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Date: Sun Mar 22 13:52:35 GMT+00:00 1998
Mail: barry@www.red11.org
Title run-in
Manchester United
Mar 28: Wimbledon (H)
April 6: Blackburn (A)
April 10: Liverpool (H)
April 18: Newcastle (H)
April 27: Crystal Palace (A)
May 4: Leeds (H)
May 10: Barnsley (A)
Tomorrows RED Birthday list 23 March:
42 Larry Turner flint@global.net.au Perth Nick "Flint" ICQ 1199536
34 Shay Sweeney ssweeney@telecom.ie Ireland,Donegal Yearly visitor to OT since 90
This Issue:
1. Good Scholes news
2. England's Gain (Telegraph)
3. Hallowed Be Our Name
4. Title Run-in: Sunday Times Title Prediction
++++++=========+++++++========+++++++++========++++++++
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Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 12:46:17 +0000
Reply-To: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
Sender: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
From: J Callaghan
Subject: Good scholes news
Comments: To: RED-DEVILS@PIPELINE.COM
To: MUFC@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
England Joy For Scholes
Scan shows knee op may not be needed
By Stuart Mathieson
PAUL Scholes has been given a massive injury
boost following a second scan on his problem knee.
Results of a new scan after Manchester United's
Champions League exit has revealed that the
midfielder's knee trouble has shown signs of
improvement since the last one was conducted five weeks ago.
The Manchester United midfielder has been
plagued by a persistent knee complaint since Christmas.
After the 23-year-old was forced out of
United's Champions League quarter final against
Monaco on Wednesday at half time because of
the knee pain, manager Alex Ferguson admitted that
the trouble now posed United a problem.
The Reds' boss was faced with the dilemma of putting
the England player through surgery soon or waiting until the end of the season.
After withdrawing him from England's friendly in
Berne next week against Switzerland United decided to rest the problem for
another ten days before making a decision.
Ferguson's final verdict will also hinge on the
availability of all his other crocked senior players. The fact Scholes' latest scan has
shown improvement means there are no plans to operate yet and, therefore, suggests
that any operation will be left now until early May.
The op is believed to be a ``wash out'' op rather
than serious surgery and would give Scholes the time to recover and rubberstamp his
place in Glenn Hoddle's World Cup 22 for the final in France in June.
X-rays on Gary and Philip Neville after the Monaco
match in midweek have also brought good news for the Reds. Both the United full
backs have had to pull out of the Switzerland World Cup warm up next Wednesday
but neither player has suffered breaks or fractures with their respective
problems.
With Andy Cole also KO'd for England after suffering a knock in the Champions
League match, United's initial seven man representation for Switzerland has been
reduced to three with only David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Teddy Sheringham
reporting for duty.
Sheringham misses the Premiership match against Wimbledon next Saturday at
Old Trafford because of a one-match suspension.
A Manchester United is for life, not just for christmas.
---------------------------------------------------------
JacKiT@indigo.ie
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If tomorrow was today, it would be yesterday.
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Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 09:02:14 +0800
Reply-To: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
Sender: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
From: Red Devil Marcus
Subject: England's Gain (Telegraph)
Comments: To: Red Devil List ,
Darul Kisai , Darul
To: MUFC@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
England gain from United's latest loss
By Colin Malam
GLENN HODDLE would not be human if he did not allow himself a small sigh of
relief at Manchester United's unexpected removal from the European Cup.
Publicly, the England coach is full of regret over United's quarter-final
defeat by Monaco. Privately, however, he must be thanking God a heavy burden
has been lifted from the shoulders of practically a third of his probable
World Cup 22.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the United contingent to
England's chances of prospering in France this summer. At the very least,
the Neville brothers, Gary and Phil, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, David
Beckham, Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole constitute easily the largest group
of players from one club in the current England squad. So their well-being
is critical to the outcome of the whole enterprise.
At the moment, they are of very little use to Hoddle. Suffering from
injuries sustained or aggravated in last Wednesday's second leg against
Monaco, the Nevilles, Scholes and Cole have withdrawn from the squad to play
a World Cup warm-up against Switzerland in Berne this Wednesday. Not only
that but the three survivors, Beckham, Sheringham and Butt, are bruised in
mind and body.
