By Roger O'Brien
September 30 2007

Cristiano Ronaldo scored the only goal of the game at St Andrews in front of the travelling fans to keep United in touch with the league leaders. It wasn't too pretty but another clean sheet and yet another one-nil victory to the Champions ! The author wasn't there but the broadsheets were and here's the report from The Observer..... THE OBSERVER reported the game as follows...

These are happy days for Sir Alex Ferguson. His team are collecting three points while playing just mediocre stuff, his chief rival is no more and the team left behind appear in disarray. Whatever the public utterances, Fergie will be delighted that Jose Mourinho has left Chelsea and the club he took to consecutive championships now lie five points behind. Here, United were dull and might have lost, yet scrapped away to take the victory from a side set up well by Steve Bruce to resist the champions. If Franck Queudrue had not produced the awful error that allowed Cristiano Ronaldo to again be a match winner, the United old boy might have had at least a deserved point for his shrewd approach.

Last week Bruce squeezed a point from the visit to Liverpool by positioning Mehdi Nafti in front of the defence and asking the Tunisian to lead his midfield in frustrating Liverpool. Here, against visitors Birmingham had not beaten in the league since a 5-1 rout in November 1978, he repeated the ploy. It worked, especially in the opening 45 minutes. As Ferguson said: 'It was very difficult, they played well and deserve full credit. That is the hardest game so far this season for us.'

Before the break Birmingham were certainly the sharper and more cohesive than a United side arguably Sir Alex Ferguson's strongest. The only possible debate was over the omission of Louis Saha who offers a differing option to Carlos Tevez in attack alongside Wayne Rooney. But, it was Birmingham's lone striker Cameron Jerome who stood out before Ronaldo's goal. He might have scored after 27 minutes when a poor Edwin Van der Sar clearance went direct to him. The Dutch keeper - replaced at half-time due to a toe injury by Tomasz Kuszczak -was out of goal and Jerome's curling effort appeared to have given Birmingham the lead before Nemanja Vidic hooked a leg out.

United were disjointed enough for 25 minutes to pass before a first corner arrived. It came to nothing. And though Tevez had earlier dribbled into the area after seven minutes and Rooney should have done better when through on Maik Taylor seconds before, that was about it. The visitors' problems derived from their central midfield pairing of Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick. Both failed to break forward in support, which meant there was little fluidity going forward. And as the break neared, Ryan Giggs began dropping inside in an attempt to link. By that point Birmingham had created far more and were unlucky not to be leading. Added to Jerome's near miss had been the 17th-minute effort from Gary McSheffrey that forced Rio Ferdinand to clear his line.

Ferguson, though, resisted making any change at half time and within five minutes saw his team score. Queudrue's Sunday was instantly ruined by his mistake. While the French left-back dithered, the double player of the year muscled in, rounded Taylor, and finished. 'Even I could have scored that,' reckoned Bruce. If that undersold the winger's finish, then the manager's assertion that it was his team's only serious error was correct.