A few days after tipping Real Madrid for the Champions League, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry as Real Madrid were sensationally knocked out of the competition for the (if memory serves) sixth successive season at the knockout stage, this time by Lyon.

Trailing 1-0 from the first leg, Real were fully expected to overturn that deficit with ease and cruise through to the next stage.

When Ronaldo scored after just six minutes, the deficit was overturned and everyone expected the rout to continue from there but it just didn’t happen.

Higuain continues to suffer the kind of luck that makes you wonder if he has been smashing mirrors as a hobby recently and hit the post yet again.

However, when Lyon scored in the 75th minute, it was all but over. In fact, it WAS over. The final score was 1-1 and Real Madrid were out of the Champions League.

Lyon are one of those teams that have given a few teams a torrid time in the CL over recent seasons but would hardly be anybody’s first choice to actually win it but you have to give them immense credit. They beat Real at home and drew with them away. The perfect recipe for Champions League success.

And so, despite spending the equivalent of small country’s national debt, Real have left the Champions League at almost the earliest possible stage.

A penny for Ronaldo’s thoughts right now… the lessons were there to be learned… he followed his dream.

He’ll be having nightmares tonight.

Wednesday, 10th March 2010 – KO: 19:45

It has been over two weeks since we played at Old Trafford and what a game to come back on – it doesn’t get much better than this.

I have watched a replay of the first match a couple of times now and I must say, we can consider ourselves quite fortunate to be taking a lead into this game. With a bit more luck and a bit more composure in front of goal, Milan could have blown us away by half-time.

However, we rode our luck before coming back very strongly in the second half. When we went 3-1 up, it looked very much like this tie was as good as over but Seedorf’s clever little backheel in the closing stages gave Milan some chance that they can overturn the deficit.

It is going to be very interesting to see how Milan start in this one. They started extremely brightly in the first leg and I think we were a bit surprised by that. They do need to win here tonight and probably need to score at least three goals in the process (although a 2-0 win would also take them through) and so they won’t be able to mess around too much, they will need to attack.

If the first leg showed one thing it is that attack is their strength however so I would not say that they face mission impossible in terms of getting the goals they require. The problem they face is getting those goals whilst keeping us out at the same time. I simply cannot see that happening and sooner or later we are going to score a goal and if we get one, we could get two as the Milan heads start to drop.

I think Valencia is going to be our key player here tonight. He made a big difference when he came on in the first leg and the little triangle between Berby, Valencia and Rooney has brought several goals recently (I do hope that Berby will play alongside Rooney here tonight).

At the back, we have Rio and Vidic and whilst I am not filled with confidence that they can keep Milan out for 90 minutes, if they can keep them out for 60 minutes, it would probably be enough for Milan to start getting desperate and frustrated, opening gaps for us to exploit in the process.

Evra is a cert for the left and it only remains to be seen whether Rafael is chosen on the right again. He was given a bit of a torrid time in the first leg by Ronaldinho and I do wonder if young Rafael was a little star-struck. Ronaldinho must have been a hero for the young Da Silva’s when they were growing up in Brazil. To find himself actually playing against him must have been a bit surreal for the lad.

Personally, with Valencia on the right as opposed to Nani then I think the right side defence is better covered so I see no reason why Rafael shouldn’t be chosen again here tonight.

The midfield is going to be interesting. Fergie might go for the five man midfield but with Carrick suspended, Scholes playing the whole match on Saturday and Giggs still injured (as well as Anderson), options are somewhat limited.

I can see a good old 4-4-2 with Valencia, Fletcher, Scholes and Park with Fergie looking to bring Scholes off after 60 minutes or so to be replaced by Gibson.

Berby and Rooney up front.

Fergie was bullish after the first leg and insisted that we can make all the goal permutations and their implications irrelevant by just winning this game but it remains to be seen if the team can match Fergie’s warcry on the pitch. Personally, I think we can. Some of our best performances and results of the season have come in the games where nerves and pressure were supposed to get the better of us.

