DESPERATELY IN NEED OF SECOND GEAR WHEN THE SAINTS COME MARCHING IN

The league resumes this weekend after a ten day break to allow for world cup qualification. The break came off the heels of an  Adnan Januzaj show at the stadium of light that has since dominated the back pages for all sorts of reasons. It's possibly the last thing that Manchester United would have wanted but the written press are mentioning his name in the same sentence as the phrase 'Europe's most wanted teenager'. The attention he secured himself after that volleyed second strike can't have made it easy negotiating that contract with his agent. At the moment, a deal is yet to be signed--not good news when the likes of Juventus and Barcelona are hovering. You do hope though that the club will sort that out sooner rather than later.

As far as basic business is concerned, one of the league's in-form teams and the very difficult to beat Southampton provide the opposition this weekend. At the moment, the club is yet to get out of gear one as far as EPL business is concerned. We've not won 2 on the bounce as yet and yet we're soon getting into double-digits in the column of games played. David Moyes has to get the team in the habbit of getting results and hence points on the board as we risk falling too far behind in the grans scheme of things. I know it's just a 6 points gap off the top, but there's 8 other sides that have done better than us so far in the league. It's worrying that even if all results goo our way this weekend, we cannot get into the top four in the middle of October. That is the concern for us---that we've found the likes of West Brom a very tough proposition and made Sunderland appear better than their league position suggests.

It all bodes for another nervy afternoon at Old Trafford as one wonders which United team will turn up against Pochetinho's side. Southampton currently sit in fourth and have already beaten Liverpool at Anfield this season. We desperately need the points and you only hope the manager will have worked out a way to take all three points on the day by negating the attacking threat of the Saints as well as a side capable of getting the job done upfront. One thing that we need to sort out quickly is the defending. We've so far leaked a hatfull of goals and even though its better than last season, the goals last term meant that we could still out-score the opposition. At the moment, we're finding it hard to do both tasks of defending and bagging goals. It's why we might still need to start Adnan in a fxture like this because of the defensive organisation of the opposition.

The money in the league right now has made the gap between the 'small teams' and bigger teams is now considerably reduced. Freak results will now be more frequent than ever but surely United have served their time under that particular jinx with the defeat against WBA. Now is the time to get stuck in and do a job.

We've got 4 straight home games and as such you feel that everything is i place to build that little bit of momentum to take into the first clear run of club football. Whether the side capitalises on this though is a matter of finger nails, teeth and David Moyes.

  



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