So Its Upon Us....Thursday Night Football

Back in September it wasn't even a thought in anybodies mind...

In December it was a stark reality...

For the first time since 1995 Man Utd will participate in a European competition other than the Champions league, for those of you who have been oblivious to this competition....(Probably every United fan :-p) here are the main differences

The Logo 

Is this an issue for me? ... Ofcourse not



The Theme
"Zadok the Priest" (don't lie you didn't know what it was called) will not be heard when Man Utd step up to face Ajax

Is this an issue for me? ... No

The champions league theme tune kicks ass, you know its a big game when you hear it and it makes the hairs stand on the back of your neck...but its only a theme tune.

Lesser Competition
As would be expected, it is less prestigious than the Champions league, it is the second tier of european competition, Man Utd are too big of a club to be in it. It has been given numerous, slanderous names in the past

- The Micky Mouse Cup
- The Channel 5 Cup
- The Liverpool Cup



Is this an issue for me? ... No



It may be the little brother (or sister) of the champions league, but it is still a trophy which we have not won, and its a still a European trophy, winning it would be as proud and achievement as winning the FA Cup in my opinion.

Thursday Nights
Instead of the expected Tuesday/Wednesday nights Europa league matches take place on Thursday nights.

Is this an issue for me? ... YES!

This is the main reason I'd rather have gone out of Europe all together. Playing on Thursday nights can seriously mess up a teams weekend games, to be honest Utd's staff and players should all be used to managing more than one game a week, so hopefully this won't really be an issue. Though with the league being such a tight race this year any negative effects from Thursday nights could have a massive effect on the outcome.


Having said all this leads me to the main debate, which started in December....will Fergie go for it or will he send out the reserves? Here is the offical squad as announced;

De Gea, Amos, Evans, Rafael, Fabio, Jones, Ferdinand, Valencia, Nani, Carrick, Young, Park, Rooney, Hernandez, Welbeck, Scholes, Cleverley, Pogba, Smalling and Fryers

The squad seems the be the best of both worlds....it should be a competitive squad no matter what and on top of this it could be the return from injury for Smalling, Jones and Nani. There have also be rumours that Paul Pogba will be handed a start.

My thoughts on the matter are...I don't want us to be here....but we are....and if we are here we may as well go for it....having said that if it effects our results in the league I'd rather we got knocked out sooner rather than later.....BUT lets face it....we are MANCHESTER UNITED, we don't aim for 2nd place and we always go out to win.



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NOTW Tap Liverpool FC Phonelines

Liverpool: <Ring> <Ring><Ring><Ring> “Hi, is Gary Cook there?”

Man City: “Er..he doesn’t work here anymore…who’s calling?”

L: “Shit..this is going to be a lot harder than we thought”.

...

MC: “Sorry…what did you say?”

L: “Er, nothing, never mind. I’m calling from Liverpool football club, you know; You’ll Never Walk Alone, the Kop and all that stuff from the 70s when we were good. And we understand that you are trying to sell Carlos Tevez? We’re really interested as we’re a little short up there with our star forward being found guilty of being racist and all”.

MC: “Erm, okay. Yes, that’s right, we want at least £25million but as you’re another club who are in our division we will want considerably more”.

L: “Cause we’re competitors for the league, right?”

MC: “Ha…er, no.”

L: “So we’ve got £35million, and that is what we’d like to offer you.”

MC: “That certainly is something we would be happy to talk about, would it be split over the season or in one sum?”

L: “Oh, it would be one big, huge, wasteful lump sum”.

MC: “Good, we’d much prefer to have the sum paid upfront.”

L: “Yeah, exactly, you want the big lump upfront, right?”

MC: “Exactly”.

L: “So when do you want to talk to Andy Carroll? I’m sure he’ll be easy to convince to join, there’s lots of strippers and bars in Manchester and it’s easier for him to get back to Newcastle”.

MC: “Sorry? Why the hell would we want to talk to Carroll, you’ll want to talk to Carlos no?”

L: “Yeah, we’ll need to talk to Carlos, but we’re offering £35million Andy Carroll for him?”

<Dinnnnngggggg>

L:“Hello? Is anyone there?”

<Line goes dead>


(I'd just like to point out at this stage I am not claiming to have written this, I got it sent to me in an e-mail. If I knew who wrote it I would of course give them credit)

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, it is always appreciated. Feel free to comment or tweet me. I also want to take this time to ask that you use the SocialMedia buttons at the bottom of this article to help share & grow my blog aswell.

Game Over...

It's never a good feeling getting beat by the scousers and Saturday was no different. Although I feel we played well and we dominated the game, we didn't do enough when we where on top to finish the game..... that's always dangerous no matter who you are playing. United could have easily been the one's who scored  a goal in the 88min. But it wasn't to be and Dirk Kuyt scored only his second goal of the season to screw us over again at Anfield.

