Sometimes you can just tell within minutes that you have put the wrong bet on and this was one such occasion.

I don’t know if we showed Ajax a little too much respect or it was the other way ’round but the opening forty-five minutes of this game was  tedious in the extreme for large portions.

Lots of passing by both sides, very little pressing by either side and barely a shot worth mentioning.

It was probably just as well that this was an earlier-than-we’re-accustomed-to kick-off time – any later and I think I may have fallen asleep.

The second half was a bit more like it and the change on our part was noticable from the kick-off. We just upped the tempo a notch, started to close Ajax down a bit quicker and pass the ball a bit faster and Ajax couldn’t really live with it. Perhaps they’d been lulled into a false sense of security in the first half because at 0-0 they would have felt as though they had every chance of nicking this one but there was an extended period of pressure in the second half which culminated in Ashley Young’s opener where they looked rattled.

By the time Javier Hernandez knocked in our second with six minutes or so left to play, I felt that we looked quite dominant although De Gea was called into action to save a few long-range efforts but was rarely really troubled.

Perhaps it has to be remembered that virtually half of our team here was comprised of players on their way back from injury (Cleverley, Young, Fabio, Jones and Nani) and so this gave them all much needed minutes on the pitch.

It’s symptomatic of the bad luck we’re having at the moment though as Ashley Young was replaced by Valencia who went down with a hamstring injury mere minutes after coming on and he will now be out for around four weeks which is a massive blow as I think he has been our most consistently good performer of the season and it is just as well that Young and Nani are now back from injury.

Overall though, it was a decent night’s work from United and I think we now know that Fergie does indeed intend to give this tournament a proper go.

This game will be remembered for the stunning comeback from 3-0 by United but the biggest question on everyone’s lips was, “How the hell did we find ourselves 3-0 down in the first place?”

There wasn’t much to get too over-excited about in the first half. Welbeck appeared to be tripped for a possible penalty but replays showed that the challenge occurred outside the box and, from the referee’s angle, it could have even looked like the Chelsea player got the ball (I actually think Welbeck had nicked it away and it should have been a free-kick just outside the box).

Chelsea huffed and puffed but created little until a loose ball was picked up by Daniel Sturridge and, facing up to Evra, he tricked his way past and blasted the ball into the box. De Gea stuck out a leg and diverted it away from goal only to see it ricochet off Jonny Evans and into the net to give Chelsea a 1-0 lead they scarcely deserved.

At half-time, I had no doubts that we could score the necessary two goals to win this match and with the players out nice and early, it looked like they meant to get straight down to business and take the game to Chelsea from the off.

However, the second half got off to the worst possible start for us as Torres (who remains dodgy in front of goal) delivered a sublime cross straight onto Mata’s boot who volleyed it home spectacularly after less than thirty seconds of the restart.

At this stage, the hill we had to climb suddenly looked like a mountain if we were to get three points from this one but Chelsea weren’t done and a free kick which David Luiz headed towards goal was diverted wickedly off Ferdinand’s shoulder and past the wrong-footed De Gea to make it 3-0 with just five minutes of the second half gone.

As United fans, we are used to seeing comebacks from our team but 3-0 down at Stamford Bridge… well, I would like to know when a team last achieved this but it certainly isn’t in my memory banks.

We were thrown a lifeline less than ten minutes later though when Evra was tripped clumsily in the box for a penalty which Rooney put away with aplomb.

At this stage, Chelsea had received a warning and you’d expect them to shut up shop but, bizarrely, they continued to play an attacking game which made the rest of the second half a very open game and we were given yet another penalty some ten minutes after the first which Rooney again put away with ease.

To be fair, this one looked like a clear penalty at first glance but replays showed that Welbeck “bought it” but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures and I’m sure a certain Mr Drogba would have been proud of the way Welbeck just left his leg in and went over.

So, at 3-2 it was certainly game back on and there was, by this stage, a certain inevitability about what would happen next. Our tails were up and we were doing to Chelsea what I expected us to do from the start and it fell for Ryan Giggs to show every ounce of his mature years to keep a cool head and deliver a perfect cross into the box which Javier Hernandez headed home for 3-3 with at least five minutes plus added time to be played.

Could we pull off the comeback to top all comebacks?

