Outstanding stand-in keeps the Robson dream alive

Manchester United 1 - West Bromwich Albion 1

Old Trafford should have known that any team in Bryan Robson's image would not be going down without a fight, but even the old stadium cannot have envisaged the point pulled off by their old captain here last night. It really was something to marvel at.

Old Trafford should have known that any team in Bryan Robson's image would not be going down without a fight, but even the old stadium cannot have envisaged the point pulled off by their old captain here last night. It really was something to marvel at.

In as one-sided a Premiership match as you can get, West Bromwich were out and seemingly down until Robert Earnshaw's penalty threw them a lifeline they will grab hold of until next Sunday's do-or-die affair with Portsmouth. They may still be odds-on for the drop, but this unlikeliest of draws will tell them that nothing is beyond them. Not after a day when for so long their relegation had seemed a mere formality.

Indeed, the cheers that were to greet Earnshaw's leveller had to go some to threaten the decibel level reached a full half-hour before kick-off when the news of the Southampton equaliser reached the West Brom support. Until that moment their task had appeared utterly hopeless.

But then came Danny Higginbotham and then came the United team-sheet that made nothing like the electric-chair reading they feared it might. No Ruud van Nistelrooy, no Wayne Rooney, no Paul Scholes, no Roy Keane... and Kleberson in the XI to boot. It might have been suspected that Sir Alex Ferguson was taking it easy on his old friend. Until his after-match comments, that is. "It was a terrible give-away," he fumed. "We'll get justifiable criticism for the chances we missed. It was embarrassing. That's what happens so many times. You need the type of player like Van Nistelrooy to finish matches. I think that's it now as far as second place goes. We've dropped too many points against the bottom half of the League. That's an embarrassment to the players."

Perhaps he wasn't referring to Cristiano Ronaldo, who was at his merciless best all evening, as he signified when skipping his magical way through in the ninth minute before seeing Russell Hoult paw away his shot. And when the West Bromwich goalkeeper was called into action five minutes later to tip over Quinton Fortune's 25-yard strike it wasn't so much ominous as obvious what was to happen next. Although even the longest-suffering Baggie would have been hard pushed to recall such a bizarre, not to mention calamitous, sequence of events.

First, Neil Clement almost headed Ronaldo's cross into his own net in the 20th minute and in his rush to get across the goal to stop that sickening eventuality, Hoult pulled a groin muscle. He bravely, but erroneously, tried to carry on. A minute later, after Alan Smith was hacked down on the edge of the area, Hoult's injury restricted him from reacting fast enough to keep out Ryan Giggs's quickly taken free-kick which bobbled into the empty goalmouth.

Inevitably, West Brom were livid as Mark Halsey let it stand and their mood wasn't helped the next minute with the sight of Hoult hobbling off. On came Tomasz Kuszczak for his Premiership debut and as Ronaldo set about his area with venom the Polish Under-21 international must have been bemoaning his introduction. As the minutes ticked down to the break, however, West Brom were mighty glad of their reserve as he first kept out a diving Fortune header, then a Ronaldo curler and finally a point-blank shot from the Portuguese. Kuszczak's heroics had, incredibly, kept the arrears to one.

Earnshaw did have something resembling a shot early in the second half, but Kleberson's cute effort a few instants later, again neatly turned over by the Pole, suggested that it remained a question of how many. But where there's Roy Carroll, there's hope, the United goalkeeper bafflingly hesitating and letting in Kevin Campbell in the 52nd minute, until the striker's ageing legs failed to make the requisite ground.

Still, it served to trigger the West Brom revival as United contrived to take their eyes, feet and minds off the ball. Kleberson deserved something hideous for his skier over the bar from the six-yard box in the 55th minute, and United's chances-to-goals ratio should have made redfaced reading.

The blushes were well and truly raised in the 62nd minute when John O'Shea clumsily bundled Geoff Horsfield and Halsey pointed to the spot. Earnshaw's composed finish belied the pressure the Welshman must have been feeling to bring his disbelieving side back into it.

Cue the cavalry - Scholes, Rooney and Louis Saha, but by now the United scalp had been exposed and West Brom were not for the taking. With Kuszczak inspired to the very end, they somehow hung on, and Kanu even had a late appeal for a penalty. That would have been infinitely more than their display warranted. Their guts, in contrast, may yet deliver them something far more precious.