I said yesterday that I couldn’t possibly see how Ferdinand could appeal the charge because the offence looked quite blatant.

However, Manchester United have appealed against it.

What this means is that Fergie either has some very compelling reason for why Rio appeared to try and knock Fagan’s head off or he is putting an awful lot more importance on tonight’s Manchester City game than he puts on the Premier League matches against Aston Villa and possibly Everton.

By appealing, he can play in tonight’s game but his ban will take him through the Arsenal, Portsmouth and Aston Villa games.

If the FA decide that the appeal is frivolous, then the ban could be extended to four games which would mean that Rio also misses the Everton game.

Under any other circumstances, you would expect Fergie to take Rio’s ban on the chin, make it start tonight and then he would miss just two Premier League matches (Arsenal and Portsmouth) but tonight’s match is not only a semi-final but a semi-final against Moneybags City.

As I say, perhaps Fergie is privy to some information that has not yet been released to us. If he isn’t then this looks like a bit of a gamble to me.