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”.

Wednesday, 7th April 2010 – KO: 19:45

We went into the first leg on a great run of form and I must admit to being extremely confident that we would brush the pesky Germans aside with relative ease.

Thirty seconds at the end of the first leg threw a bucket of cold water over me, and Manchester United’s chances however.

When we went a goal up after barely a minute played, it looked like we could go on to win comfortably and whilst Fergie has been keen to stress that Bayern played extremely well after that, I think we were the architects of our own downfall. We really should have hammered home that advantage and scored a second at some stage in the game. Bayern were there for the taking.

However, we went into our shell somewhat after that first goal and this only gave Bayern confidence to press forward. That they eventually ran out winners was not a major surprise in the end, I think every United supporter saw it coming.

When they scored that second goal, it was of secondary importance at the time as we all looked across to see Wayne Rooney. With Wayne Rooney in the side, overcoming a goal or two deficit would be far more achievable but as we saw him hobbling off, we all knew then that we faced an uphill battle.

Today, however, thoughts of Wayne Rooney have to be put aside. That second goal Bayern scored is very much a problem and the more I think about it, the bigger the problem becomes.

When this match kicks off tonight, Bayern Munich will be “through”. If we score the first goal then for as long as it remains 1-0, we are “through”. However, if Bayern Munich score one, then we need to score three to go through. Not impossible if we had Wayne Rooney but it just seems far less likely without him.

It does seem unlikely that we will keep Bayern out for ninety minutes. Whilst he missed the first leg, their top goalscorer, Arjen Robben should be back for this one and their midfield playmaker Schweinsteiger should also be back for this one. What this all means is that they are likely to be an even bigger attacking threat in this game than they were at home.

Like in the first game, Van Gaal will be looking for an all-action display from his midfielders, putting pressure on our midfielders in order to cut the supply and they will be looking to break and score that all important goal which could well put the tie beyond us.

Quite what we will do is hard to predict. Our passing in the first leg of this tie and the game against Chelsea was absolutely woeful. We were passing to the opposition almost as much as the opposition were passing to the opposition!

Forget the striking dilemma for a moment – the most important aspect Fergie needs to get right for this one is the midfield. We were over-run in the first leg and we were over-run for large chunks against Chelsea at the weekend. That cannot be allowed to happen again here tonight.

I don’t know what the chances are but this would be an ideal game for a fit Owen Hargreaves to play in…

If we can quell the Bayern midfield and cut out the supply to the likes of Robben and Ribery then we can overcome this Bayern side with or without Rooney (and there is still a rumour that won’t go away that he could make the bench for this one) but we are going to have to dig deep into our reserves to pull it off.

My betting predictions of late have been appalling as I seemingly found myself out of sync with Manchester United. When I expect them to play well, they are awful, when I expect a tough game, they thrash the opposition 4-0.

Predicting what will happen here tonight is almost impossible. Will both sides come out cagey knowing that 1-0 for United or even 0-0 for Bayern will be enough to go through or will both sides come out all guns blazing hoping to blow the other away?

I am going to go for the United win again here on the basis that we can’t lose three games on the bounce (I appreciate that a draw is a possible result) and that the United players will show what we all thought before the first leg – that we are simply too good for them. With or without Rooney.

The bet is 3 points United to Win @ 1.8 with bet365.

One hundred and eighty minutes of football played and for all but about twenty of them, United were going through to the semi final. Over the two legs, Bayern were rarely even in this tie and when they went 3-0 down in this game, United really should have had the quality and experience to make absolutely sure of it but somehow we managed to let it slip away.

Rooney made a surprise start and his mere prescence pumped up the crowd and got everyone believing that something special was possible here tonight. When Darron Gibson put us 1-0 up after 3 minutes and Nani put us 2-0 up after 7 minutes, something very special was very much on the cards.

At that stage, we had overcome the first leg deficit and were on our way through.

However, Rooney went into a challenge with Van Buyten on around 20 minutes and at first the fact that Van Buyten appeared to catch Rooney’s dodgy right ankle seemed accidental (although it left Rooney limping from this point on) but when he quite clearly kicked the same right ankle just 12-13 minutes later, there was nothing accidental about it. It was deliberate, it was cynical, he should have been booked – but wasn’t.

We were always a man down in this game as the referee was doing his best to level the match by giving every fifty-fifty in the direction of Bayern and the number of free kicks they won in the first half when there was little, if anything, in the challenges was staggering.

With the benefit of hindsight, Rooney should have come off as soon as he started limping after twenty minutes. We were playing against twelve men from the start and with Rooney nowhere near 100%, we were attempting to do it with ten.

