Wednesday, 30th December 2009 – KO: 20:00

Without wishing to tempt fate or sound too over-confident, a game against Wigan at Old Trafford is possibly the best fixture we could have been handed as we attempt to close that gap on Chelsea to just two points again.

Due to a bizarre quirk in the fixture lists, this is the fourth time we have met Wigan in the League in 2009 and we have won the previous three. In fact, we have beaten every single time we have played them in the Premier League.

Wigan have been a strange side so far this season and their fans must be wondering which Wigan will turn up. They beat Chelsea 3-1 and followed this up with creditable draws against Fulham and Manchester City but were hammered 4-0 by struggling Portsmouth and absolutely massacred 9-1 by Tottenham. They have also been the only team to go to Burnley so far this season and come away with the three points.

We, of course played at their place early on in the season and that game was probably Wigan in a nutshell… 0-0 at half time, they probably had the better of us in the first half but we ran out 5-0 winners after 90 minutes.

I am not sure we’ll be seeing another five goals this evening but I think two or three would not be out of the question. Now that our defence is starting to get back together, we have to be confident of achieving something that has been quite rare for us so far this season and keep a clean sheet.

Unfortunately, the bookies see it this way too and around 1.60 for Manchester United on the -1.5 AH is about as low a price as I have ever seen for a match between two teams in the same division.

I am torn here between believing that we can win this one 3-0 and knowing that we sometimes have games (especially at home, strangely) where we struggle to get off the mark and there is always the chance that Fergie will tinker with the team a little as we have two big Cup games coming up in the next week or so.

However, Fergie is likely to take the view that the Cup games will look after themselves. The priority is three points in this one and if we can make some inroads into the goal-difference gap at the same time then that won’t do us any harm whatsoever.

The bet is going to be 3 points Manchester United -1.5, -2.0 AH @ 1.89 with Stan James (please note, this appears as -1 3/4 Asian Handicap with Stan James).

This was possibly United’s best performance of the season so far and the 5-0 scoreline did not flatter us at all. In fact, had this finished with a similar scoreline to the one Spurs inflicted on Wigan a few weeks ago, no one could have complained.

Rooney was the driving force behind everything and but for the woodwork (twice) he could have had at least a hat-trick himself in this one.

For large portions of the game, it  was all United and one-way traffic in the direction of the Wigan goal and Wigan rarely had any answers of their own.

All in all, a brilliant way to end a fantastic decade for Manchester United – let’s hope that this is a sign of things to come!

For some reason, the bookies make Chelsea the overwhelming odds-on favourites to win the Premier League this season.

However, I think anyone backing them at this stage needs their bumps feeling.

Despite winning against Fulham today, their price has drifted slightly (they were around 1.67 yesterday but are available at around 1.90 today) but this is because Arsenal’s price has come in substantially (to 5.0 from around 6.0) and what this means is that United’s price has drifted slightly to around 3.5 (from 3.4 yesterday).

I will go on record right here and now and say that any money on Arsenal is wasted money. They will NOT win the league this season.

Personally, I make it 50/50 between Chelsea and Manchester United.

If I tossed a coin and offered you 3.5 on heads, you would take it right? (if you just answered “no”, you’re in the wrong place, mentally and physically).

I watched Chelsea today and whilst they won, they were not convincing at all.

Our recent hodge-podge defensive line-ups almost fared better than Chelsea’s today and when you consider that it consisted of the vastly experienced trio of Terry, Carvalho and Cech, it doesn’t bode well for Chelsea.

On another day, they would have been caught out royally. A few years ago, I would have picked any one of those three for Manchester United and I probably would have taken all three without a second thought but today they looked woeful.

It wasn’t an off day, however. Cech hasn’t been the same keeper for quite a few years now (arguably since his serious head injury) and his flappiness is rubbing off on his central defenders who no longer seem to know whether he is going to come or stay and this is starting to make them look bad.

I have felt for a few years now that despite Terry getting most of the plaudits for being “Mister Chelsea”, it was Carvalho who was the main man in the defence but even he is starting to look dodgy.

Terry has looked dodgy for a couple of seasons now and relies on refs not seeing his cheating to get by. He has no pace and is caught out of position quite easily. He normally relies on Carvalho to bail him out but, as mentioned, even he doesn’t seem to know what he is doing at the moment.

