Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph
It was disappointing and surprising to hear Sir Alex Ferguson deride Liverpool's ability to 'play for only five minutes and win the game' when he won a European Cup in 90 seconds.
As the former European champions are too ambitious and proud to take real succour from next Sunday's League Cup, Ferguson must recognise that his last hope of significant silverware this season was shredded by opponents showing more desire and intelligence. Liverpool worked hard for 90 minutes. It was United flickering only in bursts.
The man of the match was Didi Hamann. He strips football down to its bare essentials, winning the ball with precision and determination and laying it off simply, keeping the momentum going, keeping the opposition sweating.
Alex Ferguson
They had one attempt at goal and then the goal, but that's what they're all about because they only need to play for five minutes - that's the way they are now.
They just pump the ball into the box and their set-piece delivery is very good. They keep you under pressure all the time and I think we just didn't have enough height today to cope with that. They depend on keeping a tight ship at the back and they're very difficult to beat.
I think we dominated the game in the second half, but we should have done better in the first half - we showed nothing threatening really.
In the second half, when we got any momentum going they just stopped the game by giving free-kicks away - and that was hard to handle.
Rio Ferdinand dropping out was a blow and then Mikael Silvestre coming off at half time with an injury just furthered that.
Then of course there was Alan's injury and it tells you a lot about the FA Cup. You need that little bit of luck and I think it was against us today.
