Sunday, 11th April 2010 – KO: 13:30

Nestled in between matches against Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, there has almost been a danger of overlooking this one but in terms of what now lies ahead, it is as important as any fixture we have left this season and one we must not take lightly.

A slight worry is that Fergie will almost certainly play a significantly different side to the one that lined up against Bayern Munich in midweek and the bench that evening probably provided most clues as to who will play in this one.

Expect returns for Giggs, Scholes and Berbatov for starters. Rooney is almost certainly ruled out for definate this time and I do believe Fletcher is in need of a rest.

The return of John O’Shea in midweek was a surprise and it could be that he will be given some role to play.

Whilst this game is of vital importance to us, Blackburn’s season is now pretty much over. They are safe from relegation but too far behind to have any hopes of European football to play for. The are currently mid-table and that looks likely to be where they end up, regardless of what happens here today.

Whether that will play into our hands, remains to be seen. Manchester United are hardly Blackburn supporters’ second-favourite team and they will certainly expect nothing less than 100% from their team for this one.

In any case, Blackburn are one of those teams who always seem to give us a tough game, especially at their place but whilst they have enjoyed some success over us a few years ago, recent years have seen us win two and draw one of our three games there in the League.

None of our wins were particularly convincing however and the draw came thanks to an 88th minute equaliser on our part.

Personally, with the changes likely to be made to the team and Blackburn’s recent home record (they held Chelsea to a 1-1 draw a couple of weeks ago), I think we will have our work cut out to leave Blackburn with the three points here. Certainly I don’t think that this is going to be as easy as the odds (around 1.50 at best for the United win) suggest.

I just hope our defence can hold firm and cut out the sloppy goals we have been conceding in recent games and that someone can score at the other end and we can come away with a win, however narrow.

The bookies think this will be a high scoring game and I really can’t share that view. Everything points towards 2-1 at the very most as far as I can see but 1-0 or 1-1 would seem more likely to me.

The bet is 3 points Under 2.5 Goals @ 2.08 with bet365.

Well, I had a bad feeling about this one from the off. Fergie rang the changes and decided to give most of the “first” team a day off. Even the Evra-present Evra (apologies for that, I couldn’t resist) was given a rest as John O’Shea took his position on the left of defence.

In came Scholes, Giggs, Berbatov and Macheda.

There have been several occasions this season when Fergie has made wholesale changes and it has invariably backfired.

Today was no different.

As I said in my pre-match write-up, there was a danger that coming amongst such high profile fixtures such as Chelsea, Bayern and City, there was a chance that this one could be seen as a “lesser” game against “lesser” opponents but Blackburn have been no mugs at home this season and in recent months have given everyone a game.

The sad fact is that whilst they didn’t offer a great deal as an attacking threat, they didn’t have to work too hard to keep us out at the other end and the game had 0-0 written all over it although we obviously hoped that someone could grab something from somewhere at sometime.

That airy-fairy hope was all we really had though because the players didn’t have concrete answers to the problems Blackburn posed us and neither did Fergie.

The best chance of the game by a country mile fell to Valencia who was played clean through by a cute pass from Berbatov and had he hit the shot six inches higher, Paul Robinson probably wouldn’t have saved it with his outstretched leg, as he did.

But it says it all that the one player not reknown for his goal-scoring prowess was probably our greatest attacking threat.

All in all a disappointing end to a disappointing week made all the more disappointing because a season which promised so much just a couple of weeks ago is drifting tamely away from us.

And not with a bang but with a whimper.

At least T.S. Eliot knew what he was on about when he wrote “The Hollow Men”.