicious, but it still is hurtul.

True, last season Ruud got pushed & shoved after he missed his penalty but that doesn't mean he had to take it out on an Arsenal player. But God knows if it was accidental or not since Ruud claims that both he & Ashley were going for the ball.

I think more time was spent on either the referee calming players down after a tussle or the time spent on medics running over to injured players. It felt like the beauty of a football game had been 75% destroyed. It wasn't a beautiul game of soccer at all; unlike the game between Barca & AC Milan where both teams were star-studded yet they showed that football was a game of professionalism, not going at ach other like battering rams. In the end, though, United swum & Arsenal sunk. It should've been end of story. But noooooooo.

All the controversy & the brouhaha of the game has been dragged on until today, 2 full days later. Hmmm...wonder when this'll end. Obviously not anytime soon. It was the exact replica of the game last season, if not worse. The players from both sides should be ashamed of themselves for displaying attitudes like what they did on the pitch. Heck, even Arsene Wenger was childish. If it was a match of grudges & calculativity, then it might as well not be a match at all. Guh.

Anywayz, moving on. Life is taking it's toll a little, I guess. Stress is slowly seeping in & if not for my frequent dosages of soccer on ESPN StarSports, I might as well go insane. Tomorrow's a Networking paper & I'm trying my damndest to just let everything flow in. I'm even resorting myself to watch Dutch interviews of Ruud van Nistelrooy & Rafael van der Vaart online to take away the stress.

Cheap thrill, as Janice would say.

And by the way, she was absolutely furious when Man Utd beat her team, Assenal. I kinda got a kick out of that one.

Okay, okay, cheap thrill again. Whatever. I need that right now more than ever. Life's too short to wait for all the good & glorious stuff to come by. So, take whatever you can out of life's experiences, be it as tiny as a freaking molecule or as big as Mount Sinnai. But most of all, appreciate it.

Laterz...
Lenny JC