Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for us, Sir Alex has confirmed that the injury Vidic picked up during our Champions League match against Basle is as bad as it first appeared – he’s ruptured his cruciate ligament, will need an operation and that’s his season over.

It’s another massive blow for us as we do look a lot more solid with Vida in the defence – and stats suggest that this is the case too. He has played in ten games this season and we conceded just three goals in those games. In the thirteen games which he didn’t play, we conceded nineteen goals.

With Rio not getting any younger (and becoming more and more injury prone himself) it is going to be interesting to see what Fergie does about the defence from here on in.

In terms of experience, Rio and Evans is the best option but the Smalling/Jones partnership is seen by many as being the future so perhaps it is as good a time as any to give those two a run in there?

The slight problem, of course, is that Fergie has employed both Jones and Smalling in the full-back position on occasion and, in the case of Jones, he is even being used as a midfielder at times.

Personally, I think that a lot of our problems this season are down to too much tinkering on Fergie’s part. Sometimes, due to injuries, his hand has been forced but that hasn’t always been the case – sometimes he just seems to do it for the sake of it.

I think now is the time for a big decision and, once made, stick with it and see if we cannot turn this massive set-back into a positive.

Well, it doesn’t seem like five minutes since I was sitting here writing about our masterplan for winning this group with a couple of games to spare which would render this one all but irrelevant but we’ve hit a couple of bogeys in this competitions since then and suddenly a result from this, our last game of the group stage, becomes crucial.

A draw tonight will see us through. A win tonight could see us win the group – but not if Benfica win against Otelul at home. Basically, it is looking very much like we’ll be playing to finish second in the group which really isn’t great for a team that is as experienced as us in Europe after being given what looked like a “dream group” at the start.

I saw the interview a couple of weeks ago where Fergie stormed out after a journalist suggested that the English clubs had “struggled” in Europe this season and I could see both points of view. The English teams have struggled by our standards so far this season but I could also see why Fergie was disgusted by the comment because there is an insinuation that English clubs only have to turn up and take their three points without the 90 minutes battle on the pitch in between.

Of course there is a “struggle” in that respect and if people expect to go into a Champions League game (the cream of Europe, let it not be forgotten) and have an “easy” game then they are underestimating and being completely disrespectful of the achievements of the teams that have qualified for the competition. No one gets into the Champions League by being a useless side and none are pushovers.

I made the point in a recent post that perhaps some of the players couldn’t get their juices flowing for these “lowly” group games anymore but my view has changed somewhat of late and I do wonder if it is the fans who don’t get going of late. These are massive, massive footballing occasions. Perhaps not Champions League semi-finals but there are plenty of teams that dream of getting into the Champions League whilst us Man Utd fans perhaps take it all for granted these days.

We turn up, we qualify and then we play against the glamour clubs in the latter stages – that’s the way it has been for several years now but I think we take it for granted that the players don’t actually need our support to do so anymore.

Of course, this is an away tie and Basel’s crowd will be outnumbering our own by a considerable amount anyway – we had our chance at OT and we blew it. We now do have to hope that the players give their all where perhaps we have not but should the worst happen, I hope that fans will not totally exonerate themselves from blame.

Ok. Rant over.

In this game, we have a bit of a striker dilemma which I actually believe will help us. Chicharito is injured, Berba is injured, Owen is injured. That leaves Rooney and Welbeck and I hope that Fergie just goes with Wayne right in front of goal – where he should be all the time as far as I am concerned.

Forget Rooney the midfielder, Rooney in behind, Rooney out on the wings, Rooney starting from defence – just stick him up front – right in that 20 yard square area directly in front of goal – that is how he had his record-breaking scoring run a couple of seasons ago and is the way to go as far as I am concerned.

Played there, Rooney will score the goals required – it is then up to what has become once again a pretty miserly defence to keep Basel out at the other end.

So, I’m not going to go overboard on our scoring this evening but I’m going to rely on us keeping Basel out and doing what need to be done at the other end.

I think this bet will win.

The bet is UNDER 2.5 goals @ 2.00 with Victor Chandler.

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.

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?