However, I am always wary of backing a team that doesn’t actually need to win so I am more tempted to go for a more neutral market in this one.

I think a lot depends on the first ten minutes of this game. We do have a habit of conceding early goals in Europe but we could also come out all guns blazing and score one of our own early on. If either team scores early then anything could happen here tonight as the whole dynamic of the tie would change.

If neither team scores early then I can see a low-scoring affair. It is hard to imagine Milan keeping us out for 90 minutes but we have to remember that we don’t actually need to score at all.

What you often find in these two legged ties is that both games rarely follow the same pattern. Everyone is expecting another goal fest here tonight but neither team really wants to get into that kind of game. Milan are looking for 2-0, we are looking for 1-0.

For this reason, I am going to go for the Under bet here because I think it offers some value.

The bet is 2 points Under 2.5 Goals @ 2.00 with Bet365.

Review to follow…

The Iceman Cometh...(as soon as he sorts his dodgy foot)

Scans have apparently confirmed that Wes Brown did indeed suffer a broken metatarsal in his left foot following a fairly innocuous looking challenge with Matt Jarvis in our game against Wolves at the weekend.

Brown played against Egypt for England last week and seemed to have forced his way into Fabio Capello’s plans for South Africa.

The curse of the broken metatarsal has struck again though and what is it about England footballers and their dodgy feet at this time of year? There doesn’t seem to be a major tournament goes by without at least one of them suffering the same injury on the eve of the tournament!

The injury itself should take 6-8 weeks to fully heal and then a couple of weeks getting back to fitness will take us to around mid-May.

This obviously means that it looks unlikely that Brown will feature again for United this season but he should be more than ready for action if needed by the time England kick off on June 12th.

I do hope that Wes gets to go to the World Cup because he missed out in 2006 and this might well be his last chance. He’s a solid, dependable pro who has never let us down. His chances have been few over the last couple of seasons as Fergie has gone with the attacking style of Rafael but prior to that, I thought Wes Brown was our second best player of the season during the 2007/08 double winning campaign.

All the best, Wes!

Many years ago when I was just 19 years old. I was working with an insurance company in North Wales. As part of my training, I was told that I had to go to Head Office in Liverpool.

I was young and naive and tried my best to get out of it. A Mancunian in Liverpool just didn’t sound healthy to me.

I arrived on the train and put my head down as I walked through the streets, head down,  towards my destination as fast as my legs could carry me. That is when I heard running footsteps behind me.

“Hey!”, came a call.

It can’t be me. No one knows me here. How can anyone be calling me? I don’t have Manchester United tattooed on my forehead.

But the footsteps got closer. “Hey you!”

Eventually and to my sheer horror, a hand clamped on my shoulder. Was it the police? Do they behead wandering Mancunians in Liverpool? Is he going to ask me for money to fund his drug habit and pummel me to death with a lifesize bronze bust of John Lennon if I refuse?

It was a middle aged man and he was holding out a five pound note.

“You dropped this up there”, he nodded his head in the direction I had come from as he offered it to me.

I was dumbstruck. I managed to say “thank you” and then proceeded to feel extremely ashamed of myself.

That was my first impression of Liverpool and it has stuck with me ever since.

As a result of me going there, I struck up a friendship with a lad there called Steve who was as big a Liverpool supporter as I have ever met. It was an unlikely friendship but he was posted in the same North Wales branch as me shortly afterwards and I was about the only guy he knew in the area, we started to hang out a bit.

I was living in a beautiful Welsh village called Benllech at the time which is directly beside the seaside. One night, after a few too many drinks, Steve asked on our way home if we could walk down to the sea as he had something he had to do.

We walked down to the sea and he waded into it, shoes, trousers and all and began singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the top of his voice. I can’t remember now but I think I joined him. Partly because I was drunk and partly because I didn’t know what else to do.

He told me that he had a friend who had died in the Heysel Stadium disaster and that they had come to Benllech Beach as kids and he wanted to do it to remember his lost friend.

