Without wanting to sound disrespectful to Crystal Palace (and with thoughts of what Leeds did to us here in the FA Cup a couple of years ago still fresh in the memory) the Carling Cup draw appears to have been kind to us once again for this, our quarter final match.

Not that I would have been too bothered had we drawn City, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool in this round from a progress point of view but it might have meant that Fergie wouldn’t be quite so bold with some of the selections he will undoubtedly make this evening and that would have been a shame for the lads concerned.

I’m talking, of course, about players like Paul Pogba, Ravel Morrison and (possibly) Zeki Fryers who have been given their first team chances away from home so far in the competition but tonight might be expected to make their Old Trafford debuts and from the start, rather than from the bench.

Of course, none of us really knows what Fergie has in mind for the game this evening and trying to guess his team selection for any match these days is a little like trying to guess Saturday’s Lottery numbers, only you don’t get seven million quid for getting it right.

What we do know, however, is that he will be playing a team which he believes will be good enough to win the match.

Crystal Palace are not the force they once were and came quite close to being relegated from the Championship last season and this season is not shaping up much better for them as they sit in mid-division and without a win in their last six games but, somewhat bizarrely, they have beaten two of the better teams in the Championship (including leaders Southampton) to get to this stage of this competition.

However, I simply have to believe that we will have too much for them at Old Trafford this evening. The team Fergie puts out will have a smattering of “kids” but there will also be a lot of experience and quality in there. Berbatov was used in our last Carling Cup game and it seemed to rejuvenate him. Players such as Park and Valencia could also be included.

We have won both of our previous Carling Cup games 3-0 so far and it would seem unlikely that we’ll repeat that scoreline again but Crystal Palace are struggling for goals at the moment (the same could be said about us, I suppose) and have scored just two in their last seven league games.

I suspect Lindegaard will be given his chance in goal and, given competition for places, whoever Fergie chooses in defence will be giving everything to ensure that a clean sheet is kept so this won’t help Palace in their quest to get on the scoresheet so I’ll be very surprised if they score tonight.

The bookies are pretty convinced that we’ll win this one comfortably and that it will be a high scoring game, though. We certainly could win this 2-0 or 3-0 (or even beyond that) but I’d really like to see who will be playing upfront before going overboard on that kind of bet.

For this one, I am going to have a tentative bet on the corners market. I can see a lot of the play being in Palace’s half and if this doesn’t result in goals for us then it could result in plenty of corners.

The bet is 2 points Manchester United -4 on the Corner Handicap @ 2.00 with Paddy Power.

I’d been out with my family today, as I usually do on Sundays when there’s no United match on and so had not heard any news at all all day.

On arriving home, I booted up the Sky Sports page to see what had happened in the Liverpool v Manchester City match only to be greeted by a story saying that Gary Speed had “passed away”.

Huh? Passed away? 42 year old ex-footballers in the prime of their lives don’t just “pass away” – surely something was amiss here?

However, on further reading, it was confirmed that Gary Speed had died in what looks to have been suicide.

Sometimes in life, things happen which stop you dead in your tracks – and this is one of those times.

Now, obviously, I cannot claim to have any personal attachment to Gary Speed in any way – he wasn’t even an ex Manchester United player – he was actually an ex Leeds player – an integral part of the very Leeds team that pipped us to the League title way back in 1992, no less. But I do know that he was one of the most likeable men in football and, from all accounts, seems to have been just as popular with everyone off the pitch, as it were.

Happily married with two kids, having what must have been his dream job and seemingly a generally enviable lifestyle, it is hard to imagine what drove Gary to this but I suppose the full details will surface at some point in the future.

In the meantime, for what it’s worth, RIP Gary Speed and condolences to his family.

Apparently Liverpool and City drew 1-1 …. but on a day like today, who cares?

With all due respect to Newcastle, I bet few people expected this fixture to be a sort of “top of the table clash” at this start of the season but Newcastle have been going great guns so far and, like us, have only suffered defeat at the hands of Manchester City but it has to be said that they made a better fist of their match against City than we did.

However, I did have a feeling that they were becoming a bit stretched when they played Everton just before the international break and that lack of strength in depth will probably result in their downfall and as we enter the busy month of December, they could well get found out and start to settle to something like their “normal” position in the table.

But for now, they’re full of belief and, provided last weekend’s defeat hasn’t adversely affected them too much, then they’ll come to Old Trafford with the feeling that they can finally get something from us there (they haven’t beat us at Old Trafford for the best part of forty years).

The biggest problem with this one is that we all know pretty much what to expect from Newcastle but the same cannot be said of Manchester United right now and whereas last season it was our away form which was iffy whilst our home form was impeccable, this season, it has almost tended towards the reverse and the midweek draw against Benfica was another disappointing day at the office.