There is one man in the Chelsea shirt at the moment who makes all the difference and that man is Drogba.

If he took every chance he gets in a match, he could score a hunded goals per season with ease but mercifully for the rest of us, he doesn’t but he does take a considerable amount of them and he has been the difference between no points and points for Chelsea on several occasions over the last few years.

Now that he is about to leave for the African Cup of Nations, Chelsea might struggle. He is one less man for the opposition to worry about but it must feel like two men for opposition defences.

I said a couple of games ago that we would overturn the deficit before the end of January and I will stand by that.

Chelsea have got lucky over the last few games (dodgy penalty decisions, own goals etc) but their luck is about to run out and we are going to come good for the rest of the season.

It has taken us a while to adjust to the loss of Ronaldo but we are now well and truly over it. There are goals all over the pitch for us and the defence is starting to look healthy again.

I can say for certain that our price to win the league right now is as high as it is going to get in the foreseeable future and it is going to come down at some point between now and the end of the season to 2.0 or lower which makes for a nice trade-off situation. Take it now.

Wayne Rooney - Being a bit scary

Yes, I know it is ground that has been covered before and I know that Rooney has had a taste of wearing the Captain’s armband already (for club and country) but I think now is the time to take it a bit more seriously.

Fergie has gone on record as saying that he does prefer midfielders, defenders and even goalkeepers to be captain because they get a better view of the game than centre-forwards but there was once a certain Monsieur Cantona who wore the armband during Fergie’s reign and that didn’t exactly end in failure.

Besides, Rooney is hardly the archetypal centre-forward – you are as likely to see him playing in his own half as the opposition’s – depending on what is required.

However, I have been watching Rooney for some seven or eight years now and even when he was at Everton, what I saw was a Red Devil.

When he arrived at Manchester United and scored a hat-trick on his debut as a mere eighteen year old (in a Champions League match, might I add) there was no doubt that we were looking at the real deal here.

Since then, he has just gone from strength to strength. Yes, he does have his off games but who doesn’t? What Wayne Rooney always does, no matter how things are going for him personally or the team generally, is give 100%.

In his younger days, he was a bit hot-headed and whilst that aspect of his personality sometimes bubbles to the surface even now, it is becoming less and less noticable. He seems to be a man, a husband, a father and idol to millions of kids perfectly at ease with himself and his numerous roles and is looking to do everything on and off the field to the best of his ability.

I don’t think there is a man in the red of United who embodies the spirit of Manchester United more perfectly than Wayne Rooney. The only blot on his CV is that he was born in Croxteth and not Newton Heath but we can’t hold that against him. Cantona was born in Marseille, Robson was born in Chester-Le-Street, Bruce was born in Corbridge and Keane was born in Cork.

Giggs is the preferred captain at the moment and it is hard to argue with that. As a role model, Giggs has no equal. He has been there, seen it, done it (over and over and over again) and is still playing today as though he has won nothing and has everything to prove.

However, if Giggs lacks one thing that Rooney has in abundance, it is a big mouth.

Manchester United have been crying out for someone to drag the team forward by the scruff of the neck if necessary for quite a few years now (since Keane left, in fact).  Rooney is the man for the job.

Provided the powers-that-be don’t make an almighty cock-up when they appoint Fergie’s successor, I can see Rooney at United for the next ten years and within the next two seasons, he will be the Captain.

When Rooney made that stupid back-pass against Hull the other night, he looked immediately towards Fergie with the kind of sheepish look a kid gives his dad when he knows he has just done something naughty. He looked towards Fergie because he knew he had nothing to fear on the pitch.

When Rooney is Captain, the other players will know they will have to answer to him in the first instance and Fergie later.

Give him the job, Fergie. Give him the authority to kick Berbie, Nani and anyone else not doing the business they are paid for on a regular basis up the arse.

Call it delegation.

Something of a pivotal weekend for the Premier League this week.

Chelsea dropped points, United won three points and the big clash between Arsenal and Villa was won by Arsenal.

Suddenly, there is a bit of a gap between the top three and the rest.

Arsenal have a game in hand over United and Chelsea and if we imagine that they have played and won that game, they find themselves sandwiched between Chelsea and United by a point either side.

Fourth placed Villa would find themselves five points adrift. And therein lies the gap.