I actually had come to terms with the loss, the fact it was a cup game let me right it off in my mind, I think stopping Man City winning the league this year should be our only target. As I said I had written the game off and made my peace with it, not being annoyed that

1) Evra got booed throughout the game for complaining about receiving racist abuse (therefore implying Liverpool fans are supporters of racist abuse???)

2) The fact that Liverpool played like an away team visiting Old Trafford and performed a smash and grab attack with most of their players behind the ball at all times (I suppose the fact they where successful means they will not be to disappointed with me pointing this out)

Going into work today I knew I would get stick from Liverpool fans but usually the ones in work talk a bit of sense (as much as you can expect a scouser to have anyway), but their attitude pissed me off to such and extent it sparked this post, my first since I started work back in September.

They spoke as if they had just won the FA cup yesterday and also started to give me grief about the "Channel 5" cup starting in the next few weeks. AS IF THEY WHERE IN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE.

After all this banter and chat, (which of course is to be expected, you cant give it if you cant take it) was the one claim that took it too far, showing their sheer delusion and bitterness. One of them claimed that Liverpool had essentially just ended our season.

Absolute trash in my opinion, of course we wanted to win, of course I would have taken a draw but the fact there is no replay in this run of important fixtures is also a relief.

As I mentioned above I believe that the main target for Manchester United this season should be to reclaim the league tittle and stop Man City from lifting it. If we where in the League cup final, the Champions League and the 5th round of the FA Cup...I would still believe that this would be our No.1 target. Being knocked out of the FA cup doesn't affect our league position and does leaves us with less games to concentrate on so I don't know why they feel the defeat against Liverpool would be such a body blow.

Game over?.....FUCK OFF.

Wayne Rooney: Record breaker

Two hat-tricks in a row, 8 goals in total. Wayne Rooney has started off this season in magnificent form, already reaching the halfway point of last seasons goal tally and looking as if he could again reach the hights of two season ago where he scored 34 goals!

He reached the massive mile-stone of 150 goals for the club with his first strike against Arsenal, but it almost seems silly concentrating on this as he has now blasted in a further 5. 2 more against the Gunners and 3 past Bolton. 

Total club goals now stands at 155, 110 in League bringing him equal with Ryan Giggs (the only player still playing to compete with Rooney, but realistically Wayne will not have to worry about Ryan scoring a bucket load this season) Well take a look at Wayne's Goals now in terms of Man Utd all-time scorers & all-time league goals

via www.stretfordend.co.uk

via www.stretfordend.co.uk

As we can see he has a further 90 goals to score in the league and just an extra 5 on top of this in all competition. Being only 25, its not unrealistic to think that he can exceed these totals. Being cautious we can safely assume he will be playing until he is 32/33 and stays at United for the rest of his career. Therefore playing for the next 7 seasons he would require only approximatley 14 goals a season, a bench mark he has exceed in every previous year in a United shirt! If he can in fact continue the form he is on at at the minute it may not even take this long. Obviously, although it may be the smaller target Wayne could break the all time record before the all time league record as there will be no restrictions on the compettions the goals are scored in. Speaking on the all-time target Sir Bobby has set he has said, 

"I spoke to a few of the players and asked how many Sir Bobby had and Giggsy said I was 100 or so off. It's a target for me, to try and do that. Hopefully, in the next few years, I can do it."

The game against Bolton was also Waynes 7th Hat-trick for the club bringing him level with Sir Bobby on atleast one level

via www.mufcinfo.com

He had the greatest possible start to trying to break the record no.of hat-tricks by scoring one on his dream debut against Fenerbahce in 2004. Since then he has almost averaged one a year with 7 hat-tricks and this being his 8th season at the club. Assuming one more a season it is tough to see Denis Law's immense 18 trebles being touched.

A crazy stat regarding hat-tricks (kinda relevant), literally just tweet as I am writing this blog;

"January last season, Berba had more hattricks than Rooney had goals. Now Rooney has more hattricks than Berba has appearances" via R_O_M

Today's goals also brought Wayne into the Top10 all time PL Goalscorers aswell,

via www.premierleague.com

Looking at this table, we can see that there are 3 other players in the top 15 that are still playing. Although, looking at the ages of the others, the only player who will be able to significantly rise up the table will be Rooney with Owen (31), Lampard (33) & Anelka (32) all heading towards the final seasons of their career.

To top Alan Shearer's record will be an even will require Rooney's goal tally per season in the league to to be as high as 20 league goals per season over the next 7 years (again this figure is variable because Wayne may well play on longer than this) 

All-in-all his blog has been to highlight how Wayne has the potential to be one of the greatest & most prolific strikers in the English games history. What I find most pleasing when looking at these stats, is that I know he offers the team so much more than goals, working tirelessly throughout each game and putting as much effort in to assist the team as he does to score himself. 

Only time will tell if he can break any or all of these records, but regardless I think we should all be please that we have a player of his quality in our squad!

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, it is always appreciated. Feel free to comment or tweet me. I also want to take this time to ask that you use the SocialMedia buttons at the bottom of this article to help share & grow my blog aswell.