This is the one

So here we go then.

It’s always been about this one hasn’t it? Ever since the fixtures were announced last year. We might have flirted with the idea of it all being over by now, but that was never seriously going to happen was it?

Eight clear before the non-performance at Wigan. Five clear before the brain-fade at the end of the Everton game. Now it’s down to three. Fergie likes to say we always make it difficult for ourselves and it was the man himself who coined “squeaky bum time”. There’s not an argument from any Red that this is the squeakiest in almost 20 years either. Masochist? He’s probably not too far off.

There’s still plenty of possibilities for it all to change, everyone knows that, but the fact of the matter is this. Come away from there without losing and it’s on, a ciddy win and…. Well, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.

But you can feel it can’t you? Just look at the set-up. Them and us. One match. In their backyard. Against us. Us, the team they embarrassed, spanked and sent home crying (metaphorically) back in October. This is the end of one dominant era and the start of another. Our league title slipping to them in front of our own eyes. And the players! The troll who went from Red to Blue, worshipped at first then out-casted only to return triumphantly for the glory at the end. “Fergie, Fergie, sign him up” they’ll sing before laughing at us for years. Him, Aguero, Toure, Silva, each one a big-game player, a matchwinner, unstoppable on their day. It’s surely just a progression now. The League Champions’ medal replacing the blue and white scarf around the manager’s neck for the next year at least. Blow-up trophies replacing the inflatable bananas of days gone by. The Mayans had it right, the end of the world is coming and it’s not going to be pretty.

But this is football. And football has a funny way of beating logic. Evolution tells us that only the strongest will survive, the weak will fall by the wayside and triumph of the favourite is inevitable. Competition, now that’s different. Competition flips the script. Competition says the other lot may be the favourites, the odds may be stacked against you, on paper you should have no chance but despite this, competition says it doesn’t mean they can’t get taught a lesson and it doesn’t mean they can’t get battered. Once the first whistle blows, the results just don’t always add up.

In a week where we’ve seen the worst Chelsea side in recent years and Bayern Munich reach the Champions League Final at the expense of the Spanish giants, don’t be surprised if someone tears the paper, someone decides we’re not ready to hand over the title just yet pulls a performance out that defies logic and belief from deep inside them. See, no matter what the experts have told you and the commentators have predicted, there is no accounting for that moment of magic that makes all the difference. When it’s this close this late on, titles are won and lost on those split seconds of genius, and if one of those comes from someone in red…. Well, as the old saying goes:

“We got ourselves a game…”

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