However, the England coach can expect a steady improvement in the physical
and psychological condition of most of the Stretford Seven now that they do
not have to combine winning the European Cup with defending their domestic
title in unexpectedly tense circumstances. Had United got to the final of
the European Cup while facing a strong challenge from Arsenal in the
Premiership, Hoddle's World Cup preparations undoubtedly would have
suffered.
It is difficult to imagine, for instance, that United manager Alex Ferguson
would have made too many of his players available for the friendly against
Portugal on April 22, which comes a week after the second leg of the
European Cup semi-final. Nor, in all probability, would they have been in
the best shape for the May 23 friendly against Saudi Arabia, three days
after the final of Europe's premier club tournament, and then an
international tournament in Morocco.
United were already beginning to wilt under the combined weight of a heavy
programme and a growing injury list. That much was clear from their results
since the turn of the year and before they succumbed to Monaco. Just six
wins in 15 league and cup games is not the sort of record you would expect
from England's finest club side were they still in the form and condition
that had made them well-nigh irresistible before Christmas.
So the dashing, for another year, of United's cherished European Cup hopes
could well be the making of England. Although it promises to be a tough
fight to keep Arsenal at bay over the last leg of the season, there should
be enough time between games now for United's many England players to
recapture the zest which has so patently been missing from their football of
late.
Since even the younger players have been feeling the pace, it is no disgrace
for Sheringham, at nearly 32, to be admitting he is jaded. "I've had a chat
with Teddy about that and we've rested him today," said Hoddle on Friday.
"He'll be rested again tomorrow, so he'll have had a few days of complete
rest after the Monaco game and will train, hopefully, on Sunday, when his
knocks and bruises should have settled down.
"One of the things with United is the size of the match every time they
play. When they are in town, other teams raise their game and it's a full
house. Every game for United is a massive one, because everyone wants to
topple them. They've had injury problems, too, so Alex Ferguson couldn't
rotate the squad as he'd have liked and he's had to play players more and
more.
"It's been a testing season for the United boys, I agree with Alex on that,
and that's why we've worked together closely on the availability of players.
This time, for instance, I wanted David Beckham with us even though he's got
a knock on the calf. Alex was fine about it and said he was fit enough to jo
in us. I appreciate that."
One United player who might put a strain on the harmonious relationship
between Hoddle and Ferguson is Scholes. The England coach must have been a
little alarmed to hear the United manager say he was thinking of delaying an
operation on the midfielder's troublesome knee until the end of the season
so that he could play the inventive redhead sparingly in the club's seven
remaining Premiership matches.
If Hoddle harboured any misgivings about such a high-risk policy, he was
keeping them to himself. In fact, he intimated that he and Ferguson were
working hand-in-glove on this one, too. "He is a concern, because he's had
this knee problem for some time," the England coach said of Scholes. "He's
had a scan and we'll have to wait and see what the medical people discover."
There is an obvious contradiction in Hoddle's attitude to United in that he
contends they went out of the European Cup only because they suffered
injuries to key players and were forced to play others who were not fully
fit. Yet he insists the ending of their latest quest for the Holy Grail
cannot be interpreted in any way as a bonus for him and England.
"Bayern Munich and Germany were strong together," he said. "So were Ajax and
Holland. So it would have been nice for England to have stamped their
authority on club and international football in the same way. But United
were unlucky. They were hit by injuries at the wrong time."
What Hoddle does concede is that English teams generally seem to suffer more
injuries than their foreign opponents. He laments the fact that, nearly
every time the England players assemble for a match, most of the talk is
about withdrawals and doubtful starters, and he suggests the reason could be
the intensity of our domestic football.
"I think it is possibly to do with the way we play," says the England coach.
"The next game is always coming round the corner pretty quickly. We play
more Saturday-Tuesday, Saturday-Wednesday games than any other country in
the world. Spain and Italy play a similar number of matches, but it's
stretched over a longer period.
"Our game's changing, there's no doubt about that. It's evolving and
becoming more skilful, but I still say it's possibly the most difficult for
staying injury-free. The tempo is such that you certainly need higher energy
levels to play in England than you do abroad. The build-up is a lot slower
in other countries."
So, like United, Hoddle must make do and mend. He has an advantage here in
that he can choose from a much wider range of players than Ferguson, whose
seemingly formidable squad turned out to be not quite strong enough at the
highest level of European club football. Even so, it is time English
football woke up to the truth that its very nature is still handicapping it
in international competition.
© Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1998.
Marcus Lionel van Geyzel.
