Well, I watched the match against Celtic last night and whilst I am fully aware that it was just a meaningless friendly with the sole objective being to get players match-fit, I must say that it left me very excited for the coming season.

Fergie went with almost exactly the line-up I wished for:-

VDS

Rafael – Evans – Smalling – Fabio

Obertan – Scholes – Fletcher – Giggs

Berbatov – Diouf

If I could have swapped one of those players then I would have had Nani on the right (I believe he is still recovering from injury, however) and switched Obertan over to the left in place of Giggs but the overall fact that Fergie was willing to give these exciting young prospects a chance was great to see.

Even better was that none of them disappointed.

Smalling got caught out and gave away a penalty which led to Celtic’s goal and he will surely learn from that but overall, he didn’t look out of place at all. I really didn’t expect much from him this season but I think we could be seeing a lot more of him in first-team action this season than we initially thought.

Obertan remains a bit raw but he is a threat with pace to burn and the confidence to take a player on. He was one of the better players on the night.

Diouf didn’t get a goal but showed that he can be a handful for defences and did his case no harm. I expect to see more of him this coming season.

Scholes only played the first half but was fantastic and the difference he makes was apparent in the second half when the play seemed a bit disjointed. This, of course, is a good and a bad thing. Good because we have his services for the next 12 months at least. Bad because there was no one else coming on who could come anywhere near matching what he does for the team.

Man of the match by a country mile, however, was Dimitar Berbatov. He was simply head and shoulders above everyone else on the pitch and I really do think that he has finally had a word with himself and he is now determined to go into this season with a “to hell with it” kind of attitude.

He played with a confidence and a “who dares wins” attitude that is perhaps easy in a meaningless friendly but by doing that, he showed what he is capable of and I only hope that he takes it through into the new season proper.

He scored a blinder, set up Welbeck for the second and had a hand in Cleverley’s deflected third.

That United were able to brush Celtic aside so convincingly and several of the really big players weren’t even on show just shows how much quality we have in depth at the moment.