Well, unfortunately, not this time and to be fair, Chelsea had a couple of decent efforts of their own in the closing minutes which required De Gea to pull off a couple of very good saves especially the one from Mata’s perfect free kick which was heading right into the top corner before De Gea used every inch of his six foot four frame and every bit of his agility to paw away at the last moment.

So, all in all, the players deserve every praise for not letting their heads drop at 3-0 and anyone who questioned whether or not we have the stomach for the fight at this stage of the season got their answer in emphatic style but there does remain a sense of bewilderment as to how we found ourselves 3-0 down in the first place.

For all the comeback heroics, this still feels like two points dropped as, just as with Liverpool in the FA Cup, I think we were the better team but we didn’t get the result we truly deserved.

However, quite apart from the fighting spirit on display, there were several other positives to take from this:-

De Gea’s performance: He still looks a bit dodgy on crosses and such but he showed that he is one hell of a shot-stopper. There was nothing he could do about any of Chelsea’s goals but he certainly prevented a couple of almost certain goals that a lesser keeper would have been picking out of his net.

Rooney’s penalties: Rooney has missed a few of late but showed remarkable courage to take not one but two penalties in this one and not only did he take them but he scored them convincingly with seemingly no sign of nerves or self-doubt. Petr Cech had no chance with either.

Carrick awesome (again): Michael Carrick has been back to his very best in recent matches and was once again instrumental in midfield without ever appearing to do anything particularly spectacular.

Valencia awesome too (again): I must admit that with Nani having such a great season last year and with our signing of Young in the summer who then went on to have a great pre-season and start to the season for us, I feared that Valencia could get edged out for much of this season but he has really shown his fighting spirit to rise to the challenge and I suspect that even if Fergie had a fully fit trio of Nani, Valencia and Young, Valencia would be his first choice right now.

He runs tirelessly, he gets forward, he tracks back, he always gives his full-back a nightmare and whilst his service has always been good, he’s now starting to add a decent shot to his repertoire. Arguably the best United player of the season so far for my money.

If there was something to moan about here then it was the fact that we had to rely on the penalty spot to get two of the goals (as we did against Stoke) and Hernandez’ goal aside, we didn’t really carve open any clear-cut chances. This was the problem against Liverpool the other week where, for all our possession, we ended up losing and it is a worry.

Rooney was deservedly man of the match here and put away his penalty kicks brilliantly but I think we’d all like to see him banging in a few more from open play now that he’s back from his little injury lay-off.

I think you could tell from my pre-match post that I had a feeling that something like this would happen here, however, I would just like to clear up my clumsy choice of words when I said “if it goes wrong then it wont be viewed with enormous disappointment.”

Of course, getting knocked out of the FA Cup by Liverpool at Anfield is almost as bad as it gets and it was enormously disappointing that this is exactly what happened but with the injury list we were carrying into this game I just felt that even Fergie had to accept that it would be a big ask to expect a win… hope, yes… expectation, not really.

As it turned out, we put up a tremendous fight and it has to be said that we were enormously unlucky to come out as the losers here. The stats I have in front of me say that we had 62% of the possession which sounds about right. For long spells of this game, our midfield was passing the ball around whilst Liverpool were chasing shadows.

However, we didn’t actually do a great deal with the possession whereas Liverpool were much more direct when on the ball.

Scholes gave his usual masterclass in midfield seeing a lot of the ball, exhibiting a pass-completion rate which must have been in the high nineties but a lot of it was sideways and backwards. It’s the type of thing I would love to see us pull off when we’re winning a game with five minutes to play but we were never in the lead in this match and I just felt that we could have been a bit more aggressive on the ball.

It did seem as though Scholes was always the “out” for any player with the ball. Scholes always finds space, the other player sees him and gives him the ball and it just pings backwards and forwards like this. In the meantime, Liverpool were able to get themselves set in position with their two banks of four behind the ball and seemed almost happy with this situation because we were rarely threatening their goal (we actually only had two attempts on target throughout the whole game although Valencia struck a terrific drive which came off the post in the first half).

As a result of all this, there was the impression that both of Liverpool’s goals “came against the run of play” but for me, they just did more in possession than we did and basically showed that you don’t get points for pretty possession, it’s all about sticking the ball in the net more times than your opponents.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though. There were lots of positives to take from the game. Rafael was mostly excellent today and it was his tenacity and superb ball in which led to Park’s perfectly struck goal. Valencia continues to impress although he didn’t get a great deal of success in terms of getting in behind the Liverpool full-backs today and he was marshalled well but was unlucky not to get his name on the scoresheet again.

