Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

Manchester United - is playing the Swiss *that* exhausting?

Are we sure Sir Alex Ferguson is Scottish? After his little tirade about his players being ‘exhausted’ after their international duty I get the feeling that with this little bit of ungracious losing he is really an Australian. Oddly enough though, even they played like a bunch of muppets at Spurs and got a lucky point there, he did not mention the trip to the Middle East the team took to play in a meaningless game over there (sorry did I say meaningless, I meant ‘lucrative’). Teams go through these periods of getting poor results - all it takes is a few of those 50/50s to not quite go your way and then you drop some points, your confidence drops, which mysteriously means more of those 50/50s go against you…. Man U are going through on of these. Admittedly the whole Munich commemorations will not have helped, as much as you try to remain professional, they are still human beings and when confronted with the build up and nearly 80 000 people standing in silence with scarves raised aloft, it is going to affect their focus. However, in reality they were in one of these periodic mini-slumps before that. Spurs could and should have taken full advantage and City did take full advantage and they had a good quantity of their players away on International duty too. Will this be the end of Manchester United’s Premiership bid? Well that depends on what Arsenal get up to tonight, but even if Arsenal win there is still only 5 points between them. Arsenal still have to go to Stanford Bridge and Old Trafford, plus there are always dropped points along the way. However Arsenal are in pole position as I write this, not only in terms of points, but psycologically too.

Arsene Wenger has been hailing his sides mental toughness as he realises as well as Ferguson that winning the title is only partly down to skill and both sides are pretty much inseperable on that front. Winning the title is about getting the job done. Right now, you get the feeling that Arsenal simply believe they can win it more than Manchester United as the comments from the United camp about the International Friendly seem to show. Winning the FA Cup aside, Manchester United will be depserate to win next weekend to close the psycological gap that Arsenal have now opened up and prove to themselves as much as anyone else that they can actually do it again.