Iwan (@IwanLehnert):

Monday was almost an example of the start of the season in reverse; we started well, built up a head of steam, took the lead comfortably, gave away a silly goal and looked nervous. Just as well the result is mostly the same. Reading didn’t make it easy, but that first goal was looking inevitable and we deserved to go through. Potentially facing Chelsea five days after the second leg of the Real tie….it’s the sort of week that you live for, isn’t it? It could be amazing, or it could be heartbreaking. Or a bit of both. Or a lot of both. ENOUGH GUESSING.

Nani’s had a lot of press inches dedicated to him this week, most of which hasn’t necessarily been encouraging. If he wants to go, and the right offer comes in, then I think it’s a case of cutting our losses (assuming that he doesn’t have a blinding end to the season). Fact is that I don’t hate the guy and I rate his skills, but he is woefully inconsistent, and there comes a point where that just isn’t good enough when you’ve spent six seasons with a club. The boss has played it perfectly, offering him a new contract whilst reasoning that if Nani wants first team football, then he needs to be worthy of it. No one’s going to hand him a place. He can do it, no doubt about it. Whether or not he will is a different story (called Whether Or Not Nani Will Actually Produce Consistent Performances, fyi).

Not looking forward to this one. Draws with City and Spurs along with a win at Stamford Bridge are not easy to come by when you’re 12^th, let alone 20^th. QPR have had a fortnight to get over that mauling in Swansea, and Redknapp will have spent a good chunk of time figuring out how he can stop us from scoring. It’s been great watching Cesar in the league this season, even if it is one of the most transparent deals you’re likely to come across. I still think that there’s enough quality in this side that their last league win really shouldn’t have been in December, but I doubt that that’ll change this weekend. They’ll want to play for a draw, and we need to be ready for it. I’m not overjoyed at the prospect of a team containing Park and Fabio being relegated, but it’ll have to be the most miraculous escape for them to survive because every team around them has more to offer.

I just wrote a stirring paragraph where I decided that it was worth throwing caution to the wind and predicting when we could start believing in a 20^th league title. Then I deleted it. Get to 31 games, then we’ll talk.

Brett:

I’m sometimes wary of teams who are in a bit of a rut: the transitorial (is that a word? – let’s say yes.) nature of football dictates that at some point, most struggling teams will “get that one big result” that breaths renewed life into their flagging hopes. This could be one of those times. Oh no, wait, they did that thing the other week against City. Phew! An away banker then. Oh no, wait, but then they nosedived back into the rut again. I can’t keep up.

We’re in as good a shape as we have been all season – which isn’t always saying something -, but the potential swing in momentum, if we were to leave Loftus Road without all three points at this particular point, could be massive. Why now and not next week, or last week? Next week is too late, last week was too early?! Hey! I find it hard enough remembering all my thoughts, without remembering the reasons for them aswell* *Thanks Mike Skinner.

Will Nani be thrust into action after his FA Cup exploits (Did I just say that? Who am I?)? Why not. Tony’s still doing his best impression of someone who doesn’t want to be a footballer anymore.

QPR have, of course,  got players who can wound us, but we’ve got players who can can do them some real damage … and David de Gea.

Prediction: 1 – 2

Goals: Carrick, Nani (Come on! As if anyone ever really gets goalscorers right anyway.)

]]> https://bifurcated.co.uk/manchester-united-chitty-chatty/bi-a-click-of-paint/bi-polar-pictoral-review-players-201112-season/feed 0 https://bifurcated.co.uk/manchester-united-chitty-chatty/features/my-winter-of-disconnect https://bifurcated.co.uk/manchester-united-chitty-chatty/features/my-winter-of-disconnect#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:04:39 +0000 http://bifurcated.co.uk/?p=3936 From an objective point of view, this season football has nudged itself ever closer towards a warped manifestation of utopia. It has lunged violently between menacingly good and astonishingly bad, intermittently grotesque and overtly sentimental. Aesthetes of stats and figures, connoisseurs of footy ‘lols’, perpetuaters of intellectual discourse, bastions of good old fashioned tribalism have all been nourished from the seasons crop.