On the downside, De Gea still cuts a worrying figure in goal. He looks like his confidence is shot to pieces at times and he was probably culpable for Liverpool’s first goal as he became more interested in Andy Carroll than the ball and knew next to nothing about it as it flew over his head into the goal. One or two other nervy moments didn’t inspire confidence either and it has to be said, again, that Lindegaard’s claim for the Number One shirt only seems to strengthen every time De Gea plays.

At the end of the day though, we’re out of the FA Cup (again) and whilst the headlines last weekend were saying Manchester 2 – 0 London, this week they are saying Liverpool 2 – 0 Manchester and King Kenny now looks set to end Liverpool’s six year trophy drought.

As for us, we finally seemed to come through a game without adding to the injury list and a few of the injured will surely now be in a position to return against Stoke tomorrow.

For reasons best known to themselves, a significant portion of the press chose to use the run-up to this game reporting stories of disharmony, “strained relations” and unrest between Wayne Rooney and Sir Alex. Both before and after games, both parties were at pains to deny any such thing was going on. Rooney himself said that he was still very happy at United and “wants to stay here for years to come”.

I don’t know if there’s any truth in the reports but a day like today shows that, if the press would just be a little patient, there’s absolutely no need whatsoever to report “non stories” because just a few hours on this day provided enough meat to fill the back pages for weeks to come – and, whilst some of it was even more unbelievable than the Rooney story, it was all absolutely true.

Around an hour before kick-off, there was the amazing news that Paul Scholes had answered the SOS call and, not only had he come out of retirement, he was going to be on the bench against City!

At first, I had to check the calendar to make sure that I hadn’t spent a few months in a coma or something and that it wasn’t actually April 1st but when the team sheet was announced, there he was – named as a substitute. Incredible!

That, in itself, can give the press stories to tell for the rest of the season.

And then the actual game began and it was to prove to have talking points aplenty – more than enough to keep idle journalists in articles for the next week and beyond.

First of all, it’s worth mentioning our line-up for this one. Lindegaard was given the nod ahead of De Gea in goal, Jones was switched to right-back, Evra on the left with Rio and Smalling making the central partnership. There was some doubt over Smalling’s fitness coming into the game but he came through the test with flying colours and I believe that the future of one of our central defensive positions could well be sorted for the next ten years.

I felt that Jones might have been used in midfield but Fergie chose to play him at right-back. I think that the Newcastle game exposed his deficiencies in central defence so I was just pleased to not see him played there against the trickier City players such as Silva and Aguero.

Fergie went with a four-man midfield of Nani, Carrick, Giggs and Valencia and I was just pleased to see Valencia on the right. Whilst it has been a case of “needs must”, Valencia is totally wasted in the right-back position. He has been superb on the right wing whenever utilised there this season and this game was no different and it was his run and excellent cross that led to our first goal.

Up front, Fergie went with Rooney and Welbeck. I’m afraid that I completely over-looked Welbeck in my pre-match article and I went with Hernandez but the Rooney/Welbeck partnership is actually probably our best at the moment. Hernandez may well be the best poacher we have at the club but there are areas he could improve on – namely his first touch and ball control but these are two things that Danny Welbeck has no issues with and he was able to demonstrate this to great effect on numerous occasions this afternoon.

Oh, and he can score, too. I was raving about Demba Ba’s goal against us in midweek but Welbeck’s goal here this afternoon was similar in some respects but, technically, it was probably even better as the ball was going away from goal (and Welbeck) but he showed tremendous technique and agility to put it away.

Anyway. The match itself started with City having plenty of the ball and put us under some pressure in the opening exchanges and in some ways, it was similar to the game we played against them at Old Trafford but in reverse. In that game, we were pretty dominant for the opening twenty minutes and City’s first goal came largely against the run of play. On this occasion, it was perhaps our goal that was against the run of play as Rooney headed brilliantly from Valencia’s cross to put us 1-0 ahead after just ten minutes to stun the home crowd.

Just a couple of minutes later, City were in turmoil as Kompany was shown a red card for a two footed challenge on Nani.