That didn’t stop us taking a 3-0 lead after around 41 minutes though and I was willing the team just to calm themselves down, keep the ball, get to half time, don’t do anything risky but Olic, just as he did in the dying seconds of the first leg somehow squeezed the ball in just before half time.

It was right then that we all realised the situation. A 3-0 lead suddenly looked like nothing. Bayern had scored and to all intents and purposes, there were 45 minutes left to play where effectively, the next goal would win it.

For the first few minutes of the second half, we were strong and looked capable of dealing with whatever Bayern had to throw at us but then Rafael got into a bit of a tussle for the ball with Ribery, he did pull and and tug a bit but Ribery also barged into Rafael – it was fifty-fifty but Bayern probably deserved the free kick.

What happened next was unbelievable as the Bayern players suddenly realised that Rafael had been booked in the first half and suddenly started piling around the referee who had shown no indication that he was about to produce a yellow card, suddenly started to nod to the Bayern players and then produced the yellow card.

I have watched the incident over and over and there is no way on this earth that Rafael should have got a yellow card for that challenge. It wasn’t as if Rafael had been persistently fouling because he hadn’t. If anything, he had been one of the best players on the pitch, getting forward to great effect and breaking up just about every Bayern attack that came his way in the first half.

A few minutes later, Rooney finally had to admit defeat in his attempts to play on with the injury as Fergie shuffled the pack to compensate for the loss of Rafael. Rooney went off, John O’Shea made a welcome comeback from his own injury nightmare and that left us basically without a striker.

We were basically going to try to hang on to the slender one goal aggregate lead for the best part of 35 minutes.

Quite frankly, it was never going to happen because the one thing we needed to do is the one thing that we have been doing poorly for the last few games and that is just keeping hold of the ball.

Bayern came forward with wave after wave of attack, we would nick the ball and then promptly give it back to them within seconds for them to have another go.

This went on for around twenty minutes until finally Robben produced an unbelievably good volley to get Bayern’s second which ultimately proved good enough to send them through on the away goal rule.

It was a sickening way to go out of the competition especially as over the two games, we were the better team but two sloppy goals – one at the end of the first leg and one at the end of half time in this leg, one appalling referee and one ankle injury all conspired against us to cost us a place in the semi-final.

Saturday, 3rd April 2010 – KO: 12:45

The biggest game of the season so far and due to the fact that on this day eight years ago, my youngest son was born, I won’t be able to watch it! I’ll be traipsing around Camelot theme park, desperately trying to over hear any mobile phone conversations about how the game is going.

There will, of course, be one far more important person watching the game who would much rather be playing and we all wish he was playing too – Wayne Rooney – and of all weeks for the thing we have been dreading might happen, it had to happen during this one – perhaps the most pivotal week of our entire season.

Anyway, since Rooney hobbled off against Bayern, Fergie will have been mentally putting together the team and the plan to finally put some daylight between ourselves and Chelsea.

This game has always loomed on the horizon and everytime either team has gone ahead by a few points, there was always the feeling that the title was still in the hands of the other. After this game, one team will have one hand on the title and the other will be relying on them slipping up and with just five games to go after this one, there’s not a lot of room for manoeuver.

There has been some talk that a draw would not be a bad result for us in this one and, of course, it would be better than a defeat and would maintain our slender one point lead but I just feel that with tough games against the likes of Spurs and Manchester City to come, the four point cushion that a win here would give us might be necessary.

Psychologically, it could test Chelsea’s resolve to the max if they were to lose this one. Playing catch-up when you’re one or two points behind is one thing because you know that one round of fixtures can see you go back to the top but playing catch-up from four points behind is a different ball game because at the back of your mind, you know that even if you do beat the likes of Aston Villa 7-1 and do that for the remaining five games, it still might not be enough.

When we met Chelsea earlier in the season, we weren’t playing too well and many people predicted a hammering for United. Chelsea won the game 1-0 but there were more than enough signs from United that we might be back in business and it was generally agreed that we were unlucky not to have taken at least a point from the game.

Since that time, the two teams have been through some good and bad patches but overall, we have fared the better and what has been noticable from this United team is that when the chips are down, in those games when you really do fear we might go down, they seem to rise to the challenge and produce something extra.

Chelsea are not to be discounted lightly, of course. Twelve goals in their last two games is incredible. Especially when you consider that seven of them came against a team who had previously boasted the meanest defence in the League. On their day, Chelsea can rip a team to shreds with goalscorers all over the pitch and if our defence is as shambolic as it was against Bayern for their second goal the other night then we could be in for a torrid afternoon.

However, for as good as their attacking options are, their defence is perhaps a weak spot at the moment and I think we have the players to exploit that, even without Rooney.

