The Creeping Fear

Another day, another raft of articles praising Ryan Giggs. The Independent quote Mike Phelan:

"There is an argument to say Ryan is playing better than he has ever done," Phelan said. "He looks after himself, is totally professional