Reds Get Rude Awakening Against Wolves

After receiving many warnings, Manchester United finally lost in the Barclays Premier League, but the way their 29-match winning streak came to a disappointing end should not be very surprising.

United Slumped Against Wolves

In the passed 10 months, it has been well-documented that United has not only been very poor away from Old Trafford, but their defending against set pieces has been dubious, which is exactly what helped Wolverhampton to a fully-deserved 2-1 win over the Reds.

Both of Wolves' goals came as a direct result of not being completely focused or physical enough on defensive set pieces, but, to be honest, there was only one positive for United to take from the streak-busting loss: it's over.

The pressure from all of the talk about United going the entire season without a loss will thankfully come to an end, which should allow the Reds to focus on the final 13 games without unnecessary distraction.

The Reds got off to the best of starts, which should have given the players a needed lift for the match, but we lost our focus and composure before the match even began.

The loss just further proves that Rio Ferdinand is the most influential player at United, because of how he is able to add focus and composure when it is needed, and that is really something that you cannot replace with anyone.

An injury in the pre-match warm-up forced Rio to be withdrawn from the squad, and his replacement, Jonny Evans, was clearly not ready to play against Wolves and will receive a lot of criticism for his performance.

Evans has recently shown that he does possess the natural ability to handle top players like Fernando Torres, but the young defender was running around in circles trying to figure out whom to mark against Wolves.

Nemanja Vidic gets a lot of the credit, and rightfully so, but even he is not the same defender when he is partnered with anyone else, and he was not able to offer the guidance Evans needed.

The Reds have conceded four set piece goals in their last two Premier League matches, which is very concerning and needs to be addressed quickly.

There is no questioning that United needs to defend better, but team defending always starts by being able to keep the ball, which also led to both of Wolverhampton's goals.

Michael Carrick was unable to get a kick in the match, but that was only because he was constantly being overlooked by his teammates, which saw him harshly withdrawn in at halftime in favor of Paul Scholes.

Even though it was his pass that created the opening goal, Darren Fletcher continued to display that he is unable to rediscover his form from the last couple of seasons, which saw Wolves dominate the possession in the first half.

Granted, the pitch was not in very good shape, which was always going to trouble the fluent passing game from United, but one cannot blame the bobbles in the pitch for the constant over hit passes - and the farther up the field they went the worse it got.

The crossing, as a whole, rarely hit the intended target, and even when it did, the forwards did not seem ready for it, which allowed the Wolves defenders grow in confidence as the game wore on.

Ferguson even tried throwing Javier Hernandez into the mix, but even he showed that he could not perform miracles, because of poor distribution from the midfield and vigorous defending by Wolverhampton.

Costly
The other aspect of the match that really needs to be mentioned was the performance of Michael Oliver, because the match referee was very hesitate and scared to make a decision.

In the first half United should have had two penalties when Vidic was pushed and pulled by Christophe Berra, but the referee did not even give either one of them a second look, which goes down to inexperience.

There is no saying that even if Oliver, 25, awarded United one of those penalties it would have changed the outcome of the match, but how he did not send Jamie O'Hara off for his second bookable offense was laughable.

United cannot blame the refereeing decisions for their loss, because they must take full responsibility for the loss and learn from it, because they only have a few days of preparation for another highly-anticipated derby with Manchester City.

Now that there is no chance of matching Arsenal's Invincibles by running the table undefeated, Sir Alex Ferguson will hopefully get Manchester back to the basics - and quickly.