I have said from the start that this title would be contested between Chelsea and United and I am not going to change on that score. To see Arsenal up there at this stage is nothing new.

The key test for Arsenal will come around February because February/March is where the wheels have tended to fall off for them in recent years as they have gone from featuring prominently in all competitions to being virtually out of the lot at that point.

With that in mind then perhaps the cruncher for them will come on the 7th February when they take on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

As for Chelsea, well, they have been stuttering like mad in recent weeks and have won just one of their last five Premier League games. We now enter January and (in my opinion) their two most influential players – Drogba and Essien – are about to be taken out of the equation for a few weeks as they enter the African Cup of Nations.

If Chelsea can cope without them for a month or so and pick up full points whilst they are away (not totally unlikely – the fixture list has been fairly kind to them) then they will be the team to beat for the remainder of the season.

As before, the clash against Arsenal at the start of February (when Drogba and Essien will be back) could be crucial.

As for us, well, we have had the most horrendous injury list to cope with and, if the truth be told, we haven’t really coped with it. Defeats to in-form Villa and Fulham may not be totally shameful but they were costly and under normal circumstances, we would have been looking for at least two points from those two games.

However, things are coming back together and with the possibility of the long-term injured coming back during the next few weeks, as well as the possibility of a signing in January, it is all starting to look a bit rosier for us Reds.

It’s going to be a cracking second half to the season but I still maintain that come the end, it will all be about Chelsea and United.

We still have to meet each other at Old Trafford and that match could well be the decider because I don’t think it will be won by more than a couple of points by either team.

Personally, I think that Manchester United are totally overpriced at 3.4 to win the Premier League and I have had a bit of that with Canbet.

Sunday, 27th December 2009 – KO: 16:00

Luckily, due to the fact that it has been a week since our last match, the defensive crisis has had a chance to clear up a little bit and Fergie has confirmed that both Da Silva brothers are fit to play and he is hoping that one of either Vidic or Brown may be fit for this one.

If this is the case then it could mean that either Carrick or Fletcher can be moved back into their midfield position (I would have thought Fletcher more than Carrick).

Anyway, things are starting to look a bit brighter from the point of view of the squad.

What of this game?

Well, our two games against Hull last season both ended in close wins for United  (4-3 at Old Trafford and 1-0 at Hull) but it must be said that neither can really be used as a gauge of form between the two sides. The first game came during Hull’s purple patch at the beginning of the season. Towards the end of the season, after a really promising start, they went into freefall and came within a whisker of being relegated and it was on this last game of the season that we beat them 1-0 with an understrength side (it was another Darron Gibson thunderbolt from 30 yards that proved the difference that day).

Fortunately for them, results went their way that day and their Premier League status was confirmed for another season.

And so we meet them again today and we find them second from the bottom of the table – the main reason for this is that they have yet to win away from home and have only picked up two points from their nine away games. Their home form is substantially better (fifteen points from nine games including four wins).

So, being at home and having seen our performances in the last couple of weeks, they might well come into this one with a bit of confidence that they can cause a bit of an upset and possibly catapult themselves out of the relegation zone at the same time.

Personally, I think we will have too much for Hull regardless of who Fergie plays but I think it will be a close game. Only Tottenham (5-1 at the start of the season) have gone to Hull and really turned them over so far this season.

The thing with United at the moment is that we do look dodgy at the back and the strikers are extremely unpredictable. We could win this one 1-0 or 4-3 (just like last season) and neither result would come as a shock.

If we run out very convincing winners (as we have done in some of our away games so far this term) that would also not be a massive shock.

With this in mind, I am going to back United to beat Hull by two clear goals but with a very small stake.

The bet is 2 points Manchester United -1.5 AH @ 2.19 with Paddy Power.

Well, after overdosing on turkey and mince pies, this was just what was needed to bring me out of my Christmas slumber. An action-packed game with plenty of goalmouth action and, eventually, goals to match.

Fergie sprung a surprise by starting with both Brown and Vidic to give a back four of Rafael, Brown, Vidic and Evra. This was more like it and it allowed a far more sensible midfield of Valencia, Fletcher, Carrick and Giggs to line up in front of them.

With Rooney and Berby up front, Hull’s chances suddenly seemed to take a dive.

