Henrik leaves Green red-faced

PITY poor pundit Alan Green, who hasn’t exactly been on a purple patch when it comes to his analysis of all things United recently.

You may recall me previously highlighting here how Wayne Rooney answered Green’s questioning of his entire career prospects with a spectacular scoring outburst in the autumn.

Now it is the turn of Henrik Larsson to put Green in the doghouse.

Before kickoff on Sunday, Green loudly opined to the listening nation that Henrik was over-hyped and over-rated and went through a cavalcade of reasons why he was unlikely to be a good move by Fergie. Oops.

Henrik didn’t so much stick two fingers up at Greeney as two feet — that peg-to-peg flash of magic that saw him tee himself up for his wonderstrike was Bestian, dare I say it. Green, fortunately for him, was not commentating as the shot flew in, but was made to look a complete fool.

Henrik’s sharpshooting propels him instantly into the list of great United debutants, where he is joined by two of his teammates from Sunday, Wayne Rooney and Ole Gunnar.

The latter, with an excellent sense of Circle Of Life historical awareness, duly popped up with his own trademark party-trick, the last-minute Cup-saver.

Soft and slightly unmerited goal though it was, we all truly shared Ole’s all-but-uncontainable joy as he hared around in front of the Stetford End, not so much for the deliverance from the replay, but because the look on Ole’s face spoke a volume: “Wow — I’m not only back, but I’m back doing THIS great last-gasp routine to boot! Smoke me a herring!” (Or whatever it is they say in Molde.) As I predicted last week, we fielded a proper Cup team for once, confirming Ferguson’s new policy this season — we’re going for them all.

Arsene Wenger said he would get his Arsenal team to do the same; suddenly, arrogant pick ‘n’ choosing of the kind we shamefully did so much in 1999/2000 is out of fashion.

Amen to that, though let’s see how long it lasts once the Champions League kicks off again.

Certainly, we will need most of our first choice XI to get past Redknapp’s motley crew of pensioners and mercenaries in Round 4, not least as Andy Cole has several points to prove to both Harry and to us. Cole is capable of anything on an occasion like that, as he almost proved with City when he came within an inch of giving them their first win at O.T. in three decades recently.

Before then we have Villa in the league and then the crunch match at Arsenal, who had us all gulping at their magnificence at Anfield the other day. I doubt we’ll see three such good goals in one game again this season and we can only be grateful that the Gooners have come such a-cropper this season through treating the lower orders with low-effort disdain.

Almost, but not quite, as grateful as we are to the Football Gods for finally giving Chelsea the cosmic payback they so richly deserve. The meltdown continues, to the unalloyed joy of the rest of Europe, judging from the bitterness I hear on my travels from Continental fans. Oh, relish the exquisite irony in Mourinho’s complaints about the transfer fees being quoted to his club, when it was Chelsea who inflated the market expectations to that absurd degree to begin with, during their initial fascistic landgrab! And let the painfully statuesque Shevchenko stand as a monument to their gross and cynical hubris getting its overdue comeuppance.

Bernard, Steven, join me: “rejoice, rejoice!”

* Richard Kurt is author of “The Red Army Years”