I know it just Aldershot in the League Cup but hey, credit must be given where it is due. The likes of Owen, Berbatov, Valencia, Fabio and Amos have not put a foot wrong in that banana skin competition called the Carling Cup. Sometimes you do see shocks in the FA Cup coming but not in this one; For starters, because of the remoteness of the fixtures at times and their inconspicuous midweek schedule, many a fan usually do not know that the club have a game and so wake up to the news that United lost 4-0 to West Ham United in the Cup (as was the case last season).
Moving on; it was nice to get the City result somewhat out of our system as we can now safely say we've won our last game.....and they say you're only as good as your last game. It was also pleasing and relieving to see Tom make his way back from injury with an hours' work-out. He was all over the midfield last night and it showed what we've missed in him.
If he plays with a foiler or holding midfielder next to him, he can certainly be as good as anyone in that position. However, that we currently lack a natural holder in the middle does sometimes take something away from his game. I mean even David Silva would struggle if you take Barry, Toure and De Jong out of the equation. So unless the manager asks Anderson or Carrick or Fletcher to sit, then we might continue to allow the opposition to get more than a sniff of our goal every game.
We've got Everton away in the league on Saturday, and whilst we would go to Goodison Park in a modest way in any other season, we simply have to win there this time. Given the result we posted last week, anything other than a win will enable the British press make record sales of papers with Doomsday articles for United.
We've now gone five points off the summit so quite frankly, City should drop the next points, not us; We cannot afford to give them enough breathing space to address whatever blip comes their way and still remain on top.
Over the course of the season so far, we've been moaning about a difficult start to the season; well the next 12 games provide us with an opportunity to really put City under pressure and illustrate for them how difficult it is to win the league.
Whilst it would be demanding too much of the team to go on and win their next 12 games, it must be evident to us by now that if we want that 20th title, we're going to have to fight for it even harder than we did for the previous one.
Sir Alex is not knew to challenges from rival clubs, but just hope we don't take a season or two to raise the bar as we did when Chelsea were then in-thing in town. As far as responding to bad results goes, none put up a better response than United. The fans will be expectant this weekend. In many ways, therefore, our season really starts on Saturday at Goodison Park.
Labels: THE LEAGUE CUP
