Shoot first to avoid awkward silence

IT’S been an extraordinarily busy few days. A royal wedding, an assassination attempt on Gaddafi, the Emirates match, Osama being the only Bin taken out on a bank holiday… And spare a thought too for FC United, whose astonishing rampage towards promotion (having been all but bottom in January) was thwarted by a late goal in the play-off final at Colwyn Bay.

Having had to cover all these matters professionally for various outlets, I found myself waving my fist at the TV and PC this morning, shouting, “please, no more news, for God’s sake”. But it’s that kind of week. We Reds stand this morning on the brink of a season-defining few days and the Arsenal setback has to be consigned to the memory’s dustbin. No time to dwell on the abysmal Giggs-free midfield display, the shockingly negative tactics, or the bizarre attempts to blame the ref from Ferguson, doing a passable impression of Mourinho.

And if you’re going to stop me there and ask me why Giggs wasn’t even in the squad, I’m afraid it’d be illegal for me to comment.

The temptation to panic has been gratefully seized by many of the less fiable Reds, but let us get this straight: all we have to do is not lose against Chelsea at home — a team we have recently twice outclassed, at a venue in which we have been unassailable — and we will then be all but home and hosed.

And tonight we simply have to avoid a once in a lifetime odds-overturning catastrophe against the worst semi-finalists I have seen in the European Cup since the format changed in 1992.

Ferguson was quite right to insist on Sunday night that we are still in a great position — every one of us would have snapped your hand off if you had offered us this scenario back in the autumn.

Never has a Fergie United team so rampantly over-achieved as this one.

Tonight approaches bearing a novel sensation.

Never have we gone into a second leg Old Trafford semi-final in this competition as favourites.

Heading to the ground with — whisper it — the expectation that we are going to be ecstatic on the whistle at the prospect of a final is downright weird, in fact.

I’m not sure if I like it; it seems a bit un-United to be in this position, so accustomed are we to relishing a backs-to-the-wall fight.

I recall only too well the last time we were up against Germans in this precise position, back in 1997. Dortmund were a much better side than this lot, a point they would underline in the final, and what every Red remembers from that night — apart from the Cantona miss — is how their early goal crushed the life out of the stadium.

That would be the main fear tonight, too, especially after our recent glum experiences of seeing how cluelessly United responded to going a goal down at both Wembley and the Emirates, you would not be as confident as you once might have been in our powers of recovery.

Let us hope, therefore, that we go for the throat from the start.

Shoot first and shoot often: as Osama would ruefully confirm, is usually effective.