It’s going to be a tough encounter and with so much riding on the result, it could get a bit messy out there but we have not lost two games on the bounce so far this season and I don’t think we will start now.

This is a chance for United to get one hand on the Premier League title and put daylight between us and the rest. I think we will respond to that incentive and rise to the occasion again.

I’m going to stick my neck out and go for the United win here on the basis that Chelsea have had their little purple patch in front of goal and we have had our abomination for the week against Bayern. We have a score to settle with Chelsea and Old Trafford is where we do our scoring.

The bet is 2 points United to Win @ 2.62 with Bet365.

Review to follow…

Tuesday, 30th March 2010 – KO: 19:45

The German Bundesliga has always struck me as a funny old League. Wolfsburg were last year’s Champions with Schalke 04 finishing in 8th place. At the time of writing, Schalke 04 lead the Bundesliga whilst Wolfsburg are down in ninth place.

As for Bayern Munich, they won the Bundesliga in 2007/08, finished second last season and are currently in second place again.

What I suppose this shows is that the Bundesliga is mental but Bayern Munich are pretty consistent and over the years have probably been recognised as the standard bearer for German football.

Our own record against Bayern is pretty mixed on the whole. We have met them seven times but have only won one of them (can anyone remember that game? what happened?). We did, of course, have them in the group stage of the Champions League that year and the two games between us produced some pretty decent matches with the two games finishing 2-2 and 1-1.

Bayern got some measure of revenge for the 99 CL Final when they knocked us out of the CL at this stage in 2001 with a 3-1 aggregate scoreline.

All of this is a long, long time ago though and it is over eight years since we last met them.

We go into this game on a great run of form. The 3-1 defeat at the hands of Everton in the Premier League being by far the stand-out result in a pretty long streak of victories.

Bayern, by contrast, come into this game having lost their previous two matches. I also think they can count themselves extremely fortunate to even be in this Champions League quarter final. They won their first leg against Fiorentina 2-1 thanks to a late, late goal which was a mile offside and then lost the return leg 3-2 which of course meant that they scraped through on the away goal rule.

It is worth noting that Fiorentina are currently in eighth place in Serie A, a long, long way behind the likes of AC Milan.

Fergie rested Rooney in the game against Bolton but I fully expect him to be back for this one and Rio Ferdinand who was also rested should resume his partnership with Vidic in the centre of defence.

There have been all kinds of reports that either or both of Ribery and Robben could be missing for this one due to injury but reading between the lines, I would say that Ribery will definitely start and it is Robben who is the doubt.

It’s going to be interesting to see if they do play and who Fergie chooses to put up against them.

Whichever way I look at this one, I can only see Bayern as distinct underdogs here. They do have some great attacking players but so do we. They have some decent midfielders, we have some very good midfielders. They look a bit suspect at the back, we have a very solid defence.

If Bayern can somehow sneak a goal and keep us out for ninety minutes then they have a chance here tonight but as far as I am concerned it all depends on how ambitious Fergie and the boys are here tonight. We could put this one to bed right here tonight and make the return leg almost a formality. Or we could settle for a score draw which is often as good as a win in the away leg.

I think we need to go for this one tonight. With Chelsea now out of the Champions League, they have a slight advantage in the Premier League as their players can have more rest between games. If we can put a couple past Bayern tonight, Fergie might even have the option of giving a couple of breather in the return leg.

The bet is going to be 3 points United to Win @ 2.41 with Canbet.

Review to follow…

Saturday, 27th March 2010 – KO: 17:30

As I type this, we are sitting at the top of the Premier League but by the time this game kicks off, we could find ourselves in third place. That is how tight the Premier League is at the moment.

We seem to be really coming into good form at the moment and the injury situation seems to be improving game by game.

Bolton have been hovering around the relegation zone for much of the season but just seem to have opened up a bit of a gap between themselves and the bottom three. They’ll still need to pick up a few more from their remaining games though and Manager Owen Coyle who was at Burnley when they beat us at their place at the start of the season will be hoping that he can do something similar again here.

The stats go against them though and Bolton’s record against us is not great although they did beat us 1-0 at their place in 2007.

I think we will have too much for Bolton today but I can’t see a big scoreline. Bolton have been conceding very few goals in recent home games (they do ship a fair few away from home though). The shocker against Everton aside, our own defence has been very mean home and away recently.

I can see a 1-0 or possibly 2-0 win for United here but I would be surprised if there was much more in it than that.

What this means is that picking a decent bet is tricky. The bookies seem to think that this will be a 2-1 win for United but I am not convinced Bolton will score.

I think there’s some value in going for the Under bet here.

The bet is 2 points Under 2.5 goals @ 2.1 with Paddy Power.

