Does anyone else think that not playing Scholes tonight (nor Rooney until late in the second half) was a mind game on Fergie’s part? Like saying, “I’m not going to field my strongest team, that’s how confident I am in my players.” (Or perhaps he didn’t want Rooney to lose his head and get a red card. I’d like to think it was mind games though.)

And also by not conceding any goals under Van der Sar, the myth perpetuates itself that no team can score against United when VDS is in goal…

I have a theory that one of these days, United will walk on to the field, and the other team will look up in horror as United will all have dark curly afros (Fergie will somehow persuade Ronaldo to grow his hair), making it impossible to tell apart the players. This was Fergie’s plan all along in buying the da Silva twins and Possebon… to field a team of identical-looking players to absolutely confound the other teams! You can’t play mind games with Fergie, he’s always one step ahead of you…

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Ps. Love the blog, Brian. Your thoughts about football are on an entirely different level… I think I was hooked when I saw that you had a blog post entitled “Steven Gerrard and the crisis of modern ontology”. Oh and also the character sketches are amazingly accurate. Thanks so much, and keep up the good work

C’mon, you know you want to.