Hoping to keep the Red flag flying high

YOU can verify the following assertion by visiting any Manchester pub at knocking-off time: to your Proper English Bloke, there are only two subjects that are of universal interest for manly discussion: Affairs Of The World, usually expressed through politics, and football (sorry, girls: you come a distant third, and are barely holding off the challenge of ‘Popular Music’ at that).

These are what we spend most of our time chuntering on about, over however many pints it may take, and thus the next few days are going to be like several Christmases come at once as we witness the climaxes of the British General Election and the Premier League title race.

An utterly unprecedented achievement is temptingly glimpsed for both political and footballing Reds: a fourth successive victory.

Both are spectacularly unlikely – as I write on a Monday, the bookies make Chelsea 1/14, and you can get 20s against an outright Labour win. Bad tidings for the pair of grumpy, debt-laden Scots who are out of the European elite and will probably soon to be out of a job (albeit “soon” being a relative term, in Fergie’s case).

And in both cases, you have to concede that the likeliest outcome will also be the most deserved. Labour have dashed every hope we had for them back in 1997, and Chelsea are heading for a double ton – nearly a hundred goals, and a 100% record in their Top Four matches. It’ll probably be a Blue weekend, in every sense.

And yet... hope can be a terrible thing, especially in these snooker-requiring circumstances, teasing you from afar with its hitched-up skirt hems.

Still we pursue it, and mutter to each other that Wigan beat Chelsea in the autumn, and wrecked their title run two years ago to boot. We remind ourselves of the seemingly impregnable positions Ancelotti steered his teams into back in Istanbul 2005, 2001’s Serie A race, and 1999’s European semi-final, positions from which he still blew it in Devon Loch style.

But let’s not kid ourselves: we will not be tripping lightly to Old Trafford on Sunday. It’ll be the heavy-hearted and booted clump of outnumbered troops on the way to the ramparts of a surrounded fortress, there to await the final assault of a confident enemy.

May we at least find some noble glory in a defeat, if defeat it is to be. We have been here before, of course, heading to a final day points-down and thus overwhelming underdogs, relying on the failure of others.

I’ve mentioned 1995 enough before now – and how painfully correct I was in suggesting last week that Berbatov could be reprising the Andy Cole Upton Park role, in light of his dismal Sunderland display – but there have been others in living memory. Such as 1980, when 14/1 would have seemed ridiculously short odds, so vast was the task. That day we had to go to a tough Leeds whilst Liverpool played host to supine Aston Villa, and the afternoon descended into aggro-strewn mayhem.

The flash-in-the-pan Avi Cohen is completely forgotten these days, except by us wincing Reds. Then there was 1968, which saw us horrendously lose at home to Sunderland as neighbours City won a seven-goal thriller at Newcastle, though at least we had the best possible consolation still to come at Wembley later in May. And seeing as I’m ladling on the miserable echoes here, let’s not forget Stoke’s past form in similar circumstances, when they came to Old Trafford midweek at the height of the 1976 climax and beat us 1-0 to all but hand Liverpool the title.

So: statistical probability, thebookies, common sense, the form book, and the Hand of History are all ranged squarely against us.

“My right flank is crumbling. My left is outnumbered. The situation may seem hopeless. Excellent: we attack at dawn,” as the Marshall Ferdinand Foch once put it when in a similar spot in 1916. May Sunday at least go with a bang and not a whimper.