I think this game, more than any other, typified Manchester United’s season a whole.

Some quarters have been suggesting that we are a “one man team” with Rooney “carrying” us this season.

Well, there was no Rooney today as Fergie rested him citing a “bruised foot” as the reason. Rio Ferdinand was also rested.

There was nothing particularly spectacular in the game as Bolton made us work extremely hard for everything in a typically fesity encounter. The fact that this game ended with no one booked remains a mystery as there were tackles flying in all over the place and I’m pretty sure half of the players from both sides will have been nursing a few bumps, bruises and sore heads on Sunday morning.

But this is what United have been doing better than anyone else this season. When a fight is called for, we have eleven warriors on the pitch ready to step up to the plate.

And despite nothing spectacular happening we still somehow manage to come away with a 4-0 victory.

The Bolton people will be wondering, “How the hell did that happen?”

Most agreed that the 4-0 scoreline “flattered” United and Bolton didn’t deserve to come away on the end of a drubbing like that.

This is the difference between United and Bolton though. The battle is the means to the end not the end in itself. Bolton seemed to think that working hard and battling hard was all that was needed. United have the focus to compete in the battle and still maintain focus on the ultimate aim which is to win the game.

When that little bit of extra quality was needed in the final third, we were able to produce it.

When Bolton produced that bit of quality in the final third, Van Der Sar was equal to it and pulled off two magnificent saves to deny them.

Having said all this, the Under bet was looking good with the score 0-0 after 37 minutes and just 1-0 after 67 minutes before a three goal blitz within the space of 13 minutes made a mockery of the prediction.

Berbatov was again given the role of lone-striker but he was dropping so deep and going so wide on occasions that the formation looked more like 4-6-0 for much of the game. He still managed to bag a brace and probably should have had a hat-trick but he lost his boot when through on goal and ended up slipping at the crucial stage.

Nani provided two assists, one for Berby and one for Gibson after some great play bamboozled his defender and left him enough time and space to get the ball to his teammates.

Fletcher was again immense in the midfield and Vidic was the unpassable wall in the heart of the defence.

I could go on an mention every single player here because they all did their jobs brilliantly.

A one man team? Don’t make me laugh.

Saturday, 21st March 2010 – KO: 13:30

Well, what a season it has been for Liverpool. Barely able to string a couple of wins together, they have lost to just about everyone at some stage and are out of the running in all competitions except the Europa League.

They do appear to have found a little bit of form of late however and have won their last six games in all competitions.

Not that any of this really matters. Liverpool could come to Old Trafford on the back of ten straight defeats and still play like superheroes for 90 minutes.

We go into this match with a serious chance of winning the Premier League again which would make it an historic four in a row and nineteen titles in total – one more than Liverpool.

Liverpool will say that they need the points here today and that it is just one more game but preventing us from overtaking their tally will provide as big an incentive as any for them to do well here today.

Fergie has also said that the 4-1 drubbing Liverpool dished out to us last season was forgotten the week after but I don’t think he’s fooling anyone. He won’t have forgotten and neither will the players. Vidic has probably been at counselling sessions ever since that day.

I’m not going to go into too much detail here on this one. It is not really a game I would like to bet on anyway. One to watch, I think.

Apart from the usual suspects, Fergie has no new injuries and it will be interesting to see if Giggs plays any part in this one.

Liverpool also have no major injury problems – not even Gerrard and Torres (surprise, surprise).

I think this will be the usual hard fought encounter, the odds red card or two wouldn’t come as a major surprise either.

We go into this game on an incredible run of not only winning our home games but we have done so without conceding a goal in all but one of the last ten (1-0 defeat to Villa in December).

I think that little record might go today and whilst we should win the game, I think Liverpool will also score.

The bet is going to be 3 points OVER 2.5 goals @ 2.05 with Bet365.

I’m writing this review over a week after the game because of various computer problems (see this post) so events aren’t as fresh in my mind as usual.

Anyway, United got off to the worst possible start when Torres put Liverpool ahead after just five minutes with a terrific header from a great cross from Kuyt.

Parity was restored just seven minutes later however when United were awarded a penalty.

I have to admit, it didn’t look like a penalty in the strictest sense but I think United deserved it for the cynical nature of Mascherano’s foul. Valencia was on the ball and was bursting towards the Liverpool penalty area but Mascherano was all over him, tugging and pulling from behind which undoubtedly affected Valencia’s run.

At the last second, just as the two were just about on the line, Mascherano let go of Valencia but Valencia took his opportunity to go down in the box. The referee pointed to the spot and, quite laughably, Mascherano pointed to a point some three yards outside the box as if to say, “But I fouled him there!”

