The Lone Official

Mike Riley is the referee for the Chelsea game.  I'm always in two minds about Riley, especially since the last couple of seasons he seems to have taken the more traditional give-Liverpool-every-decision-going approach, more so than previously anyway.  The most "interesting" part of the story from The Telegraph is this:

Ferguson and Everton manager David Moyes have both railed at officials this season. Referees would like the FA to echo Uefa punishments, so guilty managers receive touchline bans that prevent them having contact with players on match-day.

The David Moyes thing is beyond the remit of this blog (but he did have a point didn't he? and he was polite enough after the game and he's right in saying that referees need to earn respect) but Sir Alex didn't "rail at officials", far from it.  His comments completely supported Mark Halsey, didn't they:

"My information is that Hackett told Mark Halsey to rescind the red card and he would not do it," said Ferguson. "Now I understand that Halsey is being made to referee in League Two this weekend. I just don't understand how this could have happened. If it had been a Manchester United player, Hackett would never have done this for us."

Sounds pretty supportive of Halsey to me.  He had a go at Hackett who is "the general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Board" which, to my mind, is not "an official".
This, from The Independent, sums up the comments from after Wednesday's game about that game and about the Chelsea game and looks at possible selection issues:

The selection decision may depend on the fitness of Dimitar Berbatov, who injured a knee at Anfield. However, the Berbatov-Wayne Rooney-Carlos Tevez combination looked unbalanced at Anfield, with the Bulgarian isolated and the other two lost in wide positions

The Times quotes at length from Darren Fletcher, fairly standard stuff:

“Sunday is a massive game after losing to Liverpool,” Fletcher said. “It is
important we don't lose too much ground in the Premiership. It has to happen
soon or we will have a massive task. We are going to be so many points
behind, you would reach the stage where you cannot afford to lose any games.
You don't want that this early because the Premier League is a tough league.
We have to get back on track against Chelsea. There is no bigger game to do
that.”

And finally The Guardian continues yesterdays theme of overstressing our average start to the season.  I wouldn't even bother reading it.