United vs Liverpool

We’re inviting some of our Twitter friends, and now resident thought sharer Iwan Lehnert, to share some of their ‘Pre and Post Match’ thoughts with us from now on. You can still enjoy my nonsensical, confusing punctuation buffets below their proper good ones…

Iwan (@IwanLehnert):

The manager has stated that Rooney is unfit ahead of a key game. If we had a manager that wasn’t so proficient in fibbing about the fitness of his players, then I’d truly believe him. As such, I don’t. Rooney could well have some involvement on Sunday, and he could well start. That’s just how Ferguson works.  Of course, I could be wrong; this is a double-fake out and Rooney really won’t be available until midweek despite making it seem as if he will be by saying he won’t be. Crafty bugger…..

We’ve been prepared to play without him for a while anyway, so it’s hardly the end of the world if he isn’t available. The problem isn’t that we don’t have sufficient cover, because we clearly have options available to compensate for the lack of our favourite Scouser (not exactly a difficult title to maintain, obviously). The problem lies in that you really want as many options available to you as possible ahead of a derby game. Saying “anything can happen” is a big barrel full of rubbish, because not everything can happen (I doubt that a squad of Liverpudlian killer whales dressed in wetsuits will infiltrate the dressing room and hold RVP hostage, for example), but current form isn’t always the best barometer for measuring just how big games will go. You’d say that given our current position atop the Premier League mountain of Aceness that we’d be well placed to win at home against a team 21 points behind us.

Except it’s not that easy, is it?

Rodgers’ first derby at Anfield ended badly with the ignominy of a 1-2 defeat despite having had the better of the entire game with ten men. He won’t want to lose in the return fixture. Gerrard has pieced together some semblance of form after a difficult start to the season. Suarez has made me eat my words in spectacular fashion by proving that he function without another recognised striker his side and has 15 goals to his name already this season. It’s just not going to be a walkover, and Liverpool will be more than happy to turn up, which is something we’ve not managed to do at Anfield for a long time, despite the result in September. It’ll be tight, tense and marvellously engrossing. With the cup replay on Wednesday and Spurs to come next weekend, it feels as if this season is ready to truly get going.

Brett:

Is Rooney really not available for the game he loves to score in? Can Fergie really push mind games to this kind of nth degree whereby you think it’s mind games but you second guess yourself, third guess yourself and fourth guess yourself, till you forget what it was you were trying to fathom? I’ve forgotten what I was trying to fathom. By the way – totally unrelated – I don’t think Rooney will be fit.

With RVP in the team, Chicha firing and even without those factors, we’d struggle not to beat Liverpool at home. The new SAS although infinitely more annoying than V1.0, which is no mean feat, are nowhere near as threatening and of course, neither would you expect them to be, after just a few days of being. No doubt there will be a few moments where Liverpool, in spite of themselves, will cause us a few problems – probably in some way of our own making.

The knuckleheads will no doubt ensure that the shadows cast by the Evra/Suarez racism issue still linger over this fixture for years to come. I don’t enjoy this game and won’t be watching.

Prediction: 3 – 1

Goals: RVP 2, Danny.