But how can you ever look at something objectively when you care so much about it? Sure, you can present an argument by placing yourself consciously in the position of the objective viewer; you can present yourself as the equanimous being that, in general, you are, but the bias, subjective opinions that shape your character – for better and worse – will eat at you, always there reminding you that we’re not all the same and that you can’t truthfully sympathise or empathise with every Other. The saying, ‘people not like us, are people just like us’ is a kick in the teeth for you – you, who wants things to be a considerable amount better. Of course when I say ‘you’, I don’t mean the you reading this, I don’t mean ‘you’ plural either: I mean me.

If you’d have asked me before this winter, I’d have estimated that I probably wouldn’t ‘get on with’ about fifty percent of football fans – ask me now and it’s more than double that. If you’d have asked me in November how I thought United were doing, I would no doubt have spoken with optimism, maybe even excitement; I do love football, although sometimes  through gritted teeth. During the past three months though things have changed.

Players can’t be all things at once, but I do expect them, by the time they reach their mid-twenties, to have got to grips with the concept of gravity – something Park and Young for very different reasons haven’t yet done.  Players have to be given time, but I don’t expect Phil Jones, The Twins and Anderson to play the role of water, to consistency’s oil. Players aren’t machines, but I don’t expect Giggsy and  Rooney to take their winter-break mid-match. Michael Carrick is okay with me (now), but I don’t expect to be saying he’s been one of our stand-out players by default.  There’s something missing.  Without the added incentive of trying to claim the nineteenth title, or the anticipation of  a summer of  rebuilding that never happened (or having Berbatov to eye romantically), this season, more than the last, has been punctuated with uncertainty and not in a good way. I don’t think it’s ‘enjoyable’ winning a title because of the inherent failings of other teams. *cue montage of me this time last year saying a similar … oh, wait it’s been recorded over by me addressing myself and reminding myself I’ve done this joke now three times in previous posts,  so should perhaps get a life*

I’ve heard it said that we ‘use our squad well’ and that ‘SAF’s man-management is second to none’. I understand that we have some ‘noisy neighbours’ and that ‘we have the experience at this vital stage’. It’s apparent that ‘new fans are spoilt’ and that ‘we’re not arrogant, just better’. On it goes, arbitrary statements heaped upon platitudes. It’s exactly these cliches that are at the root of my more general malaise, not necessarily the individual issues with the players themselves in the paragraph above, but the way we are ‘expected’ to rationalise and articulate our own personal opinions. It’s always the same. How many times can the same people say the same things about the same things. If we’re supposed to reset at the beginning of every season and re-enter the same discussions again and again, then I apologise as I was obviously not copied in on that memo, and p.s. – I quit.

"Thank god for that ... Oh, it's another 'joke'"

At some point during this winter I became aware of how, from my own perspective, the way fans talk about football has entered a maddening era of ennui, with the same repeating sequels. I’m not just referring to the fans with their insipid mantras of f*ckwittery, it’s also the self-anointed leaders of the meritocracy who spend an inappropriate amount of time ridiculing others whose interactions with the game they perceive as worthless. It’s also the pseudo-moralists, the knuckle-draggers and the affected, all jostling for position in a vacuous game of ‘vapid comment jenga’ ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

It’s not just this. I’m also disheartened and offended by the United bloggers who regularly use abhorrent sexist language, the United bloggers whose public face occasionally slips, showing them up as the bigots they are. The members of the ‘#MUFC Twitter family’ who are the vehicles for the above and more (that’s not to say this is specific to United fans, they just happen to be my main frame of reference). I’ve never felt so Other within a group to which I thought, to varying degrees, I belonged (as if it weren’t enough taking the regular slaps in the face that football delivers unapologetically).  But then, as Jiddu Krishnamurti reminds me, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.