It’s taken me a few days to get around to writing this review for obvious reasons because I do always like to watch at least one replay of the matches before writing the reviews but I wasn’t in such a great rush to watch this one over again.

However, I watched the match over and it wasn’t actually the painful experience I’d expected. For the opening 10-20 minutes, it was all Manchester United and we had City penned into their own half for much of it with something in the region of 70% possession.

When Ballotelli put City ahead after 22 minutes it was a complete stunner because, up until that point, they’d hardly had the ball.

It must be said though that whilst we had a lot of the ball, we didn’t do an awful lot with it. City were very organised defensively and throughout the match, Joe Hart had very little to do – and this was our main problem in the first half.

However, 1-0 down at half-time was gutting but there was absolutely nothing to suggest the massacre that was to follow and I think most United fans, whilst knowing that the next goal would be crucial, had confidence that we could turn things round.

Whatever Fergie said to the players at half-time was obviously brief and to the point as the players were back out on the pitch and ready to go several minutes before the second half was ready to commence.

But within about a minute of the restart, Evans made a mistake against Ballotelli and tugged at his arm in an attempt to salvage the situation, the referee copped him and had no choice but to send him off for preventing a clear goalscoring opportunity. Whatever plans Fergie had put in place for the second half were destroyed right there in one moment of madness. It was always going to be a uphill task in the second half but that just made it almost impossible.

It has to be said though that for ten minutes or so, we continued to give as good as we got and had Ashley Young not fluffed a great opportunity when he received the ball in the box and scored then we still might have seen a different outcome here because that could have made it 1-1 and perhaps at that stage we could have played a much more defensive game and settled for the point.

It did sort of show that we still weren’t out of the game though and the players tried to do the only thing they knew they could do and get that goal back as soon as possible. This obviously meant that we were vulnerable at the back and with a man short, City were able to exploit the wide open spaces and this ultimately led to our downfall as City have such great passers of the ball that they were able to do so quite easily.

It does show the fine margins between success and enormous failure at this level though. We needed that little bit of luck or that little bit of magic to make it 1-1 but instead we got hit by a sucker punch as Ballotelli got his second on the hour mark to make it 2-0.

At this stage, the game was pretty much up but with half an hour to go there was still plenty of football to be played and so the United players once again tried to do what comes naturally and attack. Ten minutes later, Aguero got City’s third and then it really was game over.

In hindsight, what the players did next was either the craziest of the most courageous thing ever seen but they kept ploughing forward leaving enormous holes at the back but they wanted the goal, they still believed that they could pull this off and when Fletcher curled in a beauty (the best goal of the game, to be honest – unfortunately quantity, not quality always counts in this game) to make it 3-1 with at least ten minutes still to play.

In hindsight, this was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened because it suddenly seemed to make the players think, “Hang on, if can grab one more in the next few minutes then City’s heads might be all over the place for the last few minutes – we can still do this!” and so they went for it.

We had a couple of corners in the next few minutes which City defended well but it did show that again, with a decent delivery and a bit of luck, there was still a goal to be had for us and the players just went for it with everything they had. All the defenders were coming forward and players like Welbeck ended up chasing back doing the jobs of players like Evra! It was just kami-kaze football.

However, I feel that I must take issue with something Fergie said after the match about this stage of the game as he seemed to be suggesting that when it was 3-1/4-1, we should have just accepted that and just defended in order to avoid what ended up a rout.

I can possibly understand it once it went to 4-1 but at 3-1, there definitely was a whiff of a comeback – it was a faint scent; mere tendrils on the horizon  but it was there and I, for one, want to see my United team never accept defeat when we need two goals in ten minutes although I will accept that with hindsight, once City went 4-1 ahead, the chance had gone and with just injury time to be played, we should have just kept the ball and played down the clock.

Instead, we continued to try to fight, like a boxer who has been knocked to the canvas four times in a round but keeps getting up on wobbly legs, swinging away feebly only to walk onto yet another right hook.

So, yes, this could and probably should have ended in a 4-1 defeat and not 6-1 but, the record books aside, does it really matter? Fergie made a point about the damage this result did to our goal difference column (ten goals in one match is a devastating blow) but, at this stage, the five points behind is the crucial part. I do tend to agree though that the players should have shut up shop at 4-1 and they probably should have known that.