That’s probably an exaggeration but I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t looked as good at home as we did last season save for perhaps that game against Arsenal right near the start of the campaign.

The main problem for me this season is that the team has had to change too much from game to game and this has made us extremely difficult to predict – I am not even sure what our “best eleven” is any more and I’m not even sure if Fergie himself knows.

What we do know now is that Anderson is set for another long absence due to injury and is not likely to feature for another three months or so. There seems to be a possibility that we won’t be seeing Tom Cleverley again in 2011 which is another blow.

Whether this in turn means that we will see players like Young and Rooney employed in central midfield again remains to be seen but there does seem to be a feeling that Fergie is happier with the more standard Carrick/Fletcher partnership now that both have recovered from their own problems.

The defence has also changed just as much as our midfield so far this season and I still don’t really know what our best back four is.

What is beyond doubt though is that both of these departments will have to perform today because Newcastle aren’t where they are by luck – they are a hard-working side, highly organised and are more than capable of scoring goals.

I’d obviously like to believe that we will win here this afternoon but I think that we might have to score a couple if we are to do so because I do expect Newcastle to score and that belief is going to form the basis of my bet because I think the price represents decent value.

The bet is 2 points Both Teams to Score (Yes) @ 2.00 with Bet365.

With this being the penultimate match in our Champions League group stage and being between the top two teams, separated by just a single goal in the goal difference column, it is probably fair to say that it is the group decider.

Basel will still have something to say about the final placings but the winner from this one will certainly qualify from the group and will fancy their chances of finishing in top place.

Our performances in the Champions League so far this season have generally left a lot to be desired. We have won the last two against Otelul Galati but neither performance was convincing and 2-0 in each game probably flattered us, to be quite honest. I’ve said several times that had Galati had a decent striker in their side then we could have been found out in both games.

However, whilst Fergie and the players have obviously sorted things out at the back and we are starting to look a lot less vulnerable, it has come at the expense of the free-flowing, high-octane, “cavalier” style that saw us score shedloads of goals at the start of the season.

With so much at stake going into this match, I have to believe that we will be seeing more of the “safe” football from our players tonight.

Benfica proved to be quite a handful when we played them at their place in the opening fixture of this group and looked particularly strong in defence.

What all this points to, to me, is a game where neither side will be particularly adventurous, will try to keep things tight at the back and grab the one goal that could prove to be the winner.

The bet will be 2 points Under 2.5 goals @ 1.85 with Victor Chandler.

Like most other United fans, I was looking forward to the return of Ashley Young and Tom Cleverley for this one but the news that Cleverley will be out until Christmas is a major blow but Young should return following the toe injury that has kept him out of action for a few weeks.

I’m not going to over-analyse this one. Despite Swansea’s record at home this season (they are currently unbeaten) and despite how well they performed at Anfield the other week, we really should be winning this game.

By the time we kick off, the result of the Manchester City/Newcastle game will be known which might put some added pressure on us to win but I do believe that we’ll come through well this evening but I’m going to go for the straight win because even though the price is nothing to write home about, I do think that it represents value.

The bet is 5 points United to Win @ 1.57 with Bet365.

Upside Down 'S'

Eagle-eyed observers (I must admit, I cannot count myself as one of these, I completely failed to notice it myself) have noticed that the ‘S’ in the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand sign was actually positioned upside down (see image) and will have to be flipped over.

Obviously, this was probably the fault of some local Manchester City supporting worker who are well known for their shoddy standard of workmanship.

However, what is worrying about this is that the sign was probably the one and only thing that has taken place within Old Trafford in the last twenty-five years that Fergie knew nothing about and was not done under his watchful eye… and look what happened!

This obviously doesn’t bode well for when the big man eventually steps down.

Actually, another thing occurred to me about this sign the other day. It has been placed on the North Stand. Probably the reason for this is because the North Stand is the biggest stand and so it was seen as the biggest possible tribute that they could have paid to Sir Alex.

However, it is generally agreed that whoever takes over after Sir Alex steps down will have one big pair of shoes to fill in the same way that previous managers often felt that they were working under the shadow of the great Sir Matt Busby. Indeed, Frank O’Farrell (the man who immediately followed Sir Matt) has often said that he “felt Sir Matt’s presence everywhere”.

Now, whoever takes over Sir Alex will be sat in the dugout every other Saturday with Sir Alex Ferguson’s name right in front of him in twenty foot high lettering!

Hopefully, it will inspire rather than intimidate but time will tell!

To be quite honest, there’s not an awful lot to report about this rather dull game and the day will be remembered as the day the club sprung a massive surprise by renaming the North Stand to the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand. That we scraped past Sunderland thanks to a Wes Brown own goal (good to know he’s still doing the business for us, by the way!) was almost incidental.

