Evra dims title talk amid defensive woes

PATRICE EVRA has issued a stark warning to his Manchester United team-mates in the wake of their 3-1 win over Chelsea: any more of that and forget about retaining the title.

Despite United continuing their winning start to the Premier League, in the process matching a century old record of 18 successive home wins, stand-in skipper Evra was not amused by a game Alex Ferguson likened to basketball, in which Chelsea had 21 shots on United’s goal, yet somehow managed to find the net only once.

Evra warns United cannot afford to be so loose in their defending again.

“Maybe I am being hard on myself but it is the first time we didn’t control the game,” he said.

“We have five wins. Yes, it is a good start but I always want more. I hope we control the next game against Stoke.

“We won a big game. We have scored three times against Chelsea. There are a lot of positive things.

“But when they scored the early goal in the second half I thought ‘we have to be strong to make sure Chelsea don’t come back and maybe even win 4-3’.

“If we want to win the league we will have to perform better than this.”

From a United perspective, much of the focus was on Wayne Rooney’s penalty miss, “I prefer Wayne did it then rather than in Moscow,” was Evra’s reaction, recalling John Terry’s fateful slip in the 2008 Champions League final.

Now, though, there are a few issues for Ferguson to contend with.

If Hernandez is ruled out for a fortnight, as was the manager’s initial reaction, Danny Welbeck will have to be rushed back from a hamstring injury at Stoke this weekend or Berbatov will need to be trusted, something Ferguson has yet to show any sign of.

At the other end, Rio Ferdinand’s complete absence yesterday went unexplained and skipper Nemanja Vidic is still thought to be a couple of weeks of making a full recovery from a calf injury sustained at West Brom on the opening day of the season.

The obvious counterweight to that twin injury woe has been the introduction of Phil Jones, whose performances have been of such a high standard that it would be hard to justify his exclusion even when Ferdinand and Vidic return.

Tonight, some of United’s other young stars will get a chance as the Red Devils travel to Elland Road to face Leeds in the Carling Cup (7.45pm, live on Sky Sports 2).

Michael Owen is set to make his first appearance of the season tonight for United.

Ferguson will make a huge number of changes, with Paul Pogba and Will Keane amongst the youngsters who might be involved.

But there will be plenty of experience as well and Mame Biram Diouf, Federico Macheda may be joined by Park Ji-sung and Ryan Giggs.

Leeds boss Simon Grayson has shrugged off the suggestion his team are “dirty” following criticisms about the number of red cards they have had this season ahead of the clash.

It’ll be something Ferguson will be keeping a keen eye on. He was angered at Bolton’s Kevin Davies’ tackle which put Tom Cleverly out of action while an injury picked up by Javier Hernandez against Chelsea on Sunday — after a tackle by Ashley Cole which Ferguson described as “shocking” — added to his frustrations.

But Grayson doesn’t believe his side’s discipline will be an issue. “You can’t say we’re a dirty team,” said Grayson.

“If I had players going over the top and making crude challenges then we should have some sort of criticism, but not at this particular time.”