I don’t really want to get in to the finer details of the match yesterday because we were awful, beyond awful to be honest. It was probably our worst performance in a number of years and the 3-0 defeat really flattered us, it could and should have been a lot worse. We played like a team who have no back regular back four and who don’t have any sort of idea how to defend. What you have to remember is that our success in the last couple of seasons has been based on a solid defence. You could name the strongest back 4…Evra, O’Shea, Ferdinand and Vidic and when any of them were out we could just bring in Brown or Neville or any other number of quality defenders but when you take away that familiarity we play like we did yesterday. We had better players but Fulham were a better team, they knew what they had to do and they worked together which is normally what we do.
Where To Now?
We are not in that bad a position. Sir Alex always says we need to be there or thereabouts come the turn of the year and if we match results with Chelsea over the festive period that is where we will end up. Chelsea have the chance to go 7 points clear as they play before us next week and if they do that and we fail to win away to Hull the next morning we are toast. Gone. Take into account the fact that they have much better goal difference and we are effectively 8 points behind if we were to lose again. On the flip side if they did only get a point from their tricky match at Birmingham and we won at Hull we would be heading in to the new year only 2 points behind the Rushkis so not a bad scenario considering they are losing all their big players for up to 6 matches for the African Cup early in the New Year.
The Season Starts Here
If we want to go on and do what no other team has ever done before and win 4 titles on the trot then we need to treat today as ground zero. The season starts here as it were. We have done it in the past and gone on a run and if we want to win the league we can’t afford to lose more than one more game.First thing we need to do is get some sort of a defence back really reeally sharpish! If we can get a couple back we should be in good shape going in to the new year. The one thing that people will be saying is that we are missing Ronaldo but it wouldn’t matter if we had 3 of him upfront yesterday as there is only so much you can cover up at the back and we were well found out. Sir Alex has been here before though and has a week to get it sorted and you can be sure he will. People always write us off at times like these but I am actually thinking about getting a few quid on us now as we are a decent price and I think that was the turning point!