However, I can also understand how the players would perhaps not know what to do. Do they make the decision to do that, at Old Trafford, against our fierce local rivals by themselves? Why wasn’t Fergie or at least Phelan down on the touchline at this stage, just telling them, “It’s ok lads. Give this one up. Just don’t let them make this completely embarrassing now”? At least the players would have known that they had the manager’s blessing to give up the ghost.

I dunno. I just thought it strange that whilst Mancini was always making his way down to the touchline at various stages to bark out a few instructions, our own management team stayed in their seats throughout. Fergie just seemed a bit too eager to shift the blame onto the players but I think that in hindsight, he must see that he shares some responsibility for the end result.

Anyway, the day definitely belonged to City but I would reiterate that it wasn’t the one-sided massacre that the end scoreline suggests. The first half was definitely an even contest but City always just looked that bit more in control. Defensively they were solid and organised and they contained us to the point where we were restricted to half chances at best. They also worked extremely hard down the wings to nullify Young and Nani and little David Silva was awesome. Their strikers were obviously on the money too.

For us, our defence looked extremely creaky as it has done for much of the season and I still cannot understand why Evans started ahead of Vidic and I can only think that Fergie felt that Vidic was still short of match-fitness. This is probably a moot point though because I have no doubt that Vidic would have pulled on someone’s arm at some stage and got himself sent off just as Evans did!

I said in a recent post that I think Fergie has to come to some sort of decision with the defence and soon because all this swapping and changing is not doing anyone any favours. Ferdinand still brings a lot to the table but he clearly cannot do it in every game these days which means that Fergie has to make at least one change every other game or so but he will know as well as anybody that our success down the years has been built on a stable defensive unit that pretty much play together week in and week out where changes are enforced due to injuries and suspensions – not merely to “keep players happy/match fit” etc.

Well, Fergie put out the kind of team for this one that I think  most people wanted to see against Liverpool but, strangely, it seemed to make very little difference and this game actually followed a very similar pattern to the Liverpool game in that there was nothing much to see for over an hour and then all hell broke loose.

There was a bit of a surprise in goal as Lindegaard was chosen ahead of De Gea and it does seem that Fergie really doesn’t want to upset Lindegaard too much and is trying to give him a decent number of games even though it is now clear that he sees his Number One as De Gea.

Fabio, Vidic, Smalling and Evra made up the back four and I must admit that it was good to see one of the Da Silva twins back in there with a typically dynamic performance.

The midfield of Nani, Carrick, Anderson and Valencia seemed to tick all the right boxes on paper and there could be no issues with the strike partnership of Rooney and Hernandez. Fergie obviously meant business here and wanted this game put to bed as soon as possible.

But it was a strangely subdued performance from the United players. The fluid, almost instinctive, passing and movement that characterised some of our earlier displays this season was missing and the play seemed almost plodding and methodical. As though the players knew that they had to make absolutely sure in this game and so there seemed to be a deliberation to every little pass.

Perhaps because we were playing at such a low tempo, it is hard to say but Otelul appeared to cope well with everything we threw at them and were clearly a better side than most gave them credit for. However, I mentioned before the game that scoring seemed to be their main problem and so it proved in this one because they actually had the better chances in the first half and a couple of their players found themselves in great positions but they couldn’t make the most of them – if Otelul had a top class striker or two in their side then they could well have put us in some serious trouble.

However, they didn’t and the feeling was that we were going to create a decent chance sooner or later and once we had that first goal, we would relax and possibly go on to win this one by three or even four goals.

So, when we were given a penalty just after the hour mark and Rooney converted it with typical ease, there was an element of relief and a “right, come on now lads… push on from here” about it.

But then the referee, who had been almost invisible up until awarding that penalty (the first half was so incident-free that there was no time added on at all so perhaps he was a bit bored and decided to take it into his own hands to liven things up a bit) suddenly brandished a straight red in the direction of Vidic for a tackle which, after watching on replay at least half a dozen times, still looks like a yellow card at most to me. The look on Vidic’s face as the ref held aloft that red card said it all – he was absolutely stunned.

