The Devil In Me

Seeing Fergie smiling and joking on the touchline is a sight rarer than a tackle from Carrick. Yet there he was at 86 minutes, grinning at Mike Phelan through chewed gum knowing that he had just presided over a virtually immaculate performance. Champion’s League semi-finals are supposed to be tense, nervy high-pressure affairs. I have particular memories of the tie against Barcelona in 2008 when me and my Dad exchanged almost no words at all during the two matches, such was the apprehension.

Considering Schalke scored five in the San Siro, it is, I am afraid, still too early to book tickets for Wembley. However, the memories of Bayern, and Borrusia Dortmund in particular, still remain clear and this is a moment to cherish.

In the mid-nineties we played Juventus seemingly every season and it was several years before we got a result against them. At the time it looked very much a case of men against boys. Ten years prior to that and we were losing to the likes of Bournemouth in the FA Cup. It really is wonderful to see the side on the verge of making its third European Cup Final in four years.

The nature of being a fan of this team is that even when they are completely outclassing the opposition, you still expect them to concede imminently. This was hardly helped by Manuel Neuer putting in one of the best first-half goalie displays I’ve seen in my life. For a moment or two there I thought; “Are we Newcastle? Is this 1996?”

The man who was, and has been for ages, rolling back the years is Ryan Giggs. Although there was a little bit of disappointment that he missed his chance early in the second half, the way he combined with Rooney for the opener was sublime.

But there were heroes across the pitch. It isn’t just the players who concentrate more in Europe; it’s us fans too. Personally I feel like I can’t take my eyes of the action. You notice more when you watch games that way and I feel remiss in not mentioning before how superb Valencia’s first touch is. Even more cheering is that Fabio, our third choice right-back, looked like a duck on a pond in this fixture. The future could be just a rosy as the present if we manage these players properly.

Supervising the next three fixtures is going to be tricky to say the least. The return leg of this tie is sandwiched between league matches Arsenal and Chelsea and the destiny of the Premier League title. With an aging manager on the verge of a European Cup Final at Wembley, thanks to a performance from an old-stager, it’s just possible that destiny is on our side.

Thanks to ESPN’s worldwide coverage Mark’s blog has been nominated for a People’s Choice Award in a far-flung land. Please click here and vote for ‘Manchester United Correspondent – Mark Payne‘. Don’t forget to press DONE when you are finished to make your vote count.

Follow Mark on twitter.com/markjpayne


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Most realistic Reds accept that City are going to win something, sometime. It would be an awesome achievement if they didn’t after spending £400M. There is a convincing argument that the “35 years” banner should be replaced by one saying “43 years”, i.e. since they last won the league. Appropriate.

Picking a suitable team to get the job done is what you do in semi-finals and many of us are ‘well-annoyed’ that Berbatov started the match. This might well have been a case of Ferguson trying to placate the moody Eastern European. A foolish gamble in the wrong fixture.

Would Little Pea have scored either of the chances Berba missed at the start of the match? We will never know, but my suspicion is that he would have done. One wonders how Rooney feels about his outburst now, surely there must be some sense of taking responsibility for it. I expect top performances from him between now and the end of the season.

After those two misses and Nani hitting the bar I began to feel that it just might not be our day. When Scholes got a straight red for a tackle about a third as bad as Carragher’s last month, we all knew that it wasn’t. Thankfully our friends from Liverpool made sure that Sunday was, God bless them.

The country will not be waiting with baited breath to see if Dalglish is issued a ban for telling Wenger to ‘p*ss off’. That sort of thing simply doesn’t happen to managers who are not Sir Alex Ferguson.

Although it is woeful to see so many disinfectant blue shirts walking around the city at the moment it is still better than losing to Ciddy in a cup final. Which incidentally has never happened.

The message is an old one but you can’t hear it too many times. 
Manchester is Red. 
Here is a quote from Tupac to help you get through the week:

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f*ck on.”
— Tupac Shakur

Thanks to ESPN’s worldwide coverage Mark’s blog has been nominated for a People’s Choice Award in a far-flung land. Please click here and vote for ‘Manchester United Correspondent – Mark Payne‘. Don’t forget to press DONE when you are finished to make your vote count.

Much like Janet Jackson, United have usually got something pointy up front even if the whole package is a bit dodgy. Certainly, our defence was far from secure in the first half on Saturday.

There are not many weekends left in this season now but the progress we have made over 31 rounds is impressive. Nani and Berbatov, previously much maligned players, have played an enormous part in this league campaign. It is a real testament to trusting the process of team integration. Not to mention, further good reason to ignore just about every thing the pundits say too.

On the subjects of punditry and trust, I feel compelled to clarify an issue of identity. After a volley of e-mails this week let me state one thing very clearly. I am NOT Superintendent Mark Payne of the Wolverhampton Police Force. Nor is he related to me, nor do we even share the same dimension of thought. I must admit, the guy has a pretty snappy moniker, but he is nothing to do with me.

It seems a little ironic that the police have got involved in the football this week when the game’s governorship is so transparently anti-United. Let me take the opportunity to clarify what Fergie meant when he said United were being “victimised”.

The current chairman of the Football Association is David Bernstein. Mr Berstein was previously chairman of Manchester City between the years of 1998 and 2003. When one’s mind boggles at Rooney’s two game ban please consider who the second game is against. That’s right, Manchester City, in that club’s biggest match for some 30 odd years. In other news, 2 plus 2 is 4.

There is though, a calculating glint in Fergie’s eye at the moment. He, more than anybody, knows how to make adversity work in his favour. At the moment, the results show that whatever they throw at us we can work around. And that, is why we love them.
Come on you Reds!

Follow Mark on twitter.com/markjpayne

In some respects Saturday was a one-off occasion. One of my best friends got married and the damn fool didn’t have the courtesy to change the time of the ceremony when this fixture was moved to the lunchtime. As such, I retrieved the half-time scores from my pocket when I should have been getting the rings out and was the only person in the church who had a face like thunder when they said, “I do”.

Whilst my miserable mug looked out of place in a couple of wedding snaps, nobody would have expected anything other than a stern expression on Alex Ferguson’s face after 45 minutes. Although some bosses will cut you some slack if they also load extra responsibility onto you, Vidic and Evra must already know that Fergie is not that kind of guy.

One unmistakeable thing about the manager is his tendency to go for broke when the chips are down. The adage “the best form of defence is attack” is a wonderful philosophy and, to an extent, matches the psyche of this club from top to bottom. A good thing too, because when Ryan Giggs is finishing matches at left back clean are sheets are unlikely.

The chances of us coming a cropper this week looked pretty good from the outset. We face two of our bogey teams, West Ham and Chelsea, within a few days of each other and we haven’t got any defenders fully fit. In all honesty, I had ‘the fear’. Fortunately, Wayne Rooney did not.

Losing matches you should have won is the bane of any fan’s (and probably player’s) life. It looked like things were going that way in London until Rooney’s run of form bloomed into the full flower it reached last season. To say this is timely would be something of an understatement.

United have been declared lucky, lacking in fantasy, lethargic and just plain bad by commentators this year and I am sick of it. This side has true grit and I can think of no other club in the division that can score four away from home with ten players out injured. After the completion of this comeback my sense of pride in the team I support was tangible.

None of our rivals face circumstances anywhere near as dire as ours with regards to the treatment table. For a second it looked like it might get worse, any man who didn’t die 1,000 times between Vidic’s rugby tackle and the yellow card has no heart.

United remain top through sheer force of will – being associated with that in any way is tremendous. We ain’t there yet, but this league title is within touching distance now because we have a team willing to go for it.

Massive, massive result.

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