So the latest England qualifiers are finally over and once again we can all feel the disappointment of a constant under achieving England side that fails to deliver and looks as if their best chance of getting to the next World Cup would be through the play offs. It didn't get off to the best of starts with the whole Rio Ferdinand situation which as per usual of late an England manager showing a complete lack of knowledge and professionalism. Now correct me if i am wrong but if you were the manager and hadn't spoken to Rio for 10 months and you were considering him to be in the latest squad surely you would have picked up the phone and just got some of the finer details on his complicated training and fitness regime which has worked wonders for Rio in recent months. Well Roy seems to have the ability of not doing things quite like that so he had left himself open to Rio (under pressure from Sir Alex it has to be said) to get a bit of sweet revenge on Roy for the disgraceful way in which he had been treated by England over the past year.
So can anyone blame Rio for turning the chance to play for England again down? Well at least he had the intelligence to go and speak to Roy face to face (which is more than what Roy has done to him) but he then goes and shoots himself in the foot and loses all of the media's support that he was receiving by jumping on a plane to do some tv work for the England game. Now he should have just kept a low profile and out of the spotlight, instead he has left himself open to all kinds of criticism which could have been so easily avoided but not for one minute was i expecting him to get the kind of criticism that he received from a small section of England fans but should have i expected it? England fans are renowned for turning on Utd players in the past, in the mid 90's Utds players were regularly booed by England fans when the teams were announced before each kick off and more often than not it's a Utd player that ends up being the scapegoat if things go wrong so is it any wonder when Utd fans up and down the country have very little time for England anymore and i include myself in that. As for Rio his form has been excellent for us this season and giving up playing for England would only prolong his career which on current form would only be good news for Utd fans.
So we come to this weekends fixtures which see the reds take on Sunderland away in the league and Chelsea away in the FA cup. Its very difficult to try and second guess the boss with his team selection this week due to the long distances some of the players would have travelled but i think that he may play the stronger team on Monday in the cup and i hope he does as it's been far too long since we last won the FA cup and with Sunderland having major injury problems i think that game should take care of itself.There will be few sights that i ever see in my life worse than those Sunderland fans celebrating that we lost the league when we thought it was won at the end of last season so a good old fashioned hiding would give me great pleasure in seeing them fans who celebrated then pretty much crapping themselves of the thought of relegation and lets hope that they do get relegated.
So after hopefully sending Sunderland ever closer to the drop zone we face Chelsea away in the FA cup on Monday and after what has to be said as probably our most disappointing 2nd half display for some time we can count ourselves lucky to still be in the cup and that is mainly due to the magnificent last gasp save from David De Gea.The key player for us in this game will be Chicharito his goal scoring record for us against Chelsea is phenomenal so i think he will be a certain starter.One positive thing to come out of the international break was to see RVP getting on the score sheet for Holland as he has clearly been out of sorts in recent weeks for Utd this was only to be expected as he had got off to a blistering start to his Utd career and all forwards tend to go through lean spells from time to time.
So my predictions for the weekend are a convincing 0-3 win at Sunderland followed by a 0-2 win at Chelsea to set up a Manchester derby for the semi final and confidence will be high for game against City next week.
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