That wasn’t realy how the game panned out though. Plenty of possession from United (I don’t think Hull got a touch worthy of the name for the first three minutes) led to nothing in front of goal and Hull made the most of their own limited chances to give us quite a few scares.

The first half was petering out to a 0-0 but United’s pressing paid off in the very last minute when a sweet curling ball into the area was met by Rooney to take us 1-0 up at half-time.

The pressure was on us here today to take full advantage of Chelsea’s slip-up yesterday and I felt certain that the goal would settle us down in the second half and that we could run out 3-0 or 4-0 winners but Hull had other ideas and came out firing once again.

Around the 59 minute mark, Rooney played a backpass to his keeper that would have haunted him for months had we not gone on to win this match, it was loose, it was sloppy, it was intercepted and this caused all kinds of havoc in the United penalty area and led to a penalty for Hull (personally, I though Rafael hardly touched the guy and he went down far too easily but there you go).

The pen was converted and suddenly it was 1-1 and we had it all to do.

Rooney immediately acknowledged that it was his mistake that had led to the goal and it is one thing to admit to making a mistake, it is another to apologise for it but it is something else entirely to then do everything in your power to atone for the mistake but that is what he did and from that point until the end of the game, it was basically the Wayne Rooney show.

The run for the ball which led to his cross which left poor Andy Dawson with no option but to score into his own net was all about Wayne Rooney.

The exquisite nutmeg through-ball that left Berby with a tap-in was all about Wayne Rooney.

One way or another, Wayne Rooney had a hand in all four goals today. He probably won’t want reminding about the second but Fergie will probably take this kind of performance from him every week – even if it does cost us the odd goal.

Hi all,

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I have been getting into the old Christmas Spirit and with little in the way of real Manchester United action, I thought I would take a few days off.

I hope you had a great Christmas, too.

Of course, I have been reading the newspaper reports and have seen that we have been linked with everyone from Karim Benzema (again) to Kenwyne Jones on the player front and that Pep Guardiola is now being touted as the next manager.

About the only thing that seems to be fact and not a figment of some over-zealous reporter’s imagination is that Mame Biram Diouf has been granted a work permit and is now free to play for us.

Normal TRD service will be resumed tomorrow when we take on Hull and try to close that gap on Chelsea to just two points (Chelsea dropped yet another two points today).

I am hoping to see some good news about the injury situation before I do my preview.

See you tomorrow.

After we were beaten by Fulham yesterday, the outlook looked pretty bleak and with Chelsea visiting West Ham today, I thoroughly expected to be six points behind by this evening.

However, is it my imagination or are Chelsea wobbling a little bit themselves recently?

Don’t get me wrong, we are wobbling all over the place at the moment and I would rather be four points ahead than four points behind at any stage of the season but it almost seems like Chelsea know that this title is there for their taking and they just can’t put together the run they need to make it theirs.

Since a brilliant 3-0 victory over Arsenal last month, they have been knocked out of the Carling Cup by Blackburn, they were beaten by Manchester City in the Premier League, they drew against Apoel Nicosa in the Champions League, they drew against Everton in the Premier League before finally getting a 2-1 win against bottom club Portsmouth.

Today they drew against West Ham who were also virtually bottom of the League.

Chelsea fans will probably say that nothing much can be read into the “defeat” in the Carling Cup and nothing can be read into the draw against Apoel in the Champions League and I would probably agree with them.

However, it does not detract from the fact that in their last four Premier League games they have picked up just five points from a possible twelve.

I would have expected a fully firing Chelsea to have picked up nine or ten points from those games.

Even we have picked up six points in our last four Premier League matches and we’ve been playing with virtually half a team.

Chelsea will be waving goodbye to one or two of their big players during January’s African Cup of Nations while hopefully we’ll be welcoming back the likes of Owen Hargreaves and Rio Ferdinand plus all the other defenders who are currently injured.

After yesterday’s depression, I am probably going to be diagnosed as bi-polar but I have a sneaky little feeling that we are going to overturn this deficit by the end of January.

I have felt that Mark Hughes’ days as Manchester City boss were numbered almost from the off but his crass sacking this afternoon was not how I envisaged his exit.

I had said in a previous article that I felt he would last until November and it did look likely that he would be on his way out around then but a great 3-0 Carling Cup win against Arsenal followed by an even better 2-1 Premier League win against Chelsea in the first week of December appeared to have provided Hughes with more than just a stay of execution.