No attempt to hide the fact that he had cheated and was deliberately fouling the player in order to prevent a goal-scoring opportunity, just an attempt to make the referee see he had done it outside the box.

Anyway, Rooney stepped forward to take the penalty and Reina saved it brilliantly only for Rooney to tuck in the rebound.

The rest of the half was quite uneventful really with neither team really troubling the other greatly. After the blistering start of the opening fifteen minutes or so, it was perhaps no surprise that the tempo dropped a notch.

The breakthrough came for United on sixty minutes when Fletcher put in a good cross which Park bravely headed home.

With half an hour still to play, there were plenty of nervy moments to endure but we held out.

This was one of those games that our title rivals probably felt that we would drop points in and probably not even the most die-hard United fan would have counted on three points from this one, especially with last season’s 4-1 drubbing still fresh in the memory.

However, we did come through it and now sit at the top of the Premier League.

Sunday, 14th March 2010 – KO 13:30

This will surely be a case of all systems go. We don’t have another game for a full week (although it’s a big one… Liverpool) so I don’t see why most of the players who destroyed AC Milan in midweek won’t be involved here.

Sure, Fergie will shuffle the pack a bit (Neville and Scholes being the likeliest to stand down) but I expect the team to remain largely the same but with Carrick in midfield and perhaps Berby partnering Rooney upfront again.

Fulham handed us one of the most disappointing defeats of the season when they stuffed us 3-0 at Craven Cottage towards the back end of last year but it has to be said, as good as Fulham were on the day, it was one of those games where our defence was decimated and Fergie played De Laet, Fletcher and Carrick in defence!

I’m not going to analyse this one further. I fully expect us to win this one and win it pretty convincingly. We could ever reverse the score we suffered at Fulham’s place.

We are coming in on this one on the back of a great European victory whilst Fulham are coming into it on the back of a bit of a mauling at Juventus. We played our game at home, Fulham travelled to Italy. We played on Wednesday whilst Fulham played on Thursday. All factors in our favour.

The bet is 5 points United -1.5AH @ 1.69 with Canbet

Roy Hodgson was quite critical of his side’s defending following their 3-1 defeat at the hands of Juventus in midweek and his players seemed to take this on board and defended stoutly for the entire first half.

The problem was that they forgot to attack.

From this point of view, this game was very similar to the AC Milan game as United penned Fulham back over and over again only to be thwarted by either our own final ball or a great last ditch tackle from a Fulham player.

However, it was clear that Fulham could not keep it up for a full 90 minutes as United continued to pile on the pressure.

The lead came seconds after the restart as Fulham were perhaps caught napping and Rooney knocked in from a strange Nani pass which just seemed to arrive at his feet through a crowd of players.

The second for Rooney came from the new look Dimitar Berbatov who took on two players, beat them with skill and pace before slipping it into Rooney’s feet for him to sweep into the net.

The third was for Berbatov and he deserved it for his performance today as he stooped low to head bravely into the bottom corner.

All in all, this game showed just how solid we are looking in defence now that Vidic and Ferdinand are back. There was only one scare when Zamora found himself clean through but Vidic somehow managed to get back and take it from him just as he was about to pull the trigger.

Other than that, it all seemed very comfortable for United. My only complaint was with the referee Mike Jones who I thought was awful. Danny Murphy was arguably Fulham’s best player who, in between fouling our players, actually played some good stuff and produced some great passes but he got away with far too much before eventually being shown the yellow card.

Conversely, our own Valencia was booked for a totally innocuous challenge (tv replays couldn’t even show conclusively that he had actually made contact with his man).

There were one or two other decisions which left me baffled and on one occasion he was going to give a goal kick for a clear corner before, presumably, his linesman put him right.

Anyway, things can’t be all bad if the only thing you’re moaning about is the ref!

Wednesday, 10th March 2010 – KO: 19:45

It has been over two weeks since we played at Old Trafford and what a game to come back on – it doesn’t get much better than this.

I have watched a replay of the first match a couple of times now and I must say, we can consider ourselves quite fortunate to be taking a lead into this game. With a bit more luck and a bit more composure in front of goal, Milan could have blown us away by half-time.

However, we rode our luck before coming back very strongly in the second half. When we went 3-1 up, it looked very much like this tie was as good as over but Seedorf’s clever little backheel in the closing stages gave Milan some chance that they can overturn the deficit.

It is going to be very interesting to see how Milan start in this one. They started extremely brightly in the first leg and I think we were a bit surprised by that. They do need to win here tonight and probably need to score at least three goals in the process (although a 2-0 win would also take them through) and so they won’t be able to mess around too much, they will need to attack.