A couple of weeks of moping about with a face like a smacked arse ensues until a fella on the radio reminds me that the human condition is to rationalise later. My girlfriend reminds me that there is no era of ennui, just permanent ennui. A.C Grayling reminds me that taking a strong disliking to things, especially Others, is externalised anxiety and worse still, inflamed antipathy. Peter Crouch scores THAT goal. I go to see a talk with Tony Benn and am buoyed by tales of the agitators of history, not that I’m suggesting my little issue with football can be measured against the political struggles of the socialist movement, or the historical plight of the proletariat …  who am I kidding, yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing, which in itself is ridiculous. I’m ridiculous. And I find myself reconnecting piecemeal.

... And who's been eating my goals?

Finally, I go to a book talk with Alain de Botton and he tells us how we should approach things like we’re diners at a buffet cart. I like the buffet cart analogy. I don’t have to fill my plate with the whole spread, I can surreptitiously wrap some in a tissue and dispose of it later, or even spit it back out, rejecting it completely. It’s my choice.

Winter becomes spring.

Okay, now, I was doing this introduction to this post that went something like this: 

It’s now been given the backing of my imagination and roughly 100% of one persons asked, that if you were to pit our crocked XI against our available accidents waiting to happen, they’d give ‘em a right good stuffin’. I didn’t actually imagine the match, the details of the game I mean, but we’ve come this far … so, as a matter of interest De Gea was in goal for the crocks, on account of his plumbeousity of the feet, which renders him incapable of jumping for crosses at any given time, and the captain was Fletch.  ‘Whhhhaaaattt!  Where’s Vida?’  I hear my imagination ask on your behalf.  Well, contrary to popular belief, he hasn’t chewed his own arm off to fashion a splint for his knee, no, he’s househunting in Spain. Truth bullets my friends.

Should I go fixed rate, or variable…?

Okay, nothing spectacular there, just the usual crap that drives the invisible wedge between myself and roughly three thirds of the online United community.  Anyway, so, it continued as you might expect, with the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh paragraphs, with slightly less of the above and an attempt to steer the post towards some kind of point…

I think it’s a popular misnomer that Fergie ‘sorts players out’. One of the strengths of his management, I bel19ve, is that what he actually attempts to do for the most part – with wildly varying degrees of success – is to channel a player’s natural instincts towards a positive outcome for the club (and in a round about way, himself). I’m not suggesting any Derren Brown sorcery here, that’s Phelan’s department,  just good ol’ individual player management.  Of course the upshot of nurturing aggression, externalising self-destruction, encouraging those natural instincts is: it brings risk.  Living by the sword, reaps rewards – it can also leave you without a very good team to pick from.

I promise this is the last time I’ll mention Hargreaves on this site, not ‘cus he no longer clocks in and out with us, it’s ‘cus it still hurts and I can’t keep opening up old wounds.  Why? WHY?! WHY, GODAMMIT?!  Anyhow, when he left amidst the mis-quoted claims of Franken-science, one thing he factually alluded to was how he, along with SAF (and the medical team), had taken calculated risks with regards to his treatment.  We all know how the story ends.  If the risk had paid off, at the very least, we would have a midfielder as good as Owen Hargreaves still playing for us.  When the club announced that Fletch was going for an extended sit down, it became clear that Fergie (along with Fletcher), had again been riding for a fall.  No doubt, as was the case with Hargreaves, the short term solution, such is the demand placed on most employees of clubs, was considered to be the only one.

In the examples of both Hargreaves and Fletcher it doesn’t take Robert Downey Jr or Humperdick Bumbecrunch (?) … Bedbatch Cumberdick (?) … Benedict Cumberbatch (!) to deduce that the losers in this game of *insert gambling cliche of your choosing* are the two players.  Fergs and United continue stacking up silverwares unabashed.  Both players’ desire to succeed, their competitive instincts and combative nature were in part exploited by Fergs, the means to his ends.  They may have both paid for it with their careers.  More of this later.

