Muzzy Izzet's absence meant that Steve Bruce was forced into one change, with Dwight Yorke replacing the injured Turkish international. Yorke played as a withdrawn striker behind Emile Heskey, which meant that David Dunn moved to the left, Jesper Gronkjaer to the right, and Damien Johnson inside in Izzet's role. Another change was Jamie Clapham dropping to the bench with Julian Gray coming in at left-back - no doubt to use his pace and height against Christiano Ronaldo.
Blues started well against a United side boasting Ruud van Nistelrooy, Alan Smith and Louis Saha, with Wayne Rooney on the bench as back-up. Yorke and Heskey were linking together well, and Dunn and the magnificent Gray were causing problems down the left. Yorke went close twice - once with a header and once with a shot on the turn - before United started to impose themselves on the game a little more.
Van Nistelrooy missed a glorious opportunity from a Quinton Fortune cross thanks to a fine reflex save from Maik Taylor, before Ronaldo and Saha tried their luck from distance. At the other end, Heskey tested Roy Carroll with a couple of low drives.
When half-time arrived it was 0-0.
Gronkjaer, who had just had one of those days, was replaced at half-time with Darren Anderton coming on for his Blues Premiership debut. Within a few minutes he showed some neat passing, but also highlighted his desire to cut inside more, whereas Gronkjaer goes outside of full-backs. This meant that the onus was more on Mario Melchiot to get Blues going down the right.
The teams didn't quite create as much in the second half, as things got a little more heated and the rythmn from the game went. The likes of Robbie Savage, Roy Keane, Rio Ferdinand and Damien Johnson all started to go in hard into tackles - as did Rooney when he came on.
For Blues, Heskey continued to threaten, whilst Savage became more and more influential. United threw on Rooney and Paul Scholes, meaning that the Blues defence only had those two, Saha, van Nistelrooy and Smith to contend with for the final 15 minutes or so!
Smith flashed a good left-foot drive wide in injury time, but that would have been cruel on Blues had it gone in, as they meritted at least a point. Special mention should go to Gray, who played out of position, but was absolutely superb defensively against Ronaldo, and wasn't too bad on the break either.
It's another game without defeat, against just about as good a team as you can play anywhere in the world, so there's obviously a lot that Blues can take from the game. Now that one or two of the teams that you'd like to think Blues should be beating start to arrive on the fixture list, it'd be nice to think that this form can be carried into those games, and a few wins will start to come.