If the first leg showed one thing it is that attack is their strength however so I would not say that they face mission impossible in terms of getting the goals they require. The problem they face is getting those goals whilst keeping us out at the same time. I simply cannot see that happening and sooner or later we are going to score a goal and if we get one, we could get two as the Milan heads start to drop.

I think Valencia is going to be our key player here tonight. He made a big difference when he came on in the first leg and the little triangle between Berby, Valencia and Rooney has brought several goals recently (I do hope that Berby will play alongside Rooney here tonight).

At the back, we have Rio and Vidic and whilst I am not filled with confidence that they can keep Milan out for 90 minutes, if they can keep them out for 60 minutes, it would probably be enough for Milan to start getting desperate and frustrated, opening gaps for us to exploit in the process.

Evra is a cert for the left and it only remains to be seen whether Rafael is chosen on the right again. He was given a bit of a torrid time in the first leg by Ronaldinho and I do wonder if young Rafael was a little star-struck. Ronaldinho must have been a hero for the young Da Silva’s when they were growing up in Brazil. To find himself actually playing against him must have been a bit surreal for the lad.

Personally, with Valencia on the right as opposed to Nani then I think the right side defence is better covered so I see no reason why Rafael shouldn’t be chosen again here tonight.

The midfield is going to be interesting. Fergie might go for the five man midfield but with Carrick suspended, Scholes playing the whole match on Saturday and Giggs still injured (as well as Anderson), options are somewhat limited.

I can see a good old 4-4-2 with Valencia, Fletcher, Scholes and Park with Fergie looking to bring Scholes off after 60 minutes or so to be replaced by Gibson.

Berby and Rooney up front.

Fergie was bullish after the first leg and insisted that we can make all the goal permutations and their implications irrelevant by just winning this game but it remains to be seen if the team can match Fergie’s warcry on the pitch. Personally, I think we can. Some of our best performances and results of the season have come in the games where nerves and pressure were supposed to get the better of us.

However, I am always wary of backing a team that doesn’t actually need to win so I am more tempted to go for a more neutral market in this one.

I think a lot depends on the first ten minutes of this game. We do have a habit of conceding early goals in Europe but we could also come out all guns blazing and score one of our own early on. If either team scores early then anything could happen here tonight as the whole dynamic of the tie would change.

If neither team scores early then I can see a low-scoring affair. It is hard to imagine Milan keeping us out for 90 minutes but we have to remember that we don’t actually need to score at all.

What you often find in these two legged ties is that both games rarely follow the same pattern. Everyone is expecting another goal fest here tonight but neither team really wants to get into that kind of game. Milan are looking for 2-0, we are looking for 1-0.

For this reason, I am going to go for the Under bet here because I think it offers some value.

The bet is 2 points Under 2.5 Goals @ 2.00 with Bet365.

Well, this was a weird one. AC Milan caused us a few problems in the first leg and, needing to score a couple of goals here, everyone expected them to come out all guns blazing just as they did in the first game but they didn’t.

Even when Rooney put us 1-0 up after just 13 minutes there didn’t seem to be much coming from AC Milan. By the time Rooney put us 2-0 up just after half-time, the tie was as good as over and it would have been kinder for the referee to just blow the final whistle there and then.

Much has been made of the fact that AC Milan Manager, Leonardo, did not have any Managerial experience before he took on such a high profile job and this game perhaps emphasised the vast gulf between him and Fergie in terms of experience.

I’m sure Leonardo came with some kind of game plan but the players were simply not able to pull it off before Fergie had learned some major lessons from the first game and anticipated and nullfied AC Milan’s likely plan.

For a start, Ji Sung Park was given the job of sticking to Pirlo like glue and he did that job so well that I wouldn’t be surprised if Park didn’t tuck Pirlo up in bed last night and wake him up with a slice of toast and a glass of orange juice this morning.

Next up, Fergie went with the experience of Neville at right back instead of Rafael and Ronaldinho was nowhere near as influential in this game as he had been in the first. Of course, he had one or two moments but Neville was by far the most effective of the two.

And then we come to Rooney. You can make all the plans you like to nullfiy him (and there were some reports prior to the game that the AC Milan camp were confident that they had found the solution) but he is simply unplayable at the moment. Two great goals at the worst possible times (as far as Milan were concerned) and any plans they had were blown clean out of the water.

As the game descended into little more than an exhibition match, we were treated to the David Beckham sideshow as Leonardo brought him on after around an hour. Personally, I felt he should have brought him on much sooner than that. Milan lacked spark all night and needed a lift. Beckham might just have been able to provide it if he had been brought on with the game still alive but by the time he came on, Milan needed to score five and that was never going to happen.