At first, I thought it was extremely harsh and, in some ways, I was disappointed because I would have preferred to have beaten City with eleven men – City down to ten men with eighty minutes still to play provided City with every excuse they would have needed no matter what score this one had ended. However, after seeing several replays, the red card was deserved. Kompany went in two footed with studs up. It was reckless, it was dangerous and, had Nani not been able to take evasive action, he would undoubtedly have had to leave the field with a nasty injury.

Basically, players know that this type of tackle is no longer allowed and so why such an excellent player as Kompany chose to attempt it is quite baffling.

At this point, we had City where we wanted them and drove home our advantage thanks largely to great work from Welbeck with his goal that I’ve already mentioned and a run he made into the box which drew another foul and a penalty. Rooney took the penalty but, whilst it was saved, Rooney nodded home the rebound to make it 3-0 with five minutes of the first half remaining.

At this point, the United support were chanting “we want seven!” and it really didn’t seem beyond us at that point. City were like a boxer who has been hit and whose legs have gone. As the boxer tries to hold on desperately until the bell, City seemed to want to hold on for the half-time whistle.

When it arrived, most people were wondering what the hell would happen in the second half. Would City come out fighting or would they accept that today wasn’t to be their day and go for damage limitation.

A couple of substitutes from Mancini during the break suggested the latter to me as he brought off Johnson (who had been giving Evra a pretty torrid time on our left flank) and Silva (who remains one of their most potent attacking forces) in exchange for Zabaleta and Savic.

Now, I don’t presume to know what Fergie said at half-time to our own players but, no matter who or where we are playing, we should not be throwing a 3-0 half-time lead away and so I guess that part of the message was that whilst we could still get more goals from the game, the highest priority, especially for the opening five or ten minutes of the second half, had to be to give nothing away. Give City no encouragement. Keep the ball. Pass the ball.

So, when Nani tried some kind of stupid back-heeled flick after just a couple of minutes of the restart which was easily intercepted by Richards who drove towards our box, putting Evra under such pressure that he eventually conceded a free-kick just outside the area, Fergie must have been livid.

Up stepped the lethal set-piece specialist Kolorov to unleash an excellent free-kick to make it 3-1 with just three minutes played of the second half.

Again, I don’t presume to know Fergie’s thoughts but the fact that Nani was subbed within ten minutes of this came as no surprise (although the reason could just have been that Nani had picked up a silly yellow card by this stage and with the referee – Chris Foy – having his usual game i.e. poor and baffling, it might have just been a decision made to protect Nani from picking up a second yellow).

The substitution resulted in a sight no Manchester United supporter ever thought they would see again as Paul Scholes trotted onto the  pitch.

The substitution was probably made with thoughts of retaining possession in mind and, for the most part, Scholes’ passing was of the highest quality (97% pass completion ratio, apparently) but, incredibly, it was a bad pass by Scholes which led to City’s second goal.

As Aguero slotted home their second on the rebound after Lindegaard had spilled his initial shot, all eyes went to the clock which confirmed that the score was indeed 3-2 and that there was still the best part of half an hour still to be played.

Whatever advantage we had enjoyed going into the half-time break had now been completely reversed. The momentum was now with City and I must admit that I felt it inevitable that they would score the equaliser.

However, it never came, despite us enduring some extremely anxious moments towards the end of the game (no more so than when Kolorov had another free kick from a similar position to the one which resulted in their first goal right at the death but on this occasion, Lindegaard saved it well).

And so the final whistle blew to bring the curtain down on a fantastically entertaining Cup-tie which saw United fans, as per usual, put through the wringer when we should have been sitting with our feet up, smoking cigars for the final ten minutes.

The drama wasn’t to end there though as a few hours later, the draw for the fourth round was made and, somewhat predictably, we were drawn away against Liverpool. But that’s a story for another day… right now, I need a lie down.

Once again, Fergie had no choice but to ring the changes for this one as Phil Jones either failed to recover from the facial injury received in the last game or he was just rested as a matter of course but Michael Carrick, who has been in peak form of late in the middle of the park was brought back into central defence – and continued to show that he’s not too shabby in there either.

To be fair, United largely dominated this match and our defence had very little to do so it was a good time to have defensive problems, I suppose.

Park put us 1-0 ahead after just around eight minutes and a cricket score looked likely but the score remained that way until almost half time when Wigan had a player sent off and Berbatov got the first of three goals just moments later.