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Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 11:27:38 -0500
Reply-To: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
Sender: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
From: CP Cheah
Subject: Hallowed Be Our Name
To: MUFC@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
Reds,
First let me apologise for not "keeping up with the duties" of running
this list the past week or so. To be honest, we've been a bit busy, and
the results of the last two matches didn't help things much.
Anyway, we're over it now, and as we used to say back in the 80s, there's
always next season :)
Right, having said that, here's Richard Kurt's latest masterpiece. It's
also up on our webpage:
www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/ccheah/MUFC/rk.html
Chin up - we're still the Champions!
CP Cheah
Hallowed Be Our Name
The recent religious rumpus over United's Good Friday fixture was, in
one respect, hugely entertaining: I never tire of seeing Ken Ramsden
humiliated in public, as he swung desperately from one untenable
position to another until final surrender to the forces of Rome. But
the episode struck deeper chords too, for it got me thinking about the
nature of the Club and of our supporters' position in the world. Now
I'm a militant atheist and generally fairly hostile to all forms of
organized religion. One of the greatest experiences of my life was to
shag a Spanish 15 year-old on the steps of her local church -
sacriligitastic, mate. But I was nevertheless appalled at United's
original decision to play at 3pm on Good Friday, the time attributed to
Christ's death, because it seemed that United were shitting on their
own history, tradition and beliefs. Money, convenience and TV all
mattered more and Ken Ramsden's spin-doctoring over the following two
weeks just made the perceived insensitivity worse. It reminded me
It reminded me of the abandonment of our Euro-kit's black memorial socks in
the very season of the 40th anniversary: it spoke of a Club who no longer
cared about its heritage, only about its Mammon-worshipping future. It was
the offense to those who feel the Club's tradition in their blood that
bothered me. As I'll opine, the blasphemy was against the United religion,
as well as the Catholic religion.
The episode did at least demonstrate the continuing power of the Catholic
establishment, prompting some observers to wonder whether IMUSA should
be targetting bishops in their campaigns rather than MPs. Thirty years
ago, when the Main Stand was thick with clerical cloth and the faint
whiff of incense, the Roman domination was taken for granted. If the
Church of England was the Tory Party at prayer, then Man United was the
Catholic Church at play. Much of United's early support was, of course,
built upon Catholic Celtic immigrants - indeed, Newton Heath almost
became Manchester Celtic in 1902. But over the past couple of decades,
that influence was supposed to have disappeared. And where once the
confidants of the Club hierarchy included a mass of leading Fathers and
Mother Superiors, now the cronies are all bread-head businessmen and
wide boys. So it was kind of comforting for traditionalists to realise
that the old ways haven't quite disappeared yet. It's perverse but even
an anti-cleric like me felt pleased that the God Squad could still pull a
few strings and outflank the hard-faced capitalists who now shape our
club's nature.
What the modern plc exec. wants is this: a brand-name that doesn't actually
represent anything per se, a non-ideological body that anybody across the
world, no matter their age or location or class, can adhere to and worship.
Its only value will be success; everything else should be jettisonned lest
it narrow the brand's appeal. United would be football's New Labour, a
meaningless construct that nonetheless always wins and can thus draw the
support of all those hordes who like to be on a winning bandwagon.
('Foreign' Reds across the globe know the difference between those amongst
them who understand what 'Manchester United' really represents and those
Johnny-Come-Latelys who don't.) Never will plc-man want to remind
anybody of what United were for 80 years of its existence - a
predominantly working class, male, Catholic and local organization
whose business was football, not the 'leisure industry'. No corporate
entrepreneur can build a #500 million concern on such a limited credo.
And whilst no-one could object to opening up the appeal - and anyway, it's
not as if female, bourgeois, out-of-town Protestants were barred from Old
Trafford anyway - surely the utter destruction of the nature of United to
be replaced by a characterless Everyman conglomeration should be a matter of
concern? Ramsden argued that because we have so many fans of every faith, we
couldn't start postponing every other game because it clashed with some
religious festival. That would have been a fair point, if you accept that
the Club should no longer have any particular definition to its essential
nature. But United has not yet been fully rebranded. We're not quite at
Year Zero yet, at least judging by the reaction of many older traditional
fans to the 3 pm kick-off proposal.
