Lady Luck threatens to take masochistic thrill out of title race

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

I think it was the result of the reflected heat reaching us from Liverpool after Rafa Benitez’s head exploded on Friday but you can never be sure. That Anfield comedy hour certainly set our Sunday up nicely, as did LFC’s blundering about at Stoke and Arsenal’s continued failure to find their old swaggering form.

Yet not even the most optimistic of us had dreamt of anything as embarrassingly definitive as United were to provide at Old Trafford.

Despite what looked like the most unpromising Red midfield selection of the season, and the glowering unhappy presence of Tevez seeping over from the dugout, we administered a spanking of an epochal nature.

These are the kind of afternoons that end eras, after all: you can now quite easily paint a scenario in which an increasingly potless (in all senses of the word) Roman ups sticks and walks away. Taking his £600 million loan back to Vladivostok with him. Bye-bye Chelsea FC: and no-one outside The Bridge will shed a tear, for it’d be the most popular fall of a parvenu since Jack Walker’s Rovers’ late 90s implosion.

Naturally you will forgive me proudly pointing out that all three of my perennial columnar raves studded the score sheet viz. Rooney, Berb and Vidic. Mind you, those strikes were almost matched for exquisite pleasure by Drogba’s appalling miscued miss when unmarked in the Scoreboard End box: how wonderful it is to split your sides at a once-feared figure.

For Drogba, read Chelsea too: hug yourself at the thought that they could soon be just another minor London team to be battered once more. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Of course I am in danger here of indulging in the chronic short-termism that I regularly bemoan in others, so that’s enough about Sunday; as Fergie will doubtless try to remind his men tonight, all that Herculean effort will count for nought if they slip up against Brucey’s battlers.

Besides, we are not without our troubles, mainly focussed on the aftermath of Tevez’s radiophonic meltdown last week. As I write on a Tuesday morning, I am hearing rumours of him being on flights to Milan on Monday morning, for example – and also that Nani has become ‘disturbed’ by staffing developments. Yet when you see pictures of the Ronaldo car crash — and consider that the kid walked away unscathed, you do have to wonder whether, once again, Lady Luck has decided to get into bed for a good seeing-to from Alex this season.

Hark at this too: only hours after one of my pessimistic colleagues suggested, after surveying the stumbling at Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, that “the way is now open for City to come through next season” (!) we received news of two ongoing police enquiries into alleged violent misdeeds by ‘Bitter’ players.

There is, admittedly, a shadow on the horizon in the shape of Jose Mourninho’s Inter: elimination at his hands would, I imagine, have a fairly grisly effect on us. But in general, there is surging confidence amongst fans, and upbeat talk already about the spring showdown with Liverpool.

If, as looks likely, the Scousers are still in the top two by then, we will be able to savour something most young Reds have never known – a genuine, Red v Red head to head for the title at the last furlong.

Indeed it could be argued that, although 1988 and 1986 appeared to be predominantly United v Liverpool races most of the way, the last Real McCoy was as long ago as 1980’s final day, when United lost amidst heavy aggro at Leeds to news of Liverpool thumping Aston Villa. Vaguely masochistic a desire though it seems, I want that dread-in-the- gut thrill back. Let’s hope Rafa can maintain his sanity until then...

* Richard Kurt, whose classic ‘Red Army Years’ is now re-issued, only via [e-mail]