“Had we worked that out, Holmes?”, “Sssshh, just go with it, Watson.”

Of the current incapacitated amongst the squad, there are more specific examples of players who more directly arrow this post towards the sort of conclusions that suit my own opinion.  The aforementioned Vidic probably being one of the better examples (I will visit the others momentarily).

Nemanja Vidic cheats a hell of a lot more than the average Premier League defender.  That isn’t my opinion. Truth bullets. Nemanja Vidic is also a bit of a nutjob. That is my opinon, but probably not a popular one. Nemanja Vidic is also one hell of a defensive force.  That is also my opinion, but one I think most people would find difficult to argue with.  If you stop Vida cheating and/or being a nutjob then he’s not the defensive force.  Fergie knows this. The trick, of course, is harnessing all of the component parts of his personality to form the required whole; an effective team player. Sometimes Vida gets caught cheating and gets sent off, or we concede a goal as a result of him giving away a needless foul.  Much more often than this though, Vida makes vital tackles, keeps very good strikers quiet for long periods of time and saves the day. Fergie accepts the terms of the risk involved in having Nemanja Vidic in his team.  You temper Vida and you stand to lose all that he offers you.  When Vida, in a spectacular display of indiscipline, needlessly gets involved in a tangle with an opposition player in their half so voraciously that he does his own knee in, is out for the season and we lose the game anyway – that’s where the risk backfires.

(As an aside – don’t worry, in using these brackets I’m effectively whispering to you out of earshot of fans of other clubs – players such as Vidic serve to highlight one of the dichotomies of succesfully managing a football club: actively turning a ‘blind eye’ and furthermore encouraging the ‘necessary’ evils in order to gain the upper hand, whilst maintaining a holier-than-thou self righteous facade, finger pointing and generally suggesting the rest of your rivals are profoundly well adjusted to some form of sick society that is completely alien to your own.  Or something like that)

“Brackets or no brackets, I can read it. Tut tut”

On to the others … Unfortunately, although we love them down to their ickle socks, The Twins didn’t come with a warranty. As with most BOGOF offers, refunds are also invalid.  Their rambunctious wont, would no doubt see them throw themselves into the mouth of a lion with landmines for teeth if they thought for one second that said lion was potentially getting the upper hand on them.  An admirable trait, but one that has seen them keep our medical staff in gainful employment all by themselves.  SAF again understands that making a concerted effort to reign them in could bring with it dire consequences with regards to their output.  He hasn’t managed to channel their temperament as of yet and at the moment the risk of allowing them to continue somewhat indisciplined isn’t producing that many positives.

Whilst formulating a similar paragraph about Anderson, he’d only gone and been ruddy named as a sub on the ruddy same day, therefore practically negating my point about him being injured.  However, that was small fry compared to the news that Rooney had been dropped in a ‘misdemeanor that only Rooney could get dropped for shock’!  My post was fast becoming dated.  I soldiered on … blogging, hardest game in the world.

Ando similarly spends a disproportionate amount of his time at the pie shop staring at the ceiling in the Carrington nurse’s room.  Again, to his credit, if he were offered the luxury of being able to detach his limbs at will and disperse himself across the Old Trafford pitch, so as to be everywhere at once, then he would shake on that deal in exchange for his mortal soul.  In the absence of this ill-gotten gain, he does it his way for 55 minutes and then the wheels fall off.  Fergie could curtail it, implore he holds his position, but then you just have Darron Gibson with braids.

“If just one person metions me and braids I’m off…Oh, right that’s IT!”

Yes, I know Ando no longer has braids.

(I could use other current examples such as Cleverley, Young and the perpetually injured Owen, who have been risked, rushed back when not 100% fit and now we are without. )

Players of course need to be disciplined in a tactical sense, and in a behavioural one, and others besides.  But without the encouragement of what some might describe as their innate ability, they just become ordinary.  We can keep The Twins and Ando fit with discipline at the expense of an intrisic part of their nature. Fergie could have insisted both Hargreaves and Fletcher got the neccesary treatment as soon as they were advised of the dangers.  United may not have won the Champions League in 2008, or the league last year.