After I became a young Red in 1975, from a
mixed Catholic/Protestant family, I soon realised I wasn't joining a
characterless catch-all organization but a Club largely built by
certain kinds of people within a particular tradition. My neighbours
were working-class, second generation Irish immigrant Catholics and
told me they were delighted I'd joined 'their Club'. I in turn felt it
right to respect the traditions and ways built up over the decades - to
be aware of the rights and sensibilities of the 'host community' if you
like. (So I knew the song that Prod classmates sang about the Pope's
wedding tackle would clearly be inappropriate at OT.) It's no big deal,
of course, this Catholic/Protestant stuff: Manchester isn't Glasgow and
the issue has only become pertinent two or three times in my 20 years
as a Red. Most Reds under 30 don't give a toss about this anyway. But
in principle, I do not believe it is right that newcomers should be
able to come into a pre-existing community and demand that it
sacrifices everything it has built up over a century. It's like the invasion
of the middle-class families into a working-class audience over the 90s: how
dare they come in and start shouting the odds over fans' behaviour etc. when
the hosts' families have maintained that Club through generations past? It
would be different had United been a bigoted, unwelcoming community: then
the hosts would've deserved to be culturally assaulted in such a way, just
as the white trash Leeds scum deserved their kickings from the police and
club in the 1980s. But United have always welcomed everybody: it's just that
it always used to ask that its core traditions be respected. So Ramsden was
wrong to put Good Friday down as just another religious day amongst many. If
United's spririt still has a 'religious nature', it is surely still one
coloured by Catholicism more than any other faith. For the decades of
sustenance local churches and their communicants gave United, especially in
financially troubled pre-Busby times, surely some special dispensation for
one day only was justifiable reward? Or, to personify the issue, what do you
think Sir Matt's opinion would've been? Exactly. And we'd surely all take his
advice over Ken Ramsden's every time.
We have to cling onto our traditions because they matter:
history makes United what it is. There's so little left now: even that
enduring faith in carefree attacking football being as important as
success is under threat these days. Hugh McIlvanney, Fergie's
biographer and number one press mouthpiece, wrote last week that we
should all stop moaning about performances like United's in Monaco. He
cited our defeat in Lisbon in '64 as a classic example of how United
used to let themselves get over-excited away from home when following
the Busby creed and that Govan-grim 0-0's are much better. Well, thank
fuck George Best didn't think that way in Lisbon two years later. Or
the lads of '65 going to Dortmund for a tricky one and roasting them
6-1. Or the blessed Babes themselves, getting three tie-winning away
goals when losing to Bilbao in '57. Sure, you might fuck up in
Gothenberg or Barca; but sometimes you succeed gloriously too. And it's
glory, not mere victory, that you'll remember when you're old and grey.
(To be frank, half the victories this season will be forgotten by June,
actually.)
Knowing and celebrating our history is massively important, and
respecting the way immigrants, Catholics and outsider rebels aggregated
at United to shape our history and nature must surely be part of that.
So of course you don't have to be a good Catholic to be a good Red -
but going out of your way to be offensive to an important tradition
within United's support is rather unecumenical, to say the least.
Ironically, given that the numerical number of practising RCs at OT is
at an all-time low, never have United's multicultural, multinational
supporters more resembled persecuted Catholics from the bad old
pre-Emancipation days than they do now. Look at us, spread across the
world, gathering at our secret meeting rooms in every conurbation,
treated as the enemy within by the locals, tending our faith as best we
can in between pilgrimages to our Vatican, Old Trafford. Talking to a
Red from East Yorkshire in Monaco the other day, and thinking about
this Catholic issue, I couldn't help noticing the similarities. He was
telling me about the grief he gets from Leeds-supporting locals for
following an alien team, as if he were a 17th century Papist lambasted
by Protestants for his treacherous devotion to a 'foreign despot'.
Nothing gets ABUs going like their locals who choose to follow the one
true faith from afar; the intensity of the hatred parallels that of
Reformation England. A Stuart Era Protestant courtier once wrote about
the incomprehensibility of native Englishmen following the foreign Roman
church; he could understand it from the residents of Rome's region, but what
possessed the Londoner or Norfolk man to look so far afield? Sounds
familiar?!