Yes, today was all about Sir Alex Ferguson and he did say after the game that he thought that the players were playing with added anxiety because they really wanted to win for him.

There was one funny moment in the second half when the linesman gave a penalty against us only for the referee to go over to him, have a word, and the decision was overturned to a free-kick for us. To be fair, replays showed that it wasn’t a penalty but there were a couple of hands flying around as the ball flew over the penalty area but it did have an air of the referee saying to his linesman, “United are supposed to win today, this is Fergie’s 25th Anniversary, we can’t spoil the party”.

We did improve in the second half and only some excellent saves from Westwood, the Sunderland keeper, kept us down to just the one goal but Sunderland rarely threatened and Fergie will no doubt have been pleased at yet another clean sheet – our fourth in a row since the City debacle.

The day belonged to Fergie though and he was clearly as shocked as anyone when he saw the covers removed to show the North Stand renamed. It was also announced that a Philip Jackson (the guy who sculpted the Sir Matt and Holy Trinity statues outside Old Trafford) statue of Sir Alex has been commissioned to sculpt a statue of Sir Alex and I can’t wait to see that – the one of Sir Matt is quite breathtaking.

Anyway, for now, we go into another International break and it’s two weeks until we play our next match – away to Swansea which could be a toughie – Swansea are doing well at home.

There are many memorable dates in the history of Manchester United – some represent our greatest triumphs and some record harrowing tragedies but today is a date to celebrate and smile about for today is the 25th Anniversary of the day that Sir Alex Ferguson was appointed manager of our great club.

After the Busby Babes of the 50s and the Holy Trinity of the 60s, Manchester United spent the best part of two decades in the footballing wilderness. Of course, we picked up a few FA Cups during those decades but we could only look on longingly as Liverpool seemingly picked up the League title season after season with no end in sight as our last league success (1967) started to fade into a point in time that only the elder statesmen amongst our fanbase could remember.

We were generally a club going nowhere fast when Alex Ferguson took the reigns but he knew from day one that it was a travesty that such a massive club, with such a rich history at home and in Europe not to mention average crowd attendances of around 60,000 was not truly consistently contesting for the top honours every season.

The changes he made immediately have been well documented elsewhere and I won’t go into great detail here but it is fair to say that the effects of those changes were not immediately apparent and for a little time in his first few seasons, there was some speculation as to whether or not he had been the right man for the job after all and rumours that he was one game from the sack at one stage towards the end of the eighties have never really gone away.

However, he had a plan and knew that Rome wasn’t built in a day. The pieces started to be put into place one by one so that by the start of the 90s, the glory days had once more returned to Old Trafford and have remained for the last twenty years of Sir Alex’s reign.

His genius was confirmed and Manchester United are now truly regarded as one of the elite in world football with a present (and quite probably a future) to match their history.

There are bound to be many Manchester United fans out there who only weren’t even born, or at least were too young to remember, anyone other than Sir Alex in charge of the club and I can only say to those people that they’re the lucky ones! We had a fair few managers between Sir Matt and Sir Alex – some well-intentioned but out of their depth at a club as big as United and some decent enough but lacking the vision of Sir Alex – the vision to see the fundamental problems that existed at the club that were preventing us from fulfilling our true potential.

Of course, some of them may have seen the problems but knowing that a problem exists and actually rolling up your sleeves and doing what is necessary to put it right (and succeeding) are different things entirely.

Sir Alex Ferguson was the first manager at United since Sir Matt to basically deconstruct the club and put it all back together on more solid foundations piece by painstaking piece.

That he did this once was incredible. That he has continually made the changes necessary, building title-winning team after title-winning team to keep us at the forefront in world football with his unrelenting drive for success is, quite frankly, super-human.

As we sit here today, looking at Manchester City challenging for “our” title, I have to smile. I’m thinking Leeds, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Newcastle, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea. All of these clubs and their many managers have pitted themselves against Sir Alex and Manchester United in the past and, yes, on occasion, with success, but overall, Sir Alex remains the last man standing – he’s sent them all packing at various stages over the last twenty years and you just know that he relishes the challenge that Roberto Mancini, Manchester City and another billionaire owner brings to the table for it is these challenges that keep him going.

One day, and as Fergie nears his 70th birthday the day comes ever-closer, we will have to deal with the prospect of a Fergieless Manchester United but not today. Today Sir Alex has work to do and we can all rest-assured that he will be applying every last molecule of his experience, knowledge, talent and drive to the task. And for that I, and the millions of Manchester United fans around the world can only say a barely worthy, “Thank you Sir Alex!”

We’ve all had cause for complaint about the fixture lists down the years and Sir Alex himself has had the odd moan but I must say that it is jolly decent of the Premier League to pit us against Sunderland on the eve of Fergie’s 25th Anniversary in charge of United because Sunderland currently comprises a significant part of Fergie’s Manchester United past.