Revisiting the examples of Hargreaves and Fletcher, as I said I would, I wanted to redress the balance of this post a bit, as I don’t want to simply imply that Fergie recklessly uses players for the furtherance of his own career (and ultimately the success of the club) and cares little when they end up at the back door of the glue factory.  Although when you put it like that…   No, of course the players are implicit in the risk taking.  At least you hope so.  If they’re not, then more fool them.  Anyway, time is ticking on.  It’s clear to me that the self-efficacy of the individual player plays an integral part with regards to the risk to their long term health.  Self-efficacy derives from an individual’s self-perception and is heavily influenced by external factors.  People with a strong belief in their own ability (high self-efficacy), which is the category you can imagine that most professional footballers would fall into, are much more likely to view obstacles (such as playing when carrying injuries, not 100%), as something they can overcome, as opposed to something they should yield to. Hargreaves and Fletcher (The Twins and Anderson) are professional footballers and their lives revolve around the strict regime placed on them as a result of that.  They are all defined primarily by what they do on the pitch.  It provides them with their identity.  They need to gamble as much as Fergie and the club needs them to.  Without it, what are they?  Did I make a point there?  Let’s hope so.

“Did you get the point?” “No…you?” “No.” “Good.”

For the concluding paragraph I was going to attempt to summate that SAF, in terms of the success of the club with regards to the individual casualties we spit out along the way, was weathering this particular season’s storm as only he can, incredibly well.  But then we lost to Blackburn (at O.T., where we look less and less convincing!) and I was sulking, so left it for a bit.  Then Newcastle happened and I thought that perhaps the risks that Fergie was taking weren’t working out after all.  I mean, we might still have Fletch and Hargreaves, right?!  I left it for a while to see what the F.A. Cup game would bring.  It was during this time, while sorting out some CDs, I decided to title this post as I have.  The ‘Get ur freak on’ part referring to what I felt United needed to do.  Weak, I know.

Things then just kept on happening.  We had suddenly flipped Scholesy upside down one day over Christmas and realised we’d been looking at the sell-by-date, not the use by.  Despite our best efforts to drag a loss from the jaws of victory against City, we only went and beat them didn’t we.  And now with the news that Sparky is back, I can envisage a beautiful climax to this gloriously demented excuse for a Premier League season, when QPR go to City on the last day.

One of the enduring aspects of football is how things literally change in an instant.  There’s always light at the end of the tunnel, it just might be a train.

The most interesting thing about this game was that in the build up I discovered that Oletul translated to Steel but Oletul Galati as a whole translates to Middlesborough.

Few positives Fabio getting on the pitch and Phil Jones just gets better.

Count most everything else as not as positive and 2-0 is a good comfortable CL group stage result.

Man of the Match: Jill Phones

.

Implicit in trust is a close relationship between the truster and the to be trusted and unless you’re one of SAF’s friends or family members reading this (Hi Cathy!), we can assume that none of us here are on SAF’s Christmas card list this year and therefore not closely related to him in the more conventional way. However, arguably the same can be said of religious faith. I think it’s safe to assume that Muslims don’t pop round Allah’s house for tea every Tuesday (which is a shame cos he/she does a mean Halal chicken and chips). The ‘relationship’  formed is born through worship. Through the fans worship of Fergie, the trust in his judgement abounds and for the most part he is often afforded by some supporters a blind faith similar to that bestowed on religious deities.

Questions were raised when SAF began accessorising with some cherubs…

We know because we are told in almost every article ever written about him that he knows this club inside out. This reinforces our trust in him, because although not football managers ourselves we understand that that is an intrinsically important and good thing (plus we’ve all played ‘Football Manager’ and we all know that after the initial thrill of the hyper-realistic functionality that the backroom stuff is really boring).