This was an even bigger blow for Vidic because this was his comeback from injury game for Manchester United and there were signs that he was a little rusty – his timing was slightly out on a couple of occasions and at one point in the first half, he played a ridiculously sloppy pass straight into an Otelul attacker’s path which we were lucky to get away with. It was perhaps this lack of full match fitness that meant he didn’t quite reach the ball as intended and ended up clattering the Otelul player.

However, it wasn’t really dangerous, the Otelul player was fine and I think a yellow card would have been adequate but, the ref disagreed and I suspect that that means that Vidic now misses the rest of our Group Stage matches.

Anyway, with this happening almost immediately after scoring that breakthrough goal, it meant that, when we should have been pressing on with the momentum firmly behind us, everything was turned on its head and suddenly Otelul realised that playing against a ten-man Manchester United (which clearly wasn’t firing on all cylinders) was a significantly easier prospect than they imagined before the match kicked-off.

At just 1-0 behind, on their “home” ground and against ten men, they weren’t out of this one and a point or even all three was never out of the question.

Despite being a man short, we looked fairly comfortable for most of that last twenty-five minutes or so though and whilst they had their chances, they fluffed them and as the minutes ticked away, there seemed to be more desperation from Otelul and they themselves had a man sent off in the 89th minute for two yellow cards (again, this sending off seemed harsh to me – the ref had lost the plot completely by this stage).

Moments later, Rooney cleverly bought himself a penalty when he was tripped in the area and, once again, Rooney put the penalty kick away superbly – the keeper guessed the direction right this time but the kick was so powerful and so accurate that he still had no chance of stopping it.

2-0 with just added time to play and for the first time in this Champion League campaign (expect for perhaps when we were 2-0 up against Basel!) us United fans could actually relax.

And that’s how the game ended.

We’re now second in the group and we next play Otelul at Old Trafford and the only thing I can see that might prevent a convincing win for us in that one is if Fergie plays a massively weakened/changed side. However, after having a go at the complacency of his players the other day, I suspect that he might have to practice what he preaches in that one and make absolutely sure by putting out the big guns.

The three points aside, there weren’t too many positives to take from this game, I felt. The return of Vidic was great to see even if he’s now banned for a spell in this competition and the way Rooney put away his penalties showed that he is as focused as ever following another couple of “eventful” weeks in his ever-controversial life.

However, Valencia didn’t look himself in this one and he was surprisingly ineffective. Key to his game is being able to go on the outside, buy himself some space and whip in a decent ball but he was unable to do this and found himself coming inside over and over again and it almost always fizzled out to nothing.

Conversely, Nani’s main strength is coming inside although he seemed to be having the same problem as Valencia but in reverse and so ended up going on the outside and attempting to whip crosses in. Whilst this area of his game has improved, it’s still not his strong point and so, again, there wasn’t much coming from him (although on the one occasion he did come inside with a trademark run and shot, he was extremely unlucky to see his shot rebound off the inside of the post).

It wasn’t a great night for Hernandez, either and I cannot remember him having a single chance. Hopefully he’s saving them for City!

Still, this was a test for United. We’d played ourselves into a tricky situation which could have turned into a disaster had we failed to win this game but we did what was necessary and now finishing top of the group is in our own hands again. Two of our remaining three games are at Old Trafford and I doubt we’ll see the Basel game repeated again any time soon.

Well, I don’t know about everyone else but I have never felt so out of touch with Fergie’s thinking and his team selection for this one knocked me sideways.

Rooney, Nani and Hernandez started on the bench and for all the pre-match talk of a possible comeback, Vidic was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Fergie went with Smalling and Evra in the full-back positions with Evans and Ferdinand in the centre of defence with De Gea continuing in goal.

Young and Park took the wings with Giggs, Fletcher and Jones completing a five-man midfield. Welbeck started up front on his own.

If it was Fergie’s intention to kill the game then it worked as neither side created many opportunities in a rather dull first half although it has to be said that Liverpool were generally more effective than us and we could have been in for a really rough ride were it not for excellent performances from Ferdinand and De Gea.

