United take the role of giantkillers

Manchester United versus Chelsea at Old Trafford — tomorrow’s game, as we’ve come to expect, is being billed as a ‘Super Sunday’ occasion, one of those blue-chip Premier League match-ups, two big title rivals of the modern era going head to head again in of the great football theatres of the world.

Chelsea, already with a ferociously relentless look about them this season, are certainly fit for purpose. But United? Even with the fresh application of glittering stardust in the form of Di Maria and Falcao, there’s still an unsettling sense that Louis van Gaal’s side are raw understudies who will struggle to live up to such a leading role. And not for some time has Old Trafford been a place to inspire fear in even the mildest hearts.

One of the blackest of the many black marks laid against David Moyes was that his brief, tortured time in charge ended with Manchester United out of European competition for the first time since 1990. But as Louis van Gaal surveyed the Champions League landscape this week, he must privately have been counting his blessings that having to cope with a European challenge was not also on his lengthy to-do list at Old Trafford.