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.