The vast majority of Old Trafford rose to their feet to applaud Beckham as he took to the pitch.

Fergie pulled off another masterpiece of gamesmanship when he took Rooney off just a few moments later however. It brought a halt to the Beckham adulation and forced the crowd to celebrate the REAL hero around here these days… Wayne Rooney.

Anyway, the game plodded on and it was almost too cruel to watch as we dismantled AC Milan and exposed them for what they are: a team of ageing has-beens. It was all rather sad really but I kept remembering how they had destroyed us 3-0 a few years ago so to go one goal better was all the sweeter.

As for the bet, I am annoyed with myself. I was tempted to go for the Manchester United -1.5 Asian Handicap which I noticed was paying out at 3.0 but, perhaps because I am on a losing run of bets, I didn’t have the confidence. I felt that the most we could hope for in this one was 2-0 but there was always a nagging question of us being able to keep Milan out for 90 minutes. I didn’t think for a minute that we could win 4-0 and, to be quite honest, do it so easily.

And so ends AC Milan’s Champions League Campaign for 2009/10 but we march on into the Quarter Final and can look forward to next week’s draw.

It is an open draw and we could be paired up against any of the remaining teams. The only thing that is certain about it is that we won’t have to welcome Ronaldo back for at least another 12 months.

Saturday, 6th March 2009 – KO: 17:30

When we met Wolves at our place just before Christmas last year, Mick McCarthy all but conceded defeat before a ball was kicked by naming a drastically changed side. We won 3-0. Wolves were handed a £25,000 suspended fine for effectively breaching Premier League rules.

I think most people understood what McCarthy did but my own feeling was that it could set a dangerous precedent and the Premier League were right to impose some from of punishment (even if it was only a token gesture).

I don’t expect any such capitulation from Wolves in this one though. Three months on and Wolves find themselves very much in the relegation battle Mick McCarthy was so desperate to avoid.

The League is so congested down there at the moment that a point or three here and there can catapult a relegation threatened team into lower mid-division in no time.

What will encourage them as well is the fact that we seem to have a little bit of an injury crisis again at the moment and a massive Champions League match coming up against AC Milan.

McCarthy will be hoping that Fergie and at least a couple of the players will have one eye on this match and take this one lightly.

He might hope for that but if there’s one person who will not be taking this one lightly it is Fergie. We have some very tough matches ahead of us and it is highly likely that we will drop points in those and so it is imperative that we go for the jugular in the ones we would normally be expected to win with comparative ease.

With all due respect to Wolves, this is one of those games.

I expect Fergie will put out the strongest possible team he can for this one with a view to getting a healthy lead fairly early so that he can bring a few off as soon as possible.

I think the team will be Van Der Sar, Rafael, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Nani, Fletcher, Carrick, Valencia, Rooney, Berbatov.

If we can get ahead to the tune of 2-0, he will bring off Valencia, put on Park, move Nani to the right with Park taking up the left. Bring off Rooney and put on Diouf. Ferdinand might also be replaced by Brown (I believe Evans picked up a knock in midweek).

How’s THAT for a prediction?

(If that comes true, I will eat my socks live on Youtube – I have to keep my hat because of a previous promise I made regarding Arsenal not winning the League!)

The worst thing that can happen here is for Wolves to take the lead as that could scupper a lot of plans. The best thing that could happen is for us to take a 2-0 lead before half-time.

I fancy that we can pull off the latter and that the changes Fergie will make at that point will not weaken the team to the degree that we end up conceding a goal.

We should win this one and it is a case of by how many as far as I’m concerned.

However, I am going to go back into the Corner market for this one. Games between us tend to have a lot of corners and I see no reason why this should change here tonight.

The bet is 2 points over 11 Corner @ 1.85 with Bet365.

Well, as half-expected Rooney didn’t play a part in this one and Berbatov was chosen to play upfront alone and I must admit, he was quite a revelation up there on his own and probably did more chasing around in this game than the rest of his United career put together. Having said that, there has been a bit more donkey work from Berby in recent games so maybe the penny has finally dropped that he can’t just rely on teammates to do it all for him.

Anyway, Wolves made things very tough for us here and if anything, they had the better of the chances. Vokes’ miss in the dying moments in particular will give him nightmares for the rest of his life should Wolves eventually get relegated by one point.

However, with very little going our way (even one of the linesmen must have had a tenner on Wolves because he gave us nothing), we had to rely on a solid defence and one or two lapses aside, the re-united Rio and Vidic dealt with everything very well and it is good to see them back for the most crucial stage of the season.

