Here we are yet again, in ‘new season = new manager’ mode for the third time in three years, wondering whether this is now going to be A Thing.

Just What ‘Class’ is Roy Keane, Then?

Getting in behind the Premier League weekend.

Catch up with all the weekend antics from the Premier League in Monday Morning Leftback 

Please pass on my thanks to Richard Kurt for acknowledging, in his sports column today, that Crystal Palace are a Premier league club.

Whatever else has been going wrong for Louis Van Gaal, these days, he still has something going for him: luck, writes Richard Kurt.

Idler Johnson the unlikeliest of Red heroes

The science of United ticket-touting is complex and challenging. When Michael O’Leary finally quits his airline, the company could do worse than pluck a successor from the Warwick Road broking fraternity, so expert are they at judging dynamic advance seat pricing.

Liverpool: Losing on goal difference having scored 101 goals would have been too cruel

Our pundits take a look at the ins and outs of this week's action.

Utd's horrorshow rolls on, it's all about the result for Gunners and Blues seeing red over ref Foy.

Matt Busby once wrote in Soccer At The Top: “If anything is to be gained from football, it is to be gained bywinning or losing with dignity. If there are nations whose people so losethemselves in their emotions as to encourage the thug and the cheat they can be educated only by example.”

LAST week, my crystal ball was throbbing impressively.

“I’VE just been listening to a foaming-mouthed BBC reporter describe this past United month as “the perfect start”.

LAST week I wrote here, in full giddy-o-meter mode: ‘What if the Gunners are humiliatingly spiked by our bunch of kids on Sunday? I wasn’t the only putative Nostradamus foreseeing such climaxes, though.

Terrace-talker Richard Kurt is asking fellow Manchester United fans to believe in the impossible

HOW did we do last night, then? Not that it matters very much, I suppose: thanks to the rather fortunate win in Catalonia, this group appears to have gone into a coma, which prompted Messrs Fergie and Carrick pre-match to sound off about how “great” the Champions League still is in terms of excitement in its group stages.

THERE’S a great temptation to quote the Wilde cliche on ‘carelessness’ after Fulham was succeeded by Everton. I’ll stick to blaming Fergie, for his inept tinkering with 10 minutes to go. You truly cannot teach an old dog new tricks.

WHAT a sublime-to-the-ridiculous week for travelling Reds.

HMM. What was I saying in my very final paragraph just last week? That we shouldn’t be wholly deceived by our Big Five wins, and that Wenger was surely right to be proclaiming he had seen future glory during his twin Manchester setbacks.

ONE of my preferred Old Trafford pressmen is a Lancastrian working at the Daily Wail, who does a good line in world-weary ennui — which makes a nice counterpoint to that paper’s usual tone of quasi-fascist hysteria.

IRREFUTABLE proof that I am getting both old and sad: more than once, whilst watching Sunday’s rather tedious 90 minutes, I found myself slyly turning on an earpiece-tranny combo to hear what Alan Green was blathering on about on the BBC’s commentary.

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?

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.

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.

YOU can’t turn on the telly or open a paper this week in England without seeing Brian Clough’s face smirking at you. ‘The Damned United’ has just opened here.

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.

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.

AGONY AND ECSTASY: Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs race to celebrate with Anderson who scored the winning penalty in the Carling Cup final shoot-out at Wembley.

AS Torres’ second went in, to give the jammy Scousers their laboured win against a Chelsea side unfairly reduced to ten men, few could resist the temptation to declare this the week that the title race finally became a proper Red v Red death-match for the first time in almost 30 years. If Rafa can avoid reproducing his Keegan impression, that is.

AND with one late bound, they were free. Not just United on Saturday, but Chelsea too. Twice over, it would seem: Lampard’s goal is being credited with saving Scolari’s job, of course, but there’s also the matter of their very future as a club.

IT had been brass monkeys weather all week in Manchester until the day Chelsea arrived, when the thermometer shot up eight degrees.

WITH Liam Mackey away another week ALLAN PROSSER gets more continuous starts

YOU have got to love the way football defies economic realities. The world’s most precariously indebted club is beginning to whisper the world ‘quintuple’ whilst the planet’s richest has just ensured its 33rd trophyless year.

IT’S the time of year for facing truths and making resolutions so we might as well start by admitting that we are becoming a tad concerned about the failure of the Liverpool title bandwagon to derail so far.

GREETINGS from my Christmas holiday base, where I am escaping the vicious UK weather and economic collapse; I figure what’s good for the players is good for the fans too.

YOU know, it’s all too easy for cynics to mock this World Club Cup.

How will we cope without the entertainment provided by the greatest living Irishman we’ve become so attached to?

ON those rare occasions when the world seems to turn its gaze towards Manchester, we Mancs will seem to be wholly unconcerned.

I’M writing before kick-off in Spain but for once I can genuinely be insouciant enough to suggest that it doesn’t really matter how we did last night; all eyes have been on next Sunday since full-time in Brum.