Charlton 0 Manchester United 2Meeting a side about to re-enter the Champions League can often be compared to calling on someone preparing to go to a posh dinner. They do not wish to be rude but the taxi is on its way, a cuff link has gone missing and the bow tie won't do up.
At least Charlton forced Manchester United to don overalls over their dinner jackets. By the time Alex Ferguson's team take the field against Panathinaikos at Old Trafford tomorrow night the memory of Saturday's win at The Valley will be little more than a scoreline, yet they had to work reasonably hard to achieve it.
The teams created barely half a dozen scoring chances between them and Ruud van Nistelrooy took two of these, the second after Jason Euell had become the third Charlton player sent off in five matches. They collected only three red cards in total last season.
There is not an ounce of malice in Charlton's make-up but clearly they need to apply themselves to keeping 11 on the pitch. "I have been trying to stress to my players that when you play against this quality of team you can't keep going down to 10 men," said Alan Curbishley.
Euell went because, having been cautioned in the opening minute for lunging late at Tim Howard, the United goalkeeper, he went in even later on Gary Neville just past the hour. Possibly he was feeling miffed because United had just gone ahead. If so he should have been more annoyed with himself than anyone else.
In soccer it is standard practice, when defending, to move out once a corner or a free-kick has been blocked. Yet on this occasion, as Ryan Giggs's free-kick was charged down and Gary Neville's shot from the rebound hit Nicky Butt, Euell remained on the Charlton goal-line, keeping every attacker onside.
Van Nistelrooy gratefully accepted the ricochet off Butt, Euell's dismissal soon followed, and there the contest virtually ended. "If Euelly had come out, three of them would have been offside," Curbishley reflected.
Until van Nistelrooy scored, moreover, Euell could claim that even if he was not in the same class as the United player the Dutchman had posed only a slightly bigger threat. In fact so assiduously did Chris Perry track van Nistelrooy down that he cannot have thanked Jonathan Fortune for committing the grappling foul on the striker that led to United taking the lead.
United's work ethic was more impressive than the flow of their football. Such individualism as there was came from Cristiano Ronaldo, with his quick, elusive feet and now-you-see-it-now-you-don't invitations to opponents to try to take the ball off him.
The response of Radostin Kishishev and others was to take the man if they could not get the ball and it was a measure of Mike Riley's unaccustomed lenience that the Bulgarian did not see a yellow card until the 76th minute. Five minutes later Kishishev unwittingly glanced on Giggs's free-kick for van Nistelrooy to score at the far post.
"Ronaldo's very direct and not too concerned about defending," was Curbishley's verdict on the young Portuguese. "He's dangerous and he's unknown. You might see him on TV but until you actually play against him you don't know what you're up against."
"There were a few tackles on him today," said Ferguson, "but he just gets up and gets on with it." Except, that is, when he is enacting the death scene from Camille.