We're a persecuted, despised minority everywhere but Manchester's Holy See,
yet as a brotherhood united we're the biggest force in the world. Such a
diverse denomination can and should show a little respect to each other -
because no-one outside our faith is ever going to give us any, are they?
copyright Richard Kurt 1998; first printed in Red Issue, March 1998
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Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 20:02:42 +0800
Reply-To: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
Sender: "Manchester United Football Club (soccer)"
From: Red Devil Marcus
Subject: Title run-in: Sunday Times Title Prediction
Comments: To: Red Devil List ,
Darul Kisai , Darul
To: MUFC@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
March 22 1998 FOOTBALL
Manchester United out of Europe, Arsenal chasing a double, who will win the
title? Joe Lovejoy, football correspondent, assesses the form.
The race is on
IT HAS not been a good week for football's money men, the plc milking
machine that is their umbilical temporarily running dry. Pause here to dab
away crocodile tears.
The impropriety of two slack-jawed Newcastle United directors wiped £10m
from their shares, while Manchester United's stock market valuation fell by
£1.8m with their European Cup demise.
Newcastle's chairman, Freddie Shepherd, and his deputy, Douglas Hall, set
new standards for bringing the game into disrepute by mocking the fans who
have funded their louche lifestyles, and the Mancunian board do not deserve
to be bracketed in such dubious company.
It is a fact, however, that the directors of a plc are responsible to
shareholders, not supporters, and that Manchester United's are motivated by
finance first, with football coming a poor second. There was an embarrassing
reminder of those priorities last weekend when, after Arsenal had won 1-0 to
rejoin the hunt for the championship, the interview room at Old Trafford was
commandeered after the match for a sponsorship announcement.
The impression was unavoidable. The fans wanted to know what had gone wrong,
and how it could be put right in time for Monaco's visit; the club were more
interested in the continued largesse of a Japanese electronics company. This
feeling that profits are now the be-all and end-all was reinforced after
United's elimination from Europe when, with team and supporters in urgent
need of a tonic, the chairman, Martin Edwards, poured cold water on the
notion of a venture into the transfer market before Thursday's deadline.
That the manager, Alex Ferguson, would like a new player or two to bolster a
squad down both in the mouth and in numbers is beyond question, but Edwards
indicated that it was not about to happen. It was ever thus, it seems. At
various stages over the past 12 months Ferguson has moved for Gabriel
Batistuta, Marcus Babbel, Brian Laudrup, Marcelo Salas and Jaap Stam, only
for negotiations to fall through for financial reasons. It would not happen
in Spain or Italy where, like the Mounties, they always get their man.
Below strength or not, had Batistuta or Salas been there to score the sort
of goal with which David Trezeguet put them out, United would still be in
the European Cup and Arsenal would still be chasing second place in the
League. Instead, denied the investment in quality of which they are so
manifestly capable, the world's richest club are left with the by no means
straightforward task of reasserting their domestic supremacy.
It is virtually impossible to overstate the psychological significance of
last Wednesday's result. The players thought that this was their year, that
they were about to lay the ghosts of 1968, and going out of Europe at the
quarter-final stage - a round earlier than last season - sapped morale to a
far greater extent than the Arsenal defeat. Ferguson will need all the mind
games he can muster to repair their self-belief.
He began the damage limitation exercise by stressing one indubitable fact:
the United team squeezed out by Monaco on the away goals rule was not the
one that took the group stage by storm, with handsome victories over
Juventus and Feyenoord. Peter Schmeichel, Gary Pallister and Ryan Giggs were
all hors de combat, which meant that when the long-term casualty, Roy Keane,
was included, Ferguson was without his four most important players. Add the
loss of England's Gary Neville and Paul Scholes during the match and United
were below half strength.
Monaco sent on Thierry Henry, the French international striker, and
Portugal's Francisco Da Costa; United introduced Michael Clegg, mystifying
one Parisian anglophile, who inquired if Compo and Foggy might be next.
It is a reasonable, although by no means safe-as-houses, assumption that
United would have fared better had everyone been fit. Monaco are a good team
and grudging praise would be inappropriate, as well as unbecoming, but
Giggs, in particular, might have made all the difference. His pace, ability
to slalom past defenders and sheer unsettling unpredictability will always
be sorely missed. As Jean Tigana, Monaco's coach, put it: "He is the
detonator - the man who can make Manchester explode."
Ferguson expects Pallister (sciatica) and Giggs (hamstring) to be back when
the scrap for the title resumes on Saturday, and gives Schmeichel
(hamstring) an even-money chance. Of greater concern for club and country is
the knee condition which is preventing Paul Scholes from giving of his
considerable best. The young man needs an operation and, not up to the
rigours of the central maelstrom, was marginalised on the right flank last
Wednesday.
