Manchester United Must Break Kit Hoodoo To End Trophy Drought

Manchester United can end their three-year wait for a trophy when they come up against Crystal Palace in May’s FA Cup final – but they’ll have to overcome history if they’re to end their drought.

The Red Devils booked their place in May’s showpiece with Anthony Martial’s dramatic late winner against Everton last weekend.

There’s plenty left to play for in the Premier League before the showdown at Wembley but the coin toss for May’s clash has already been made and Crystal Palace will play as the home team.

It means Louis van Gaal’s side will play in their white away kit and a look at previous finals in which the Red Devils have worn white won’t leave Reds with much hope.

The Red Devils have played in white in eight previous finals – and they’ve won on just two occasions.

Manchester United’s record in finals wearing white kit

FA Cup 1909: Manchester United 1-0 Bristol City
FA Cup 1957: Aston Villa 2-1 Manchester United
League Cup 1983: Liverpool 3-2 Manchester United
FA Cup 1990: Crystal Palace 3-3 Manchester United
Cup Winners’ Cup 1991: Barcelona 1-2 Manchester United
League Cup 2003: Liverpool 2-0 Manchester United
Champions League final 2009: Barcelona 2-0 Manchester United
Champions League final 2011: Barcelona 3-1 Manchester United

United’s first ever FA Cup win came in white when the Reds beat Bristol City in 1909 but they on the next occasion when Matt Busby’s side were narrowly beaten by Aston Villa.

Arch rivals Liverpool beat the Red Devils in an entertaining League Cup victory in 1983, while United’s white kit is perhaps best remembered for its showing in the memorable 1990 FA Cup final with Crystal Palace.

Advantage Crystal Palace? History suggests Man United will struggle in FA Cup final

United overcame Palace in the replay of the 1990 FA Cup final (Picture: Allsport)

Sir Alex Ferguson’s side donned their white strip in the action-packed 3-3 draw at Wembley before overcoming the Eagles in the replay (wearing their home strip) with a 1-0 win.

Van Gaal’s side, though, have not had much luck of late and have lost all three of their previous finals wearing their away strip with Liverpool and Barcelona (x2) coming out on top.

Metro

Manchester United Must Break Kit Hoodoo To End Trophy Drought

We Were Determined To End Our Poor Away Run – WAFA Goalkeeper

Razak Abalorah has said his West Africa Football Academy (WAFA) side was determined to end their poor away run in this season’s Ghana Premier League (GPL) when they played Accra Hearts of Oak last Wednesday in Accra.

Prior to that encounter, the academy lads had lost all their three away games by a similar margin (0-1) to Berekum Chelsea, Aduana Stars and Dreams FC, and, the goalkeeper said they were determined to halt that run going into this game.

The Academy lads frustrated the Phobians to a 1-1 stalemate at the Ohene Djan Stadium in Accra to record their first away point of the season.

“We were determined not to lose this one,” he said after the game, adding that they will build on this performance in their subsequent away games.

“Our game plan worked for us as we did not them to settle into any rhythm that could make them trouble us on the day,” he added, insisting that they did everything possible to win but Hearts fought back to earn a draw.

WAFA opened the scoring in the first half through Charles Boateng before Cosmos Dauda leveled for the Phobians in the second as the spoils were shared.

They will next play Ebusua Dwarfs at Sogakope on Sunday before heading to Bechem to play Bechem United in their next GPL away game the week after.

We Were Determined To End Our Poor Away Run – WAFA Goalkeeper

Gov"t Announces End To Load Shedding

Government has announced an official end to the four-year long load shedding exercise which plagued the country.

 

 

In a statement signed by the head of Public Affairs of the Ministry of Power Kweku Sersah-Johnson, Wednesday, government thanked Ghanaians for their patience during the difficult times.

 

 

 

The announcement comes two days before the January 1 2016 deadline given by the Power Minister Dr Kwabena Donkor.

 

 

He had vowed to resign if the perennial power crisis continued after the end of the year.

 

 

It appears however that government has resolved the crisis.

 

below is the statement released by the ministry;

 

 

Gov"t Announces End To Load Shedding

I Promised To End Load Shedding, Not ‘Localised Outages’ – Power Minister

The Power Minister, Dr. Kwabena Donkor, has appeared before the Government Assurances Committee in Parliament to set the record straight after comments he recently made to clarify his promise to end the country’s power crisis.

Dr. Donkor, when he was appointed by President Mahama, announced that he would resign if the power crisis persisted after 2015 and has reiterated that promise on different occasions.

However, the Minister recently sought to clarify his promise when answering questions posed to him by pressure group Occupy Ghana, stating that his promises was to end the load shedding programme and not power outages entirely.

Ghanaians who were skeptical of Dr. Donkor’s promise were up in arms following his comments.

According to them, the Minister is only making excuses to absolve himself of any blame and get out of resigning should the power crisis not end entirely at the end of the year, a claim Dr. Donkor dismissed on Wednesday.

“I have been at pains at very places to make a critical distinction that the new lexicon, dumsor does not reflect. Load shedding arises out of generation deficit. In ordinary language we would say power rationing, because we don’t have enough. That is what I promised on the floor of the House to work towards its cessation,” Dr. Donkor said.

According to the power minister, while his ministry was working towards ending the load shedding programme, it would not be possible to curtail outages as a result of faulty transmitters or activities of criminals who steal the copper cables.

“You can have all the generation and also have outages in particular areas. Four weeks ago, in the Tema community alone, five of our transmitters were vandalized because people want to steal copper from our transformers. When that happens, irrespective of our generation available, that locality will not have power until the ECG either repairs the transformers or replaces them. That is the situation we term localized outage.

“Therefore I am very careful of the over generalization, because if you don’t make that distinction, I am not accountable for the thievery and vandalism of some Ghanaians and that it why it is important I make that distinction. Underground cables have also been stolen. Those are acts arising out of criminality.” There are certain occasions with some of our modern transformers; when they are overloaded, they will cut and a transformer serves a particular locality.”

A poll was taken by Citi FM on Tuesday on Twitter to see whether Ghanaians shared the view of the Power Minister on his insistence that load shedding and dumsor should be differentiated.

32 percent of the 263 respondents disagreed with Dr. Donkor while 11 percent thought the Power Minister had a point

Is there a difference between dumsor and load shedding? #CitiCBS

— 97.3 Citi FM (@Citi973) December 22, 2015

An overwhelming 57 percent, however, though the distinction between load shedding and dumsor was unnecessary when all they wanted was light.

–

Citifmonline.com

I Promised To End Load Shedding, Not ‘Localised Outages’ – Power Minister