Steve once asked me to go to Liverpool with him and he showed me around the town one night. He took me to some cracking pubs, live music and plenty of banter. As the “Novelty Manc” I was the butt of many jokes but it was all friendly enough and on the way back to his parent’s house (where we were crashing for the night) he took me to an Indian takeaway and we enjoyed Onion Bhaji’s and Donner Kebabs (classy stuff). It was the first time I had ever been in an Indian Takeaway (I must admit, the look of them always scared me before that) but there has rarely been a week since that I have not had an Indian Takeaway. I love the stuff!

He was eventually promoted and moved away from his post in Wales and I got a new job and we just sort of lost contact but I always think about him and those Liverpudlians I met all those years ago whenever Liverpool get a great result.

Sometimes, like tonight, I wonder just how low he is feeling as he sees his beloved Liverpool humbled by Wigan.

Liverpool now find themselves losing sight of that coveted fourth spot. They could still do it but there are teams above and just below them who have played less games and have as much if not more chance of clinching it.

Rafa has let the Liverpool fans down badly this season. He can point to the injuries of Torres and Gerrard all he likes but it isn’t like they came out of the blue. The pair of them (especially Torres) have been seemingly injury prone for the last three years and that Rafa didn’t invest in a top class striker in the summer and let one of their best midfielders (Alonso) go is bad management, pure and simple.

It’s not supposed to be that a Manchester United fan should feel anything but delight at their predicament but this little Red Devil is feeling a bit sad tonight. My mate Steve and that chap who chased me 100 yards to return my fiver deserve better than this.

The real title for this post was going to be FIFA Decide to Remain Undecided on all Matters Except the One That Matters Most but that seemed a bit long but it more accurately reflects what appears to be happening at the Zurich FIFA Headquarters as IFAB convened to discuss various issues over the last few days.

If I remember correctly, there were around eight or ten items on the agenda which included things that every football fan has sleepless nights about such as whether players should be allowed to stop and start their run when taking a penalty kick!

The other thing was the red card/professional foul/penalty thing (a great example of how this law can be misinterpreted came in our Cup Final against Villa last weekend). I must admit, this probably does need a bit of clearing up.

The other thing was something to do with the fourth official and seemed to be along the lines of – “The Fourth Official – What does he do?”

IFAB couldn’t really decide what the best thing is to do with any of these things so they will be discussed again when the board meets again on 17th-18th May.

I don’t know where to begin. Here we have some very highly paid individuals who must surely be at the head of some of the greatest think-tanks in football who are there to make the decisions necessary to take the game forward and they can’t do it.

“We’ll have a think about that one”, appears to be the answer.

However, the one thing that is MAJOR and overshadows every single one of the other things combined is the use of video technology and FIFA have NO problem making a decision on this subject. They have dismissed it (again) and it will not even be discussed.

As an aside, I am going to continue to campaign for the use of video technology although the term seems to have been changed to “goal line technology” – I do not want just goal-line technology although that would be a start, I want full-blown video technology to be used to enable the officials to get it right 99.9% of the time.

As always seems to be the case (it is not coincidence, it is just that this kind of thing happens far more often than FIFA would like to admit) there was yet another incident over the weekend where Birmingham scored a goal but it was deemed not to have crossed the line (video technology showed quite clearly that it had).

Now, this example won’t get quite the headlines that others will get purely because it happened between Portsmouth and Birmingham (and not, for example Manchester United and Chelsea). The “goal” probably would not have been decisive in the outcome of the match either as it came in the 81st Minute with Portsmouth already 2-0 up. Of course, we’ll never know now…

I have mixed feelings about what I am about to say because on the one hand I know that I am bang out of order but on the other hand it might be necessary to get the issue through the thick skulls that sit around the FIFA table but I hope that this summers World Cup Final is decided by some really dodgy incident that is immediately picked up on TV but missed by the officials.

Something like Thierry Henry’s handball against Ireland would be great. It would make a farce of the competition and it would ruin the Final.

I would love to see Blatter and his cronies squirm out of that one.

