If there was any incentive that United needed ahead of the game against Fulhm, it's the chance to go five points clear at the summit and hence stamp our authority on the league. The Premier League has swapped leaders more often this season than in the past three seasons. Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea have all led at some stage this season and only their failure to build on their leads has cost them dear. United have already had their fair share of leadership and you get the feeling that it could all change when things start going bad. One of the main reasons as to why we won so many league titles in the past decade was because we put light years between ourselves and the rest of the league hence making it ominous for our rivals. It's a method adopted by Mourinho and is currently being used by Barcelona. A double digit lead makes it easy for you to recover from a dip in form and gives you the security of table leadership even after it. It's a situation that United have a chance to be in. A win against Fulham today will take us 5 points clear of Liverpool--meaning that should we win on Saturday as well, we shall remain top despite having our game next week called off. It puts us in a commanding situation and only serves to increase the pressure on Liverpool who could be 8 points behind us by the time they play Man City on Sunday.
Rooney starts on the bench while Brown and Neville are ruled out. Rafael should deputise though. The rest of the team picks itself.
Fulham have a certain Mr. Danny Murphy who has Liverpool blood and has scored quite a number of winners for the Dippers at Old Trafford. He certainly needs to be taken care of. Dempsey is another of their players that is not fazed by such occasions and so will need monitoring. Their goalkeeper is as difficult to beat as Brad Friedel so hopefully, he has an off day.
The rewards are big if we get the 3 points out of this one, so hopefully we'll get the result we all want(even 1-0 again will do just fine)
Labels: PREVIEWS