We also know that he has a very high success rate compared with other managers. This without doubt strengthens our trust in him, because we all like to win lots and lots.

He puts faith in youth. He publicly protects his players. He’s respected by his peers. (He turns (down) water in (favour of) t(w)o (bottles of )wine). All things that provide evidence, that in respect of Manchester United, he is worthy of our trust. He is trustworthy.

Trust?!…I thought you said ‘thrust’.

How deep though does the trust go? Do we trust every team selection he makes? Every player he’s bought? Every word? Every decision? Every promise?  Although admittedly slightly loaded, I think most people would probably subscribe to the idea that how much you trust to invest in someone or something is personal to you; it’s a reflection of  the ethos you live your life by. I guess one of the points I want to make is that you don’t have to endlessly repeat cliched rhetoric to prove yourself to be the bestestest supporter ever. Also, I’m presuming that your support of your club, United or other, is unconditional and so to that end although Fergie is an integral part of our successful history, we aren’t endlessly beholden to him specifically. That’s not to say the success of the club isn’t dependent on the manager’s influence and because we can only rely on what has actually happened during his tenure, we can safely say he has been the main influence on our’s. I personally feel that trusting in him unconditionally – and in effect suggesting Fergie equals Manchester United – is a little unhealthy.

Still got it!

Over the past couple of years a section of fans have distanced themselves from the club and Fergie over his relationship with the Glazer family – they have lost their faith. He is no longer trusted by some and others have forsaken their support of United in light of his very apparent duplicitous actions; with no trust, their can be no relationship. The decision to publicly back the Glazers may possibly be one of Fergie’s biggest mistakes and possibly one of his biggest regrets(?), but, having said that, I trust his intention wasn’t to harm the reputation of the club. Unfortunately it has, and his own.

“We’re right behind you boss”

For me, Fergie’s ultimate aim has always been success, which, without encompassing every facet of being a fan, is the same of the supporters (of course success is all relative). His motivations though don’t come from the same place as a fans. He may well have ‘fallen in love’ with the club and undoubtedly will always regard United as a ‘part of him’, but without labouring the point, he could have had that at another club – had someone else come knocking. Fans tend not to choose a club, the club chooses you; for Fergie, United was a career choice. It was a choice made to provide a home for his family, something he has shown us on numerous occasions that he puts before the club. This for me is no more apparent than in his support of the Glazers: in protecting his own status within the club – by ‘dancing with The Devil’ -, Fergie is ensuring he can still provide for his own (although perhaps sounding like it, this is not a criticism).

Despite the fact he isn’t a fan (in the true sense) and his very real connection with the club initially comes from a very different place, this doesn’t mean he loves the club any less than fans, it’s just ‘different’. Still born of necessity, still impassioned, still love.

“Isn’t it past your bed time?”

He is a person (not a God) who puts his loved ones first – this is where I trust him. He is a proud person with unwavering determination – this is where I trust him. He manages to instill a self-belief in his players that is frightening – this is where I trust him. He is a real human being, who makes mistakes and learns from them (and sometimes doesn’t learn from them), who admits defeat and who takes responsibility – this is where I trust him. I can see the enthusiasm in his face, the emotion and although his motivations may come from an alternate place, I trust that he is absolutely, where he feels it is possible, and where he feels he can, trying to do the best for this club. Can’t you see it in his face?

First things first…What a scorcher from Giggsy!

The rest of the game had all the hallmarks of a Champions League group opener.

We should have got the win but in fairness Benfica were only denied by some excellent saves from Lindegaard (I personally at this moment in time prefer Lindegaard to De Gea, but only really base that on the way they look comparitively, not on any form or style preference).

Really pleased to see Fletch, Carrick, Fabio, and the main man TV getting match minutes under their belts…The squad is looking so hot right now (some might say).

We will qualify comfortably.