(P.S. My love of the game outweighs my dislike for the people in charge to the extent that I don’t REALLY want to see the above happen but I can say with 99% certainty that there will be some incident at some point in the tournament that will cost at least one team their place. It will give me no satisfaction when it occurs.)

I must admit, I have had a lot of sympathy for Sir Alex Ferguson and the position he has found himself in over the last few weeks.

He has avoided a lot of the questions regarding the ownership situation and the debt situation over the last couple of months by simply banning reporters from asking about them during the Press Conferences.

He’s quite at liberty to do this because that side of things really does not come under his sphere of influence and whilst I am sure he has a private opinion on things, that is all it is. When/if the Glazers decide to sell the club, Fergie will have no role to play in the decision. When the Glazers decide to refinance or when the Glazers decide to pay themselves a few million in “Management Fees”, he will have no say in those decisions either.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s main concern has always been and continues to be the performances on the pitch.

So long as the players are doing what is necessary to pick up the prizes on the field, what the bean counters do in the boardroom is of secondary importance to Sir Alex.

However, he was asked what he made of the Green & Gold campaign during a Press Conference last week and I suppose it is a pertinent question as people want to know what effect, if any, it is having on the players.

Fergie was drawn in and made quite light of it all saying that the fans are entitled to voice their opinion if they think something isn’t being done right at the club and that he had no problem with it so long as they are supporting the team.

“We take all sinners,” he said. “I would even take City fans. I have no problem with protest. There were plenty of green and gold scarves on Sunday and I was delighted to see them supporting the club.”

“We are quite happy. As long as they are supporting Manchester United they can wear whatever they like.”

There are so many ways to interpret that it is untrue and it is no wonder the Green & Gold Campaigners took it to mean that Fergie is right behind their campaign.

The other way of looking at it is what is actually said, “As long as they are supporting the team, they can wear what you like“. In this regard, it is quite dismissive of the campaign.

It also gives a nod towards what the Glazers themselves might be thinking – that people are turning up in their droves to protest… and paying the Glazers for the privelege. If they could increase the seating capacity tomorrow to allow all 100,000 MUST members in, I am pretty sure they would!

It also issues a slight sideswipe at Keith Harris who has urged fans to boycott their tickets and club merchandise.

Fergie was quite explicit in his contempt for Harris and his notion when he said recently “Now that’s a great idea. That’s come from an intelligent guy, has it?”

Basically he seems to also be saying that he would rather a crowd of protesting supporters than an half empty stadium when he states, “As long as they are supporting the team, they can wear what they like“. He really doesn’t want anyone to start boycotting games.

I have absolutely no idea what Fergie is thinking privately but he is an intelligent man and no intelligent man can be totally happy about dedicating 24 years of his life towards making something the biggest and strongest in the world, only to see some other guys come along and undermine all of that hard work by putting the club in what appears on the outside to be a pretty weak position financially.

However, I also think he found himself frustrated at times by the constraints working under a PLC imposed upon him. Particularly when it came to the signing of players. I do believe several players have slipped through his fingers over the years because of the inefficient workings of the PLC setup.

I do believe he prefers the way that the Glazers can OK a deal almost immediately and provide the funds. As far as we are aware, this has been the case over the last few years and I do believe that every transfer target Fergie has set his sights on has been delivered.

What people have to realise about Fergie is that he values loyalty probably as highly as any other virtue. He expects loyalty from his players and shows loyalty towards them in return (hence why you will very, very rarely hear him criticise any particular player in public).

Once you leave Old Trafford, no holds are barred and he will rip into you like you never even played there but while you are part of the team, he is your number one ally.

This extends to all parts of the “team” and includes the bean counters and the owners. Solidarity is key for Fergie and you cannot allow your opponents to detect one area of weakness. A chink in the armour can be exploited and turned into a gaping hole.

This is why it has been difficult for Fergie though.

He has to be loyal to the Glazers and the other senior staff at Old Trafford such as David Gill. Not because he has to “toe the party line” (he’s above all that) but because of his pathological loyalty and the need to show the world that everyone at the club is pulling in the same direction – onwards and upwards.