However, in typical Man City fashion, they followed up the Chelsea win with a 3-3 draw against Bolton and a 3-0 hammering against Tottenham.

Today’s 4-3 win against Sunderland is three points in the bag but nine goals conceded in three games tells you everything you need to know about Manchester City.

I don’t know the ins and outs of everything that goes on at City but letting Richard Dunne go after nine years of fantastic service at the age of just 29 was an almighty gaffe that also lacked class.

This was a man who had stuck by them through thick and thin and had been their Player of the Year for four years running. His reward was to be dumped unceremoniously just when things started to look good for Manchester City and within sight of his testimonial game.

Today, City sacked Mark Hughes and the usual thing to do is at least make it look as though it has come on the back of a string of bad results and that there is no one else lined up, that the Assistant manager will be taking charge for a couple of games until a replacement is found.

Not Manchester City.

Not only has Hughes beaten Arsenal and Chelsea in the last few weeks, he has booked their place in a semi-final for the first time in about 176 years and he even won today’s game, not convincingly, but he won it.

The crassness comes from the fact that his replacement was actually in the ground watching the game.

Roberto Mancini was announced as the new manager mere minutes after the final whistle so Hughes must have known at kick-off that he was already out of a job.

I am not totally surprised that Hughes has gone, I think the job was too big for someone like Hughes, it requires a more experienced manager and someone with a track record of actually winning things and who therefore knows what it takes to win things.

I can’t help thinking however that Mancini is hardly a brilliant replacement.

Time will tell I suppose but if he doesn’t lead City to the promised land of the Champions League then he can still point the finger at the period of the season when Mark Hughes dropped something like 20 points out of a possible 30.

Personally, I think Mancini is already a dead-man-walking too. They have a bigger fish in their targets but due to that bigger fish currently having unfinished business in his current job, he won’t be available until nearer the end of the season.

Still, on a day when United have lost 3-0, it is nice to see the Bitters still have what it takes to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

With United going down 3-0 to Fulham this afternoon, it has left us three points behind Chelsea who now have a game in hand (they play West Ham tomorrow).

The game will be played at Upton Park so I am hoping against hope that West Ham who are now practically in bottom place of the league will be able to summon something from somewhere and prevent Chelsea from opening a six point gap.

You have to admit though that this looks unlikely.

It looks very much like Chelsea will be six points clear tomorrow night and with the clubs piling up behind us, even our second place is in some jeopardy right now.

No one at Old Trafford will be throwing in the towel though but this looks like watching a proud boxing champion who has broken his right hand and his left eye is starting to swell shut.

Chelsea have had to sit and watch us win the last three Premier League titles (not to mention a certain Champions League title) and they want it back again.

No team has ever won four titles in a row and there are all kinds of reasons for this.

For one, no team remains the same for four years in a row, there are always players coming and going and it requires enormous skill and judgement from the manager to assess when the time is right to let players go (if indeed he has a choice in the matter) and when the time is right to bring new blood in.

Fergie has been the master of this over the last seventeen years or so but obviously he has not won the league every one of those years, he has, however recognised that sometimes it is necessary to take a step back in order to pursue a different way of going forward.

The other thing that needs to go with you when everything between yourself and your opponent is pretty much equal is a little bit of luck.

When John Terry slipped taking that penalty after a Champions League campaign that could not seperate the two teams, we got the luck and on that occasion it proved the deciding factor.

As things stand today, luck seems to have finally deserted us.

Without our first choice defensive line-up, we normally look to the backup players but now even those are injured and so we have to weaken our midfield in order to put a defence on the field.

We got away with it against Wolves because they had thrown in the towel before a ball was even kicked (I wonder now if Mick McCarthy wishes he had given it more of a go) but against hungry, dangerous and quality sides such as Villa and Fulham, we have been found out.

The good news is that we don’t play again until the 27th December and hopefully by then, one or two players might be fit to start again, the other good news is that the game is against Hull and with all due respect, they are not exactly Chelsea.

The bad news is that by the time we meet Hull, we could be nine points behind Chelsea and in third place behind Arsenal or Villa (the good news is that they play each other before we kick off against Hull!)