The Spirit of Manchester United

In an interview with the Guardian Tony V was asked if United could pip Barca to the trophy. “Of course we can win. We are Manchester United” was his reply. While words and sentiment alone won’t bring home the bacon, his response is laced with meaning. Let’s take a look at the United team, from back to front, and take comfort in the fact ours is a team not easily beaten, nor easily stopped. I’m thinking 4-3-3…this may be wrong, and perhaps Fergie will want to stifle Barca’s midfield, but both Valencia and Park can certainly be counted on to track back.

Goalkeeper. Van Der Sar. One of the finest goalies around (and possible the best retiring goalkeeper ever?), and the cornerstone of United’s recent success. Our usual strong defending means he’s not called upon as much as, say, a Robert Green, but his authority and intelligence is partly the reason why our defence works so well. His reflexes, positioning, and reach are all outstanding, making him one link in a chain we don’t have to worry about.

Defence. Vidic + Rio = Stout. Evra is Probably the best Left Back in the World™, and either Raphael or Fabio make it an almost perfect pack four. Which is absolutely essential, given we’ll be up against the silver bullet in Lionel Messi. Not to mention the rest of Barca’s attacking arsenal…in fact, let’s move on shall we?

Midfield. I’m assuming it looks something like this: Giggs, Carrick & Fletcher. Carrick has his opponents, and then he has his parents. They believe in him, and so do I. I’ve always been a fan, and his form has certainly picked up. Giggs, assuming he’s had that annoying blindfold taken off, has been very consistent and very good this season. Darren Fletcher will be a machine, because he is a machine and because he missed out on the opportunity to be a machine two years ago. Not as creative a midfield as Barcelona’s, but MORE than capable of providing service to our front three while providing that extra protection (and whitening) for our (sensitive) back teeth (four).

Attack. Rooney must play well. He has the capability of lifting the team from good to great. And, all hyperbole and cliche aside (actually, I’m just going to embrace it), he will be the threat Barcelona are most worried about facing. Valencia has been one of my players of the season, despite being out for most of it. Without his early return from injury, I’d be willing to bet we may not have clinched our 19th title. Just a thought. Park has been a big game player, and I have no doubt that the team will benefit from an out of the Park performance due to his absence two years ago.

Where I am most likely wrong: Carrick and Fletcher. Could be Scholes and/or Anderson in for one or both of them, and there’s a genuine question mark over Fletcher’s sharpness. Poossssssibly Nani for Valencia, but Nani doesn’t provide enough defensive cover. I reckon, barring unforeseen circumstances, the other places are sewn-up.

So how do we win? In two ways. The first is so entirely obvious you’ll regret even bothering to read this post. We need to play very well indeed. All of our players will need to play the game of their lives. I can’t even begin to imagine the concentration necessary to keep Barcelona at bay. Rio and Vidic’s brains will be challenged in the extreme, however well the rest of the team play. Evra has to face Pedro, who is Barca’s ace in the hole (although arguably, Barca’s deck has more than its regulation ration of aces), while scampering forward at every available opportunity. No easy task. Wazza needs to find a way to play his own game, to unfetter himself from the pressure of the occasion, and play at his magical best. In some ways, I think this is the perfect stage for him: his season has been so up and down that the spotlight is considering taking a holiday. If we play like we did in the league against Chelsea at OT, we’ll hold Barca. We will have to play better.

Secondly, and more intangible than the first (which is saying something), we have to Believe. And not in the way that Mars Believed before the 2006 World Cup. No, we need to Believe in what Tony V was obliquely referencing. The legendary United spirit, that we are never beaten, and never bettered. Every game is ours to lose. Barcelona are perhaps the only side  (of late) that have found a piece of what United have had for decades: the hunger to be better, to win more, to always be the best. To never give in. My gut feeling is that if both teams play to their best, we will largely cancel each other out. Our team must find something else, something beyond top gear. Which, of course, we can.

We are Manchester United.