Tomorrow, a small club travels to OT, for what could be one of the most important games of the Premiership for ManU this year.
Only 2 games ago, we were 5 points behind Chelsea. In what has become a dramatic 4 weeks for the bunch of foreigners Londoners, we have have closed the gap and could run away from Chelsea.
And things look good for us: we’ve won four times in a row, which certainly will boost our confidence, and Chelsea just sacked their master tactician, Jose Mourinho ((Forget everything what as said about ‘mutual agreement, the only mutual agreement both reached was the golden handshake of £10m for Jose and his managing crew)).
For once, the appointment of a new manager during the season seems to be a bonus for us. Normally, a new manager can bring a certain shock effect the next game and that little Londoner club certainly could do with one, but timing just is completely wrong for Roman Abrahamovich this week. As I am writing this, it is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Avram Grant will be fasting praying for 25 hours, until sun end today. As a result of this, Avram won’t have worked with the squad since Thursday afternoon, when he ended the training, because his (still) friend Roman, came to the training ground.
As if all that wasn’t enough yet, 2 of Chelsea’s most important players, Lampard and Drogba, still are injured.
As written before, things look bright on the ManU side, but already this early in the season, we still face injury problems. Neville, isn’t ready yet, and also Owen hasn’t completely recovered from his thigh strain. No matter, how much I’d love to see Owen work in the midfield, I prefer him to take wait a week longer and entirely recover, instead of becoming the Flintoff of ManU.
On the good side, both Ronaldo and Rooney will play. Ronnie scored the winning goal for us on Wednesday against Sporting and Wayne got 70 minutes of matchplay in the same game. As usual for Wayne, the longer he was on the pitch, the better he started performing and running. Watch that lad tomorrow!
Six Premiership games so far and we only conceded 2 goals. Make it 7 games, with Wednesday’s UCL game against Sporting, and we only have conceded two goals. Defensively, we are solid, as solid as any (future) Premiership Champions should be. We have seen a great Rio and Vidic so far. Brown is coming back to the level of his best days, and will certainly grow even more this season, and Evra has been one of our best players this season. I don’t think Evra will have as much free play now Silvestre is injured, but that leaves more freedom to Nani and Anderson to join the game and evolve. Unless Tevez will start upfront with Rooney and Ronaldo.
And who dared to doubt VDS last season, has been proven wrong plenty of times already this year.
Prediction: 2-0
I’ll be live blogging the game.