There is talk of him delaying surgery until the end of the season but such a
course of action would be counter-productive, leaving United reliant on a
player well below par, and at the same time jeopardising Scholes'
availability for the World Cup. Never put off to tomorrow what can be done
today, as old mother Lovejoy used to say.
Gary Neville (damaged ribs) and his brother, Phil (foot) are also among the
walking wounded, but that will worry England, who leave for Switzerland
tomorrow, more than United, who are covered in their respective positions.
Always keen to accentuate the positive, it is the return of Schmeichel,
Pallister and Giggs that is uppermost in Ferguson's mind. "With those three
back, we'll have a bit more shape and experience about the team," he said.
"We've been patching things up without them, which is not a good situation
to be in."
Conventional wisdom, with which Ferguson is not about to disagree, has it
that United, with a six-point advantage in the bank, are in a better
position than Arsenal, whose three games in hand need to be won to be of
real value. It is also true that the champions, free from European
distractions and with their injured players back, should be a different
proposition from the anaemic Reds who were outfought by Vieira, Petit and
company last week.
The challengers' sleeves-rolled-up spirit was mightily impressive then, as
it was again when their 10 men removed West Ham from the FA Cup in midweek
but, as a consequence of that result, the boot is suddenly on the other
foot. Now it is Arsenal who are campaigning on two fronts, pursuing the
League and Cup Double, while United can focus their attention on the defence
of their title. They have only seven matches left, four of them at home,
while Arsenal will play 12 if they get to Wembley - more in the event of
replays.
The extra workload will not be a problem if they maintain their present
form, and consequent high morale. The contrast in the recent fortunes of the
two contenders is stark indeed. Over the last three months, both have played
14 matches, but there the similarity ends. United have won four and lost
five, Arsenal have won eight and lost just the one, to Chelsea in the Coca
Cola Cup.
That said, form is an ephemeral thing - as United will testify. It is easier
to lose than it is to find and Arsène Wenger is mindful of the fact that his
team mislaid it when Dennis Bergkamp was suspended in November. Deprived of
their clever catalyst, Arsenal suffered two of their four defeats, to Derby
County (3-0) and Sheffield Wednesday (2-0). If anything is to undermine
their title challenge it will be that woeful disciplinary record.
Bergkamp is to serve another three-match ban for his deserved dismissal
against West Ham and is due to miss the fixtures against Bolton Wanderers
(March 31), the FA Cup semi-final and Newcastle United (April 11). It could
get worse - much worse. After accumulating seven bookings, the Dutchman is
just one away from another automatic suspension, for two matches, in which
event he would miss five of Arsenal's last 10 games. Bergkamp is not alone
on the disciplinary tightrope. Patrick Vieira, Arsenal's most influential
midfielder, and Ray Parlour, whose major contribution has just been
recognised with his elevation to the full England squad, are both in yellow
peril, one booking away from suspension.
Against all this must be weighed the sound of distant cavalry, just over the
hill, if Ian Wright will pardon the expression. Wright and David Seaman will
both be fit for Sheffield Wednesday's visit next Saturday, when Steve Bould,
too, may be available for selection.
It is a hard one to call. Current form points to Arsenal, who are
sprightlier, playing with more desire and conviction. Somehow (probably
because winners feel no pain) they seem to have avoided the battle fatigue
which has had such a debilitating effect on United in general, and Scholes
and Teddy Sheringham in particular.
But the loss of Bergkamp is sure to be detrimental, the return of Giggs
could be inspirational, and my money is on United - in an accumulator with
Arsenal and Juventus for the FA and European Cups, and Freddie Shepherd for
the Greyhound Derby.
Title run-in
Manchester United
Mar 28: Wimbledon (H)
April 6: Blackburn (A)
April 10: Liverpool (H)
April 18: Newcastle (H)
April 27: Crystal Palace (A)
May 4: Leeds (H)
May 10: Barnsley (A)
Arsenal
Mar 28: Sheff Wed (H)
Mar 31: Bolton (A)
April 11: Newcastle (H)
April 13: Blackburn (A)
April 18: Wimbledon (H)
April 25: Barnsley (A)
April 29: Derby (H)
May 3: Everton (H)
May 6: Liverpool (A)
May 10: Aston Villa (A)
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Marcus Lionel van Geyzel.
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