Damnable day actually turned uglier at full-time

THE biggest groan of the day on Saturday would not have been the one produced by the Kop when Chich’s goal went in but that which emanated from United fans seeing the team sheet for the first time.

What a miserable, wretched, cringing selection that was.

Ferguson had gone into the game calling this the “biggest match in the world” but apparently he was just up to his mind games: it was simply a warm-up session for last night, or so we must conclude from the sight of United’s finest players — Rooney, Nani and Hernandez — warming the bench.

“What I tried to do was play a team to start the game and then have players on the bench who could win the game,” pleaded Alex afterwards, to which one can only reply with this column’s oldest unrequited lament — win the match first, then take off the players you want to rest.

Pah: let’s not dwell any further — given how the grisly afternoon panned out, we were delighted to escape with a point. Now let us never speak of it again.

Ah, hang on: apparently that’s a forlorn hope, as Paddy Evra’s racism complaint means we shall all be studying TV slow-mos alongside lip readers and poring over future inquiry transcripts for some days or weeks to come.

At the time of writing, no-one can take the legal risk of pronouncing one way or the other, although one might suggest Fergie isn’t taking this quite as seriously as Potty might’ve hoped: “Patrice thought he was slighted on Saturday…”

“Slighted”? If, as alleged, the ‘n’ word was spat at him 10 times during the game, than that’s a bit of an understatement.

You do get the impression that our betters (sic) are a bit miffed that all their goody-goody PR work pre-match has been somewhat undone by Paddy’s outburst.

Sir Alex had been busy lecturing us about our behaviour for days before the game, and the match was then chosen to launch a Kick It Out action programme, with players from both sides wearing anti-racism T-shirts. A message was read out before the game saying that Liverpool did not tolerate racism of any form, and there was a telephone number in the programme for supporters to report any offences.

Well, Paddy took them at their word and chose the more direct route, dialling ‘911 Ref’, but so far one gets the feeling that everyone in the game wishes this affair would just dribble away into inconclusiveness.

I was startled to hear the BBC’s Mark Chapman discussing the allegations and referring to Paddy’s attitude in the match as being “chippy” from kick-off, to murmuring approval from his three footballing studio guests.

Mmm. Interesting, and potentially Freudian, choice of word, “chippy”. Often heard in the bad old days in variants of the phrase “black person X has got chips on both shoulders”, no?

Still, Suarez must remain innocent until proven guilty, of course — but I do hope they hang him if he’s convicted, the diving little weasel.

Thankfully, for good order, there couldn’t possibly be quite as much bad feeling or heightened tension as at Anfield for our next match….oh.

Naturally, I could’ve filled the entire column with panting anticipation about next Sunday but there’s only one unbeatable sentence that’s needed: ‘this is the biggest league derby of my generation’s lifetime’.

At last: City fans are finally fully justified in deploying their fetish word ‘massive’…