IF YOU hadn’t previously heard the famous F-worded Fergie quote about United’s historical challenge against Liverpool, you must have done by now: it’s been repeated ad nauseam by every newspaper since Saturday.

AH, the dilemma of the successful: who to laugh at first? Arsenal’s “11 babies”, as memorably skewered by ‘Potty’ Paddy Evra the other day – much to French team-mate Silvestre’s fury?

WAKEY wakey and put last night behind you. Europe Schmeurope: never mind battling for continental and world supremacy when there’s a few battered square miles of Mancunia at stake.

AS has been said before, a week may be a long time in politics but in football it can prove to be an eternity.

UGH. I think it’s safe to say that was the worst FA Cup semi-final I have seen United involved in since I started watching them in 1976, and that’s not just because we lost one for the first time in my memory.

IT’S AN indication of what an instant hit Federico ‘Kiko’ Macheda has been with Reds that we are already scrambling about trying to knock up a song or two for him.

SO NEVER mind last night; surely it couldn’t have topped last weekend’s thrillfest double-header in London and Manchester? That was precisely the kind of possibility I had in mind a couple of months ago, when I slightly masochistically suggested that we should all enjoy seeing this race go Red v Red until the breathless death.

THERE was an amusing tale in the London Daily Mail last week about warnings being issued not to wear any clothing with ‘AIG’ on it, lest it attract unwanted violent attention.

NORMALLY, dear reader, you and I are already putting the past weekend to bed and looking forward to the future on these Wednesday mornings, aren’t we?

SO HERE we are again, at the dawn of one of those moments you rarely get more than once a season; a massive Old Trafford double-header, full of promise and weighted with silvery significance.