It would take a very optimistic Red Devil to predict a Premier League title from this situation but we have a few highly winnable games ahead of us and by the time they run out, we should be back to more or less full strength and the second half of the season has always tended to seperate the men from the boys.

Believe!

Saturday, 19th December 2009 – KO: 15:00

Just when our depleted defence seemed to be back on the mend, it all seems to have fallen apart again with Wes Brown and possibly Nemanja Vidic back on the injury list after their brief return from injuries.

I believe there is a possibility that Vidic could make this one but Brown seems to be out for definite.

So, it looks like Carrick will have to continue in defence, Evra will no doubt play on the left but who will play alongside them is anyone’s guess at the moment.

This being a tough away fixture against one of the most improved sides of the last couple of seasons, Fergie will no doubt play the five-man midfield with Rooney alone up front.

With the midfielders filling in at the back, it has meant extended runs in the team for the likes of Anderson and Gibson and both seem to be doing a great job in there. I would, however, expect Giggs to play in the midfield for this one with Valencia and probably Obertan on the right and left respectively. If Fletcher is not required to cover in the defence then I suspect Gibson will have to give way for him in midfield.

However, Fergie has hinted that there are likely to be surprises with his team selection for this game so don’t be too surprised (!?) if he starts with Welbeck and Macheda or something equally erm… surprising.

As for Fulham, well they remain a tough opponent even though they do have a few injuries of their own and their aerial presence in the box is likely to give our makeshift defence the kind of problems Villa gave us last weekend.

I’m not going to over analyse this one. We tend to do quite well at Fulham. They did beat us 2-0 in this fixture last season but prior to that we had three wins and these were preceded by three draws.

One thing we have never had in recent years, however, is a 0-0 draw. There are always goals in our games and I expect today to be no different but, as usual, trying to decide just how many goals will be scored is tricky.

For many reasons, this is one of those games that from a betting perspective, it would probably be wise to give it a wide berth.

The bookies generally seem divided on whether or not this will have three goals or more but Canbet’s Over price seems quite wide of the mark and I think it represents a bit of value. I won’t be going overboard on the stakes however.

The bet is going to be 2 points OVER 2.5 goals @ 2.11 with Canbet.

Well, there weren’t too many surprises in terms of personnel here but it was the formation (again) that raised a few eyebrows as Fergie went for a 3-5-2 lineup with Carrick, Fletcher and De Laet at the back, Anderson, Gibson, Evra, Scholes and Valencia in the midfield with Owen and Rooney up front.

It was a gamble from Fergie. He was gambling that we would score the first goal and with the likes of Owen, Rooney, Valencia, Scholes and Gibson, there were definitely goals in the team but Fulham went for the jugular from the first minute and I think when that first goal went in for them after just 22 minutes, it pretty much scuppered Fergie’s gambit.

Had we scored first, I am almost certain that Evra would have dropped back into defence with Owen being sacrificed for a midfielder to make it a more standard 4-5-1 away formation. It would then have been a case of hanging onto the 1-0 and attempting to score another on the break.

With the score just 1-0 at half-time, Fergie had the opportunity to make whatever changes he deemed necessary but with Fulham scoring almost immediately after the break, yet again, the plan was scuppered.

After that second goal it was just a case of Manchester United throwing caution to the wind and going for whatever they could muster. This however just left gaps for Fulham to exploit and whilst a goal for Manchester United at 2-0 might have made for an exciting finish, it was Fulham who scored that critical third and the game was well and truly up.

The whole thing stems from the fact that Fergie’s options are threadbare in defence at the moment. Fletcher might well be one of the best midfielders we have at the moment but he is no centre-back. I’m sorry but one of the things I hate to see from a centre-back is a player who turns his back on incoming shots, Fletcher seemed to do this over and over again.

Also, Scholes didn’t have a great game today and whilst he can appear majestic in games where the opposition gives him time and space to ping passes around, when he is put under severe pressure as he was today, he can look half-asleep. He has already said that he isn’t happy with his form this season and if things don’t pick up for him then I can see pride dictating that he calls it a day at the end of this campaign.

Rooney and Owen are quite a tried and tested pairing but they were given very little to feed on today and neither did themselves justice.

You can take nothing away from Fulham though. They saw a wounded animal and they ruthlessly delivered the killing blow.

As far as the bet was concerned, it won but had you told me beforehand that United would not score then I would have gone 10 points on the Under!