However, Fergie very nearly pulled off a masterful managerial move here by containing Liverpool for almost seventy minutes at which point, he had Rooney warming up and ready to come on. Just as that substitution was about to take place, though, Liverpool got themselves a dodgy free-kick as Charlie Adam appeared to take a dive after Ferdinand stuck a leg out. I’ve seen a few replays and I still cannot decide if there was any contact but even if there was, it was negligible and Adam made the most of it.

I suppose us United supporters can’t complain too loudly because we’ve seen the likes of Ronnie, Nani and Rooney do it to good effect in recent years and, in any case, Liverpool still had to actually score the free-kick.

However, Liverpool have been buoyed in recent weeks with the return of Steven Gerrard after a lengthy injury absence and it was Gerrard who took on the free-kick. It was struck well enough but it was straight at the wall and really should have bounced off it but, of all players, it was Giggs who appeared to want to get out of its way and allowed the ball to go straight through him and into the net.

Suddenly Fergie’s clever ploy appeared to have backfired. Nani, Rooney and Hernandez finally took to the field but instead of coming on with a match to win, they were coming on looking to salvage a draw. Their appearance worked a treat though and the match burst into life as United went all out for the equaliser. This, of course, came with some risk and Liverpool remained a threat on the counter but De Gea stood firm when needed and Liverpool didn’t take full advantage of their chances.

Then, with ten minutes to go, Chicharito showed excellent movement in the box to manufacture an acre of space for himself and headed in a corner to make the score 1-1.

At that point, the momentum was with us and it did feel as though we were the more likely of the two teams to score a second.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make full use of that momentum and gave the ball away cheaply far too many times which allowed Liverpool to actually end the match on top as the last few minutes was played almost exclusively in our half of the field and that was a big disappointment.

However, a point at Anfield isn’t the worst result and, if anything, it will be Liverpool who will feel that they dropped two points here. They certainly had the chances to win this game whereas we didn’t have too many clear cut opportunities.

Apparently, Wayne Rooney will discover today how many matches he will be banned for following his kick against a Montenegro player (Miodrag Dzudovic) in England’s last Euro 2012 qualifier a few days ago.

It was a kick out an opponent, it was quite deliberate and it was a deserved straight red card.

Straight reds usually carry a three match ban and that is widely expected to be the case here although, for some reason, there are people who think that he might get off with a two or even one match ban.

Personally, I think that in instances such as this, the player should receive no ban and here’s why…

The tournament is one of the biggest International footballing events in the world – perhaps second only to the World Cup (although I appreciate that people from other continents will probably disagree) and, at these events, we want to see the best players on show.

I think that there is a case for wiping the slate clean after a qualification campaign so that all players that are fit to play can play in the actual tournament.

Should Montenegro reach the Euro 2012 tournament proper then they may feel aggrieved should they have to play against England (and Rooney) at some stage but I generally believe that they received their advantage the other night when England went down to ten men and an important player was sent off the pitch. This gave them every chance to get themselves into the play-offs (or better) and they took it.

Rooney’s sending off could have cost England dearly… but it didn’t… but I feel that the punishment was there.

In case of confusion, I am not talking about bans in any other circumstances, I am just talking about bans going into a massive International tournament. If Rooney kicks a Liverpool player on Saturday then he will get and deserve a three match ban (and a round of applause from most Mancunians, but that’s by-the-by) and no one will argue against that.

Similarly, if he kicks anyone at Euro 2012 next summer then he will receive a three-match ban and if that means the end of his tournament then so be it.

I just feel that for showcase events, the footballing authorities should show a bit more common-sense with regard to these things. But this is their quandary.

UEFA know that having the best players at the tournament will make for a better tournament but they also know that they must not show any weakness at this point then it will set a dangerous precedent. In any case, this is England and it is common knowledge that we don’t get many favours from the footballing authorities. They’d probably like to ban England altogether but that’s another issue.

So… I expect Rooney to have the book thrown at him. He will have the full three match ban and that will mean that we will have to play the group stage without him and, should we get through that then Capello (or whoever is in charge next summer) may well stick with the team that got us through.

I’ll just say that I don’t believe Rooney should get off without punishment but perhaps the ban could come into effect for the World Cup qualifiers and he could be given a hefty fine – the proceeds of which could go to charity or something.

OK. Now I’m just being really silly.