The Devil In Me

I was not as nervous as I should have been before this game. Arsenal have been enjoying all of the plaudits this season whilst we have simply been getting on with our jobs I thought. Hargreaves has done nothing to make me question him and I even felt, especially after last week, that Anderson standing next to him would present no problems at all. I would also have taken a draw before the game, we all would.

Anderson’s cheeky head-butt on Abedayor in the first minute endeared him to me immensely, as did our ability to score a late goal. And it is possible that I am viewing the world through red-tinted glasses, but we seemed to control large spells of a game at the home of the Champions League’s most prolific scorers. That is certainly not bad, losing a late late goal always hurts but in a pure sense there are many reasons to be pleases about this result, right?

So why am I not that pleased right now? Because to win the big trophies, the League and the European Cup, you need a combination of three things. Inspiration, luck and belief. United displayed some inspired football on saturday with Rooney’s flick for Giggs sticking most prominently in the memory, but so did Arsenal. We were lucky too courtesy of Gallas’ handball skills, but so were Arsenal.

For ninety three minutes though, I was beginning to convince myself that this team is emerging as a great Old Trafford side, it almost certainly is, we believed we could just go to the Emirates and win. For ninety three minutes we showed that we could. And then they scored.

I am certain that in the league United have the belief to go with their talents, but the problem is so now do our main rivals, and we gave it to them.

I am not a statistician, nor am I a mathematician, I am barely even a gambling man. The sequence of United’s results this year has been weird.  Several one nils have become several four scores and now we are all happy, but of course we are.  

The quality of goals one and, particularly, three was truly stupendous in this game and now we can all shut up and agree with Fergie that Tevez and Rooney can play together. There have even been cries the length and breadth of the land to start lauding the football that ourselves and Arsenal are playing as not only the best thing since sliced bread, but perhaps the entire reason for life itself. Sure.

I am happy that we are playing nice football, goodness knows it has irked me we have not, and I am happy that we are winning comfortably. But Arsenal still having an advantage bothers me, memories of us hitting great form early in a season and then petering out bother me. And Paul Scholes being out indefinitely should bother us all.

Yes this is grand stuff at the moment, but if I started celebrating before there were any trophies in the cabinet I would not be a United fan, in fact I would be a pretty lousy sports fan all round. Football is at its best when you are winning matches that matter in the month of May. The Arsenal game is going to be interesting.