At the same time, he does not want to alienate the fantastic Manchester United supporters. The ones wearing the Green & Gold are not the prawn sandwich brigade, they are the real hardcore Manchester United fans. The fans have been around for long time before the Glazers arrived and they will be around long after they have sold up and gone. They are the ones who were with Fergie during his dodgy opening few years and they were around to share the enormous success and the many great evenings and afternoons we have enjoyed over the last 17 years or so.

They have shared every joy and every agony that Fergie has experienced over the last 24 years and that amounts to something like 120000 shared minutes. You don’t throw that kind of relationship away over an argument that hardly concerns you.

With his loyalties being stretched to breaking in all directions, it is no wonder that the messages coming from him appear to be so mixed and probably why he would be best advised to keep conversations strictly to what is happening ON the pitch from now until the end of the season.

I appreciate that this post is going to sound like a Manchester United fan trying to change the rules at the last minute because he’s starting to get a bit worried that he might have to eat his hat but this season, but La Liga will be decided based on the head-to-heads of the teams concerned should two teams end the season on the same points (as opposed to goal difference).

It probably won’t come to it but I wonder if this might be a better method than goal difference and should be adopted here in England?

The reason I suggest it is obviously because Arsenal are still in with a chance of winning the League this season and if they do then they will probably be the most undeserving Champions for a long time.

A few weeks ago, they were all but written off (I think they were something like eight points behind Chelsea at the time) and had just been royally stuffed by us AND Chelsea.

However, I think they have benefited from being written off so early. It has become like a horse race where two horses are running neck and neck on the stands side in the final furlong and all eyes are focused on those two, no one notices the horse on the far side coming from behind with an almighty sprint towards the line.

When we dropped points, we looked at Chelsea and were happy when they also slipped up and vice versa. Meanwhile Arsenal were helping themselves to three points and so the gap has been closed. The two horse race is now very much a three horse race.

However, when you consider that we have beaten Arsenal home and away and Chelsea have beaten them home and away, can Arsenal truly be considered the best team in England?

Our own victory against them at Old Trafford was perhaps a little fortunate but our away win wasn’t. We slaughtered them and made them look lightweight. When Chelsea beat Arsenal 3-1 home and away, the difference between the two teams was almost tangible. Arsenal looked like a kitten attempting to kill a lion.

I still don’t think Arsenal will win the League and as the weeks go by and Chelsea’s problems seem to grow, I think we are looking more and more likely. We have the tougher fixtures on paper but Arsenal won’t find playing against teams threatened with relegation particularly easy either. As for Chelsea, the longer Cech is injured, the more beatable they look.

I don’t normally watch much Spanish football because, quite frankly, it bores me but I decided to check in on a couple of the teams last night who lead the betting for this season’s Champions League (prompted by a little conversation I had had with Red Football Guru earlier in the day).

First up was Barcalona who travelled to Almeria. Barca were two points clear at the top of La Liga and were thoroughly expected to beat Almeria but it was Almeria who took a shock 1-0 lead. No panic for Barca though and they plodded on but as the half drew towards a close, things were starting to look a bit desperate until they were awarded a free-kick just outside the area and up stepped Messi.

The free kick he took showed just why he is such a great player. Most players, perhaps younger players, would have hit the free kick with pace but Messi showed incredible composure and maturity to rely on his skill and basically dinked the ball into the net with hardly any pace. The Almeria keeper was rooted to the spot and could only stand and shake his head in disbelief.

So, the second half started and Barca were expected to go on and press home their superiority but Almeria again took the lead via a Puyol own goal. Normal order was resumed a few minutes later however when Messi again brought Barca level. Barca huffed and puffed for the remainder of the match but were unable to break the deadlock and Almeria took a well deserved point from the match.

Immediately after this match, Real Madrid were up against Sevilla at the Bernabeu.

They knew that a win in this match would take them top of the table.