In the second half, Berba grabbed himself another with an excellent turn and shot (the kind of thing we all saw him doing for Spurs all the time a few years ago), the excellent Valencia scored a screamer into the bottom corner and Berbatov was able to seal his hat-trick and make it a 5-0 romp with a late penalty.

In fairness, Wigan should not have found themselves down to ten men – the sending off was extremely harsh (I’m sure Wigan could appeal the decision successfully). It also should not have been a penalty towards the end of the game – Park was clearly tripped outside the box but that probably balanced out an earlier penalty appeal when I thought Hernandez was clearly tripped around the twenty minute mark only for the ref to wave it away.

However, we were streets ahead of Wigan today and I do think that we would have won the game even without the decisions going our way. We were supposed to be the team with the defensive crisis but Wigan appeared very open at the back at times and with players like Rooney, Hernandez, Berbatov, Macheda, Nani, Park, Valencia and Giggs ploughing into them, it was always going to be just a matter of time before we got the breakthroughs.

The good news was to get even better after this one as Manchester City were held to a highly unusual (for them) 0-0 draw against West Brom which meant that we finished the day level on points and even that goal difference which at one point looked unassailable (and growing) is now down to just five – not bad considering the injury list we have been carrying almost from the first day of the season.

Incidentally, the injury list took another addition during this game as Jonny Evans limped off with a leg injury which is likely to see him sidelined for a couple of weeks or so and it looks vital that we get Rio and/or Jones back in time for the next game or we’re going to be playing with a defensive line-up of midfielders again.

For now though, the good times are back with us. Everyone is scoring goals. Everyone is reaching peak form (I thought Evra, who has been quick to “talk the talk” a lot of late, was finally seen “walking the walk” in this game and he was excellent) and we still had the chance to give young Zeke Fryers a run-out for the second half here – and again, he had a solid game.

Fergie said before the games kicked off today that City were favourites and he’s been saying for the last week or two that he’d be happy if we’re thereabouts come the New Year.

Mind games? Probably. They seem to be working though and City who probably felt that they would be over the hill and far away by now are suddenly feeling the pressure of leading from the front, it seems and Fergie will continue to turn the screw from here til May.

Well, I got this one wrong but on occasions such as this, I don’t mind too much.

Fergie did make a few changes but not really what I’d expected. Rio was rested so Jones pulled back into the centre-back position with Giggs taking Jones’ place in the midfield. Lindegaard came in for De Gea. Basically, the changes weren’t particularly drastic and I think it showed in yet another very impressive performance, particularly in the first half where Fulham barely got a sniff of the ball and found themselves 3-0 down by the time the half-time whistle blew.

In the second half, Fulham finally came alive and put us under some pressure but couldn’t grab a goal despite a few close efforts and eventually, they ran out of steam which allowed us to grab another couple late on to make the scoreline so emphatic.

However, yet again, victory came at a cost. Phil Jones went off in the first half after getting a knock in the face – the seriousness of which has yet to be revealed but some reports are suggesting it could be a fractured cheekbone which could mean 4-6 weeks on the sidelines. If that is the case then it shows what a tough nut he is because he did actually play on for a while (and made a great tackle in his own box to deny Fulham a decent chance after the clash) but it was clear he was still suffering the effects and had to make way for Ashley Young to come on.

This meant that Smalling went into the centre, Valencia took the right-back slot and Young went to the right of midfield.

However, Young himself got involved in a collision which meant that he had to limp off and make way for Park and early reports suggest he will be out for 2-3 weeks.

I don’t quite know what we’ve done to deserve all of this bad luck with injuries but it is now getting beyond ridiculous and during this period where fixtures come thick and fast, we can scarcely afford to have so many players out injured. However, whilst these words might come back to bite me, I think we have been a little fortunate with the fixture list in that we seem to be playing a lot of teams that are towards the foot of the table and our next two matches are against Wigan and Blackburn – two teams currently in the relegation zone.

In any case, we keep up the pressure on City at the top and have even started to make a little bit of inroads into the goal difference and this probably bodes well for when the pendulum of luck swings our way.

Fergie did something that has become increasingly rare for this one and kept the same line-up that played so well against Wolves in our last match and any doubts that that might have been a one-off were quickly erased as we tore into QPR from the off and went ahead through Wayne Rooney after just around 54 seconds.

With it being vital that we took the three points here, it could have become “one of those games” had we not taken the early lead as the pressure on us would have mounted but that early gift allowed us to relax a little although it could be argued that we may have relaxed a little too much as the first half ended 1-0 to us when it really could and probably should have been more like 3-0.

Fortunately, Carrick, clearly playing with a lot more confidence of late, went on a ridiculous run from the halfway line just ten minutes into the second half and slotted home neatly. Carrick has come in for a bit of stick down the years for being too negative and I did say in my last review that I expected him to provide the defensive cover so that Jones could get forward but there was nothing negative about his run and shot here and it was great to see. If anything, he was probably helped by his reputation for being a bit negative and goal-shy (this was his first since February 2010) as everyone expected him to pass towards Rooney who had taken a decent position in the area and this did seem to wrong-foot Cerny a bit who had started to move towards Rooney, leaving the gap to his right which Carrick found.

That’s not to say that Jones didn’t bomb forward on occasion and one time in the first half, he was played clean through by Rooney with only the keeper to beat but a mixture of a good save from Cerny and perhaps Jones showing why he isn’t a centre-forward saw his efforts thwarted.

Welbeck did manage to put the ball in the net but it was ruled offside although replays showed that he was probably level and the goal could well have stood.

Valencia has looked back to his best in recent games and he was fantastic again in this match and was only denied the goal his all-round performance deserved by another super-save from Cerny.

Jonny Evans, who has never scored for United, really should have broken his duck with a free-header directly in front of goal with Cerny totally out of position but he could only manage to hit the crossbar from a few yards out.

Rio Ferdinand had one of his best games for quite some time with a commanding performance in the centre of defence and, if he can keep it up, then we might not miss Vidic quite as much as we all fear.

Another bit of good news was the return of Chicharito who came on for Welbeck after an hour. I didn’t realise that he had recovered from his recent injury but clearly he is and will likely take Welbeck’s place when we take on Fulham on Wednesday evening.

Again, like against Wolves, I think we do have to keep things in perspective about the quality of opponent we were dealing with here and the number of chances we failed to put away but this was quite possibly our best all-round performance of the season.

It would probably be an over-statement to suggest that this win made up for the midweek disappointment but it was a great start.

After our early season scoring spree which came at the expense of looking vulnerable at the back in every game until we eventually got found out in the 6-1 mauling by City, we have looked a lot tighter in defence but this came at the expense of goals at the other end.

A balance needed to be found and I think we found it in this match. Clean sheets are great but give me a 3-1 or a 4-1 any day of the week.

The team looked nicely balanced for this one, especially in midfield and I think that what we saw today could well be our best set-up. Nani took the left, Valencia took the right and Carrick and Jones took the centre.

Nani hasn’t been hitting the heights of early season recently but he looked back to his best in this one, grabbed himself two goals and looked a constant threat all afternoon. Valencia played really positively and looked a lot more like his old self. However, the midfield pairing of Carrick and Jones is still relatively untried but it does make a lot of sense.

Carrick comes in for some stick from many United fans and I think that his confidence has perhaps been hit at times during his United career but when in this kind of form, he can produce some fantastic passes and is arguably our best defensive midfielder.

Jones is supposed to be a defender but his attacking instincts are there for all to see and we might just have found that reliable, all-action box-to-box midfielder we haven’t really had since Keane (hey, some people have been comparing him to Duncan Edwards – I think I’m ok to compare him to Keane!). I just think the two balanced each other out very well in this match but, with all due respect to Wolves, perhaps tougher opposition will provide the acid test.

Defensively, it was as expected with Rio and Evans taking the centre and it has to be hoped that Rio can now put a string of appearances together without succumbing to injury because that could well be our partnership for the season now Vidic is unavailable. Smalling and Evra took the full-back positions and did what they had to do (which was mostly just get the ball to Valencia and, perhaps more so, Nani as soon as possible).

Up-front, Fergie went with Rooney and Welbeck and clearly, this is one area of the pitch that still has to be decided upon but with so many of our strikers injured at the moment, Fergie’s decision was probably made for him here.

There will obviously be changes as the season progresses but I just hope that from here on in, the changes will be fewer – perhaps two or at most three per game and that this general line-up is what we see more of.

In any case, if this heralds the start of another goal-spree for Nani and Rooney then the future of the season looks a lot more promising than it did last Wednesday night. Let’s hope we can keep it up.

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.

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?