Managed by Brucey and featuring an entire defence of former Manchester United players, it’s going to be like an old boys re-union out there this afternoon. Lovely.

Of course, the pleasantries and hand-shakes will come before and after the match. For the ninety minutes in-between, there’s the serious business of three points to be won and Fergie won’t be expecting any gifts on that score.

Possibly due in part to the bombshell that Gyan dropped on Bruce just before the season was due to start but Sunderland’s form has been all over the place so far this season. They have only won two of their opening ten games but have drawn four and lost four. However, when you look at the scorelines a little more closely, they haven’t been beaten heavily by anybody – losing by the odd goal in all four defeats. When you also consider that they have already faced the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and the in-form Newcastle then it’s not such a bad record as it first appears.

They do seem to be like this every time we play them at Old Trafford, too. They haven’t beaten us here but they have held us to the odd draw and we’ve never scored more than two against them in recent seasons.

Generally, I would expect more of the same again this time ’round because Fergie is clearly placing more emphasis on us keeping it tight at the back than scoring shedloads at the other end but the bookies seem quite convinced that this game will have at least three goals in it and I suppose I wouldn’t rule out a 2-1 scoreline here but I think the bookies are going a bit crazy on us here.

I’ve been completely out of sync with United so far this season. When I think they’ll win by a big margin, they’ve scraped by. When I think a tough match lies ahead, they’ve won comfortably! However, I do believe that this afternoon’s game will be a far closer encounter than the bookies believe.

I expect us to win it but perhaps not by more than one goal.

The bet is 2 points on Sunderland +1.5AH @ 2.12 with Victor Chandler.

Well, Fergie sprang yet another breathtaking surprise with his line-up for this one. There were no great shakes at the back with De Gea, Jones, Ferdinand, Evans and Fabio (the omission of Evra was interesting) and 75% of the midfield was quite normal – Nani, Anderson and Valencia but stuck right in the middle there was Wayne Rooney.

Rooney the midfielder? Is this a vision of the future or was Fergie just having a little experiment? I don’t know but it worked… kind of.

Up front, we had Berbatova and Owen to complete a team which looked to have plenty of goal threat about it and I was quite confident that my view that we could win this one 3-0 or even 4-0 would prove correct.

When Valencia put us 1-0 ahead after just eight minutes, I was even more confident.

However, we seemed to play well within ourselves having got that 1-0 lead and with Rooney doing his best to be Paul Scholes, gone were the penetrating runs as he instead chose to ping passes around – some of which were mere passes back to the defence or even the goalkeeper.

I think I mentioned in a recent post that perhaps there was a feeling of… I don’t know… boredom (???) with some of these group stage matches amongst our more experienced players. It’s as though they just don’t get their juices flowing anymore.

When the draw was made for this Champions League group stage, I think we all were quite happy that we had been handed as easy a draw as we could reasonably expect but, in some ways, it might have actually been better had we been handed a draw similar to the one Manchester City have had.

It was noticable that some of our best players on the night were the younger ones who haven’t had as much Champions League experience. Jones and Fabio provided plenty of dynamism on the flanks and it was a Jones run and cross which actually led to our first goal. Fabio ventured forward on several occasions but was often thwarted by the Galati defender Costin (who had a great game ) but he was at least trying to drive the team on to greater heights when several seemed happy to just plonk around the field for the remaining eighty minutes following our opener.

As the minutes ticked by and we continued to fail to get our second goal, the Galati team seemed to grow in confidence and belief that they could perhaps pull off something of a shock in this one and De Gea had to be alert on several occasions and no more so than when a shot on target was deflected by Ferdinand but he still managed to adjust his hand and knock it away.

In fact, De Gea’s performance was a big positive from this match. He pulled off a few saves by actually catching the ball solidly on several occasions (as opposed to punching it out or something) and his distribution was usually excellent. Already the bloopers from his opening couple of games seem a long time ago now.

Again though, we were largely fortunate that we were playing against a side that struggles to score at the best of times. If Galati had their own Chicharito or someone of that ilk then they could well have given us all kinds of problems.

Anyway, as the match wore on with the score still 1-0, there was always the hope that we would finally grab that second that would put the match safe and it finally arrived after around 81 minutes when Rooney had a blast from outside the box which looked to be going well wide before it hit Sarghi leaving their goalkeeper completely wrong-footed and helpless as the ball hit the back of the net.

So, despite barely seeming to get out of second gear in this Group Stage, we now find ourselves top of the group thanks to our slightly superior goal difference over Benfica (who we play next, by the way) and on the one hand, I suppose we should be pleased with that as this is the object of the Group Stage, after all.

I just can’t escape the feeling that some people aren’t taking this early stage of the competition very seriously though. Rooney… a deep-lying midfielder?