Imagine the scene then when Sevilla went 1-0 up after just ten minutes. Like Barca, there were no panic stations but Real could not seem to break down the strong and organised Sevilla defence. 1-0 at half time what could they do in the second half?

Well, whatever they had planned, it didn’t work and it was a complete stunner when Sevilla stretched their lead to 2-0 after 53 minutes.

This was where Real Madrid got impressive though and what happened in the next forty minutes has me believing that they are not only the team to beat in Spain now but in Europe too.

I hate to admit it but it was Ronaldo who inspired the comeback and got one back after 60 minutes and then Ramos brought the scores level after 64 minutes. Higuain could have scored a couple of his own but luck deserted him. It was basically wave after wave of attack from Real Madrid as they battered Sevilla looking for the winner.

Sevilla looked like they had been poking a sleeping Rottweiler with a stick and it had suddenly woken up, very angry and had broken free of its chain. In other words: Brown trousers time.

With the clock running out and the referee twiddling with his whistle, Real eventuall got the third for a remarkable 3-2 win.

And I thought Spanish football was boring! This was one of the best matches I have seen all season.

The thing that struck me about Real Madrid though their never say die attitude. They played to the final whistle. They left gaps at the back but such was their control and possession that Sevilla never had the opportunity to exploit them and besides, it is hard to hit back when you’re a cowering wreck huddled up in a corner.

Dare I say it? The way Real Madrid played to get themselves back into this one was not a million miles away from the Manchester United spirit of 1999 when we blew away everything in our path on the way to the Treble.

I know that you can’t judge a team on one performance (anyone who saw our performance against Wolves yesterday would hardly be going overboard on our own chances in the Champions League this season) but if this is squeaky bum time in England and Spain then it looks like Real Madrid are coping with it better.

I think the winner of the Champions League will come from us three (I would normally include Chelsea in the mix but with Hilarious in goal, they are looking very vulnerable at the moment – if they can sneak through against Inter Milan and get their players back, they might be back in business though) but Real are looking the better, I have to admit.

We have Rooney, Barca have Messi and Real have Ronaldo. Three of the best who can single-handedly change the course of a game but behind them, I just feel that Real have more.

Saturday, 6th March 2009 – KO: 17:30

When we met Wolves at our place just before Christmas last year, Mick McCarthy all but conceded defeat before a ball was kicked by naming a drastically changed side. We won 3-0. Wolves were handed a £25,000 suspended fine for effectively breaching Premier League rules.

I think most people understood what McCarthy did but my own feeling was that it could set a dangerous precedent and the Premier League were right to impose some from of punishment (even if it was only a token gesture).

I don’t expect any such capitulation from Wolves in this one though. Three months on and Wolves find themselves very much in the relegation battle Mick McCarthy was so desperate to avoid.

The League is so congested down there at the moment that a point or three here and there can catapult a relegation threatened team into lower mid-division in no time.

What will encourage them as well is the fact that we seem to have a little bit of an injury crisis again at the moment and a massive Champions League match coming up against AC Milan.

McCarthy will be hoping that Fergie and at least a couple of the players will have one eye on this match and take this one lightly.

He might hope for that but if there’s one person who will not be taking this one lightly it is Fergie. We have some very tough matches ahead of us and it is highly likely that we will drop points in those and so it is imperative that we go for the jugular in the ones we would normally be expected to win with comparative ease.

With all due respect to Wolves, this is one of those games.

I expect Fergie will put out the strongest possible team he can for this one with a view to getting a healthy lead fairly early so that he can bring a few off as soon as possible.

I think the team will be Van Der Sar, Rafael, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Nani, Fletcher, Carrick, Valencia, Rooney, Berbatov.

If we can get ahead to the tune of 2-0, he will bring off Valencia, put on Park, move Nani to the right with Park taking up the left. Bring off Rooney and put on Diouf. Ferdinand might also be replaced by Brown (I believe Evans picked up a knock in midweek).

How’s THAT for a prediction?

(If that comes true, I will eat my socks live on Youtube – I have to keep my hat because of a previous promise I made regarding Arsenal not winning the League!)

