Now for the real stuff as Carling Cup loses its fizz

SO, how did we do last night?

Not that it matters very much, in truth, despite all Fergie’s protestations about the importance of avoiding other group-toppers in the draw; frankly, all eyes were already gazing towards the next two weekends, and the potentially seismic encounters with London’s finest that await.

Our encounter with London’s least-fine last week didn’t go so well, of course. The 6,000 who braved the snow and submitted to the onerous expense were not happy about the apparent lack of desire and correct attitude on show, with only Anderson and Obertan escaping the general opprobrium.

Certainly, Irish eyes would not have been smiling at the sight of messrs O’Shea and Evans blundering about, leading to some pointed observations in the former’s case about how little 80 grand a week buys you these days.

In any event, let’s not overreact: it was only the fizzy pop cup.

Fergie did not, to my mind, look overly bothered about it afterwards — and it’s two fixtures removed from what is already a very testing festive fixture calendar.

That calendar has been further freighted by us drawing Liverpool in the Proper Cup, and we all had a good chuckle over Roy Hodgson’s instant bemoaning of his bad luck. It’d be a novel, and hugely welcome, opportunity to finish a Liverpool season before the buds have sprung, and Roy must know it.

And yes, thank you for asking, we are now over the disappointment of the Blackpool postponement.

Plenty of cunning Reds ended up still going to the resort for the entire weekend anyway, telling partners that hotels and trains could not be cancelled, producing a scenario that we dub a ‘Brucey Bonus’ here. For they’ll all be at the rearranged date, of course, so they’ll have ended up escaping the usual weekend gynocratic house arrest twice over. Never underestimate the factor in football’s popularity that is the cast-iron alibi it offers to avoid having to spend 48 hours with the wife or — worse — the screaming kids.

Incidentally, it would be remiss of me not to mention FC United’s FA Cup replay against Brighton tonight, which is being televised. If you haven’t experienced an FC match before, and have all the correct technical gubbins installed, this is a great chance for you to see what all the fuss has been about — and will offer you a sobering illustration as to how 7,000 hyped-up nutters can make more noise than 70,000 somnolent Old Traffordians. And award yourself an extra drink every time a media know-nowt says that the “dream draw” for any fourth round would be MUFC vs FCUM. For the vast majority of both clubs’ fans, it’d be the nightmare scenario.

So, here we are, teetering on the cusp at the top of the rollercoaster which we hope will constitute the next ten days: tonight, Saturday, and then next weekend — for the United fan, this is surely the outstanding purple patch of the season so far. So much at stake, so many questions to be answered. This is what we live for, isn’t it? Even the wife could grasp that...