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From tonight’s thrilling encounter between Manchester United and Manchester City, one of the biggest highlights was certainly Tom Cleverley’s great impact on the field. The young midfielder came on in the second half as a substitute to the ineffective Michael Carrick and bossed proceedings brilliantly, thus leading United to their 19th Community Shield title.
Playing in the second half, Tom Cleverley caught the eye of all Manchester United fans for his outstanding performance. Besides putting together an array of impressive passes and tackles, he also got an assist to his name after playing a pivotal role in the build-up play of United’s second goal. Cleverley showed that he has got all the important qualities that an attacking midfielder requires: pace, vision, dribbling, passing, and inch-perfect crossing.
Throughout the game, Cleverley lost the possesion of the ball just twice, which proves how much ball control the young Englishman has. With Anderson, Cleverley formed a rock solid midfield partnership, driving United to a come-from-behind win. Another great quality of his which came to the fore today was his readiness to track back and help out the defence when under attack. A very good box-to-box midfielder who loves maintaining possession of the ball from the half way line, running deep into the opposition half and orchestrating attacks, Cleverley displayed sheer quality today. If his wonderful work in the pre-season friendly against Barcelona where he grabbed the eye-balls for his impressive showing was a good start, tonight’s performance is a definitive sign of great things to come for the young midfielder and Manchester United, a sign of the possibility of that Cleverley could be the heir to the throne left vacant by the maestro, Paul Scholes.
As rumours abound of Wesley Sneijder’s imminent from Inter Milan this summer, an interesting conundrum comes up now. If Sneijder arrives, chances for young Cleverley to cement his place in the first time will be diminished as the experienced Dutchman will be favoured consistently. Sir Alex Ferguson, however, continues to deny reports of Sneijder’s arrival. He was quizzed by a reporter after the City game on a possible new arrival this summer.
Reporter: “Anymore business?”Sir Alex: ” No, I don’t think so.”
If that’s the case, then Tom Cleverley is the right man to step into the Manchester United midfield and take over Paul Scholes’ throne. If he continues to play like he did tonight, he will most certainly be the solution to the midfield woes of both England and Manchester United.
