Thanks you so much for responding to these posts. We are really in the business end of the season now and I feel very far away. Getting your insights is damned important to me because you are both very much on the money.

Allez les rouges!

A real Jekyll & Hyde performance. Abject for much of the game against a well-organised but essentially ordinary Villa side we found our heart in the last 20 minutes (or was it 10, or 15? I lost track of time some time after Villa’s second goal). We were awful at the back, just awful. We do lack a Keano type driver and organiser, forgive me if I am repeating earlier comments, but too few of the team looked like they could really be arsed most of the time. Just as well Berbatov wasn’t playing, Gary would have throttled him. Gary got a huge cheer in the first half when he cut out an Ashley Young sprint down the touchline. He used up all the last of his pace and energy in doing so, and operated on memory for most of the rest of the game. It was worrying how a large clumsy and not hugely talented lump of a centre-forward made their two goals look easy. I doubt Rio and Vidic would have left him so much space.

The spirit shown in the final stages, the previously wholly absent sense of urgency, does actually bode well. A patched up team got the points which a first choice XI might have found easier to bag. Best efforts? Tevez chased everything, Fletch and Carrick sweated away without much effort to find another red shirt to pass to. O’Shea had a reasonable game. Giggsy was effective most of the time and can still skin a man when up against a Villa defender … But Nani and Ronaldo flounced and posed for too much of the game. Evra played well but is not that convincing as a defender, not a trait to be encouraged in a defender in fact! Rather better going forward. VDS was not really at fault for either goal, just left horribly exposed.

What changed the game was Ronaldo’s belated decision to put his mark on it and his 2nd goal rocked Villa, who lacked the ability and self-confidence to hold on to their lead, even less to regain it. The 5 mins was not Fergie dictating to the 4th official (despite Villa moans, I hear) but were all added on for pathetic Villa time-wasting. Serves them right! Villa’s 2nd goal was in fact the turning point. The crowd was simply not prepared to accept another home defeat and cudgeled the team into responding, which of course they finally did. Great stuff in the closing minutes. ”

Fact, as surmised by Judge C and now confirmed: Macheda was born in August 1991, after Giggs’ debut in March that year. So Giggs was playing for the Reds before this Italian Whiteside-lookalike was even born.

The final few minutes of this game were utterly breathtaking. Not because the team suddenly found itself but because the atmosphere just went through the roof. Strangers wept and hugged each other, people jumped and shouted and went hoarse. It was another 1993 Steve Bruce moment. Now we all believed again!! We can do it. We can get that 18th title!!

Today, all sober and calm again, I can look back and see all the cracks in the team but at OT yesterday all we could see was 11 heroes and a sea of red. Did we feel sorry for Villa? Well yes, a tiny bit because they outplayed us. But who cares, in this sort of mood nobody will beat us ever again at OT!! Not without a damn good fight!

I think I need to go and lie down now.

As an aside, I think Nani must have been having some long chats with Berbatov, he was invisible yesterday, and the only time I noticed him on the pitch was when he gave the ball away. Needs to buck his ideas up that lad.