With United going down 3-0 to Fulham this afternoon, it has left us three points behind Chelsea who now have a game in hand (they play West Ham tomorrow).

The game will be played at Upton Park so I am hoping against hope that West Ham who are now practically in bottom place of the league will be able to summon something from somewhere and prevent Chelsea from opening a six point gap.

You have to admit though that this looks unlikely.

It looks very much like Chelsea will be six points clear tomorrow night and with the clubs piling up behind us, even our second place is in some jeopardy right now.

No one at Old Trafford will be throwing in the towel though but this looks like watching a proud boxing champion who has broken his right hand and his left eye is starting to swell shut.

Chelsea have had to sit and watch us win the last three Premier League titles (not to mention a certain Champions League title) and they want it back again.

No team has ever won four titles in a row and there are all kinds of reasons for this.

For one, no team remains the same for four years in a row, there are always players coming and going and it requires enormous skill and judgement from the manager to assess when the time is right to let players go (if indeed he has a choice in the matter) and when the time is right to bring new blood in.

Fergie has been the master of this over the last seventeen years or so but obviously he has not won the league every one of those years, he has, however recognised that sometimes it is necessary to take a step back in order to pursue a different way of going forward.

The other thing that needs to go with you when everything between yourself and your opponent is pretty much equal is a little bit of luck.

When John Terry slipped taking that penalty after a Champions League campaign that could not seperate the two teams, we got the luck and on that occasion it proved the deciding factor.

As things stand today, luck seems to have finally deserted us.

Without our first choice defensive line-up, we normally look to the backup players but now even those are injured and so we have to weaken our midfield in order to put a defence on the field.

We got away with it against Wolves because they had thrown in the towel before a ball was even kicked (I wonder now if Mick McCarthy wishes he had given it more of a go) but against hungry, dangerous and quality sides such as Villa and Fulham, we have been found out.

The good news is that we don’t play again until the 27th December and hopefully by then, one or two players might be fit to start again, the other good news is that the game is against Hull and with all due respect, they are not exactly Chelsea.

The bad news is that by the time we meet Hull, we could be nine points behind Chelsea and in third place behind Arsenal or Villa (the good news is that they play each other before we kick off against Hull!)

It would take a very optimistic Red Devil to predict a Premier League title from this situation but we have a few highly winnable games ahead of us and by the time they run out, we should be back to more or less full strength and the second half of the season has always tended to seperate the men from the boys.

Believe!