The one think I dearly prayed for at the start of the season was an injury free campaign. Well not entirely injury free because that's largely unrealistic but surely we couldn't suffer the same the same injury crisis we did last term especially in defence that saw the likes of Carrick and Fletcher make numerous appearances in central midfield. It was pathetic and rather absurd that we lost up to 7 defenders to injury at the same time and one wonders what we could have achieved if we were at least afforded the services of at least one of our regular centre backs.
Roll on to this season and just a few months ago, as Sir Alex pointed out in his pre-Bolton press conference, we had all our defenders fit and it did hold us in good stead to go on and have a comfortable run in, but behold we now head into the run in with all but one of our regular defenders missing through injury. At least this time we can still say that so far we're not yet to the point of playing midfielders in defence but who know with the kind of luck we're getting.
Rafael, Vidic, Ferdinand, O'Shea, and Evans are currently out leaving us with Fabio, Brown and Smalling to patch in without any natural replacements.
When you're heading into a run in like the kind United are usually involved in every March and April, you hope that you can have all your players fit because of the demands that come with playing twice weekly. It means the manager can rotate to keep the squad fresh---just as he did effectively en route to the Treble. Last season we lost Rooney at this stage of the campaign and we were already without EVDS and Rio. In the end that crisis cost us at least the league title.
This season United are in a the hunt for the club's second Treble and given the inactivity of the club in the transfer market, you hope that at least if you have all your players fit then you stand a chance. We have a fight on our hands to win the league and we play City in the FA Cup semis. The Champions League draw for the last eight of the competition is soon to be made so that means the last thing we need is our fringe players contesting in the big games of the season for honours because in many ways it sells us short.
Neither does it help that our manager has been slapped a 5 match ban by the FA (cunts).
On the plus side, we seem to be doing well further up the pitch, Anderson could be back nay time soon and Hargreaves has started training again with the first team. It's mighty good to see Valencia back as well. Javier Hernandez has done a good job of keeping Berbatov on the bench by making it 16 goals in his debut campaign, two of which are the reason as to why United made it to the final eight of Europe's premier club competition earlier this week.
What's for certain though is that we need some sort of heroics from our fringe defence if we are to keep the Treble dream alive. The League remains the primary target so the game against Bolton on Saturday is a must win--I mean it's been long since we won a league game. Thank heavens that the upcoming International break will give Sir Alex some time to get more players back into the team.
Marching on!
Labels: MANCHESTER UNITED