The worst thing that can happen here is for Wolves to take the lead as that could scupper a lot of plans. The best thing that could happen is for us to take a 2-0 lead before half-time.

I fancy that we can pull off the latter and that the changes Fergie will make at that point will not weaken the team to the degree that we end up conceding a goal.

We should win this one and it is a case of by how many as far as I’m concerned.

However, I am going to go back into the Corner market for this one. Games between us tend to have a lot of corners and I see no reason why this should change here tonight.

The bet is 2 points over 11 Corner @ 1.85 with Bet365.

Well, as half-expected Rooney didn’t play a part in this one and Berbatov was chosen to play upfront alone and I must admit, he was quite a revelation up there on his own and probably did more chasing around in this game than the rest of his United career put together. Having said that, there has been a bit more donkey work from Berby in recent games so maybe the penny has finally dropped that he can’t just rely on teammates to do it all for him.

Anyway, Wolves made things very tough for us here and if anything, they had the better of the chances. Vokes’ miss in the dying moments in particular will give him nightmares for the rest of his life should Wolves eventually get relegated by one point.

However, with very little going our way (even one of the linesmen must have had a tenner on Wolves because he gave us nothing), we had to rely on a solid defence and one or two lapses aside, the re-united Rio and Vidic dealt with everything very well and it is good to see them back for the most crucial stage of the season.

The difference in the end was the class of Scholes. I watched a replay on ESPN and Chris Waddle said that the Wolves defender unfortunately slipped as Scholes was lining up his shot but I don’t think that was the case at all. Scholes dropped him on his backside and committed the other Wolves defender with a great little shimmy before driving past the diving keeper.

Diouf got an hour in this game and after bigging him up for quite some time now, I was disappointed with him really. He just seemed to be trying too hard to me. For the reserves, he is cool and calm. The step up into the pressure cooker atmosphere of the first team is proving to be a little bit too much for him at the moment.

Hopefully Fergie can have a word with him because I do think he’s got it (his movement to create space for himself was brilliant) but he just needs to relax more and stop beating himself up after every missed opportunity.

As for the bet. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were just six corners in the whole game which must be the worst corner count of the season (we only managed four ourselves).

Still, the name of the game today was three points and whilst we rode our luck on occasion (helped by the fact that Wolves have been woeful in front of goal all season) we achieved that objective to go back to the top of the table.

I was thinking tonight about how far we have come under the Fergie regime and that little comment he made many moons ago about “knocking Liverpool off their perch”.

At the time, it seemed like an act of bravado and few believed he would actually accomplish it but here we are with a 19th League title so near and yet so far away from our grasp. It is the one that will knock Liverpool off their perch. It is the one that will mean more to Sir Alex Ferguson than all the rest with the possible exception of the very first.

Of course, to truly knock Liverpool off their perch, we would have to overtake their domestic haul AND their haul of five European Cups. That Fergie has not been able to at least equal them on that score as well despite having some excellent teams down the years will probably irk him to his grave.

The fact that Liverpool won it for that fifth time despite seeming to be second best throughout most of their campaign just doesn’t seem justified to me and had they not won it that year then they would be on four with us capable of winning four this season.

However, they DID win it for the fifth time and we are stuck on three and it has taken Fergie 24 years to win two of those. At that rate, he will have to remain in the job well into his nineties! Personally, I think a Fergie with senile dementia and the loss of basic bodily functions could still do a better job than most but it ain’t gonna happen is it?

If we could win the Champions League this season then that magical haul of five would be tantalisingly within our grasp next season, just as that 19th Premier League title is this season.

So, whilst we are not guaranteed either trophy this season. What do you think Fergie would take if you offered it him right now?

The Champions League but you lose the Premier League or the Premier League but you go out of the Champions League against AC Milan?

Or do you think he would say “I would fight to win them both and if I fall between two stools and win neither, so be it!”?

For the record, I would go with the Premier League. No one has ever won the League four years in a row. It would be a special piece of history that would make winning it all the sweeter.

What would YOU say?