#MUFC v #LFC and how good will triumph over evil (hopefully)

Sunday looms large and our trip to Old Trafford is filling me with a deep sense of pessimism. It should be said however that this is usually a good sign - any deep sense of optimism (for example the one that I felt before the Villa game) is usually a sign that.. well, we know what happened then.

Liverpool's form has picked up since the Villa fiasco.. in a previous blog I said that in the run of "easier" games we had over Christmas it was vital that we collected as many points as possible as it was going to get much harder - well we've got the "easy" ones out of the way - which we won 3 (Fulham, QPR and Sunderland) and lost 2 (Stoke - which was never going to be that easy) and Villa which really should have been.

The next few games are a little tougher. Two trips to Manchester and one to the Emirates with the visit of Norwich tucked in there somewhere.

With the trip to Old Trafford coming up on Sunday, we get the now traditional Alex Ferguson musings on life.. this time, unsurprisingly it's about Luis Suarez  who is apparently "laden with controversy", which in fairness isn't far from the truth, but the same could be said of Alex Ferguson and his frequent trips to the FA to explain his latest nonsense.. and also - I especially like this one.. "I hope we don't suffer from some of the decisions that have gone his way". Now setting aside the curious grasp of the tense in this statement - quite how Man Utd are going suffer on Sunday from decisions that have been made previously - I also puzzled by the word decisions. Decisions as in plural, meaning more than one.

Now, fair enough, the Mansfield goal the other week should never have stood. So that is ONE decision. However, I would point out when Liverpool fans have a song that goes "We're going to have a party, when Suarez gets a pen." I would suggest that it isn't a regular occurence. Actually the penalty we did get this season didn't do us too much good in the end anyway. Notice penalty - singular.

It would be nice not to suffer again from decisions going against us such as those in the game at Anfield this season.. when in fairness Liverpool outplayed Man Utd with 10 men and would have got something out of the game were it not for Valencia's balance issues.

I shouldn't let Ferguson's nonsense annoy me quite so much - he does it before every game - telling the referee, effectively his job or rather how Ferguson wants him to do his job. It also lets us know who he's most worried about in the oppositions side.. it's not usual that he starts banging on about the shite players in the other side.. or at least the ones that are less of a threat.

Man Utd 0 - 1 Danny Murphy

It's been a little while since the 4-1 at Old Trafford and longer still since the days when Danny Murphy turned the fixture into something of an away banker, but I think we can go there with some optimism.

We tend to step up in line with the quality of the opposition.. even we're on an iffy run (for example, just before the trip to Chelsea this season) we are able to sometimes raise our game.. although not it seems when we go to Stoke for some reason.

It would of course be helpful if we didn't need to keep going on about the 4-1 game (although the experience of watching that game in a Manchester pub has stayed with me for some reason) and the news that Howard Webb will be in charge at Old Trafford doesn't exactly fill me with optimism - although I do seem to remember him giving one of the Danny Murphy penalties, but that was before he was drawn to the dark side.

I do have a sense that it will be Howard Webb that will be the focus of attention come the end of the game tomorrow.. some kind of dubious sending off, most probably for Luis Suarez diving although this will recinded by the FA after it turns out that it wasn't a dive and should have been a penalty after all.. at which point Ferguson will be sat that there with a smug expression on his face while presumably stroking a white cat.. His dastardly scheme involving Howard Webb doing exactly as instructed via the subliminal press conference having worked perfectly.

Of course this may not happen at all - Howard Webb could be a force for good instead of evil - and some kind of scenario involving a 98th minute Luis Suarez winner that should have been handball, offside or both may save the day after all.

We shall see what happens, but I hope it's the latter and that the forces of evil will banished forever.

THE END.

I got a bit carried away with the good versus evil stuff didn't I.. never mind.