The difference in the end was the class of Scholes. I watched a replay on ESPN and Chris Waddle said that the Wolves defender unfortunately slipped as Scholes was lining up his shot but I don’t think that was the case at all. Scholes dropped him on his backside and committed the other Wolves defender with a great little shimmy before driving past the diving keeper.

Diouf got an hour in this game and after bigging him up for quite some time now, I was disappointed with him really. He just seemed to be trying too hard to me. For the reserves, he is cool and calm. The step up into the pressure cooker atmosphere of the first team is proving to be a little bit too much for him at the moment.

Hopefully Fergie can have a word with him because I do think he’s got it (his movement to create space for himself was brilliant) but he just needs to relax more and stop beating himself up after every missed opportunity.

As for the bet. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were just six corners in the whole game which must be the worst corner count of the season (we only managed four ourselves).

Still, the name of the game today was three points and whilst we rode our luck on occasion (helped by the fact that Wolves have been woeful in front of goal all season) we achieved that objective to go back to the top of the table.

Sunday, 28th February 2009 – KO: 15:00

This of course is now the third time we have played Villa this season and it has to be said that so far they have had the upper hand and they will really fancy their chances. Any notion that Fergie might mess about with the team here and play a few youngsters is nonsense as far as I’m concerned.

I think we will have to be at our very best to win this one.

The one thing I am not expecting here is a goal-fest. Our two League games have produced just three goals between them and Villa and United are officially the two meanest defences in the Premier League.

Add to this the fact that there have been very few goals scored in any of our Wembley appearances in recent years and I think it all adds up to another low scoring affair here today.

As to the team Fergie will pick, I can see nothing other than a full strength line-up.

Van Der Sar, Rafael, Brown, Vidic, Evra, Valencia, Fletcher, Carrick, Park, Berbatov and Rooney.

The big decision is the formation – will he go with Scholes and drop Berby for a 4-5-1 formation?

I think Villa will go with the 4-5-1 formation with Agbonlahor causing havoc alone upfront so we might need bodies in the middle of the park so that we don’t get over-run so it might be that Fergie goes with the 4-5-1 too.

I don’t really have much more to say about this match, I think it is going to be a close one and the first goal could be crucial. Villa have already proved that they have what it takes to beat us but if we’re firing and fully focused thenwe certainly have what it takes to beat them.

I’m going to keep my betting on this one to a minimum and bet only on the belief that this will be a low scoring affair.

The bet is 2 points UNDER 2.5 goals @ 1.92 with Bet365.

Fergie sprang his usual surprise by leaving Rooney on the bench and going with Berbatov and Owen up front for this one. That Van Der Sar was replaced in goal by Kuszcak was less of a surprise. The rest of the team was pretty much as expected although Evans was restored to the centre of defence alongside Vidic.

The omission of Rooney obviously raised a few eyebrows but the partnership of Owen and Berbatov worked well while it lasted.

The game was barely three minutes old when Agbonlahor found himself through with only Vidic for company, he ran quite some distance with the ball with Vidic doing his usual grabbing and mauling and this eventually led to Vidic pulling Agbonlahor’s shirt and dragging him to the ground in the penalty area.

The referee immediately blew for the penalty but did not show Vidic a card. Having now seen this incident several times, I do believe that he was right to do so. Agbonlahor never really shook Vidic off and at the moment that Vidic pulled him down, Agbonlahor had started to go back to his outside and, technically, at that precise point, was going away from goal.

Milner scored the penalty to givehis team a dream start.

The lead didn’t last long however after some great work from Berbatov saw him dispossess the usually excellent Richard Dunne. Dunne was not to be outdone (!?) though and got back to tackle Berbatov in kind. His tackle only saw the ball come infield in the general direction of the ever-ready Michael Owen who did not need a second invitation and swept the ball first time into the far corner.

From this point onwards, Manchester United just seemed to get stronger and stronger whilst Villa’s grip on the game seemed to be slipping.

Just before half-time, Michael Owen found himself through on goal again but just as he might have been about to pull the trigger, he felt his hamstring and that was his game over. Desperately bad luck for Michael Owen but it did see Rooney take to the field as his replacement.

Much of what Rooney did was not great to be quite honest. He was giving the ball away and generally found little success with anything he tried to do.

However, he was not to be denied as he scored with his head (again) in the 74th minute from another great cross from Valencia.

Villa piled on the pressure in the closing stages but could not quite make the breakthrough and so we ran out 2-1 winners and the first trophy of 2010 is now in Manchester United’s cabinet.

Martin O’Neill was not happy at the end of the game because the referee did not send off Vidic and I had to laugh when I saw one or two interviews with the players who felt that the incident was the “turning point” in the game.

Quite how an incident that happens in the third minute can be classed as a turning point is beyond me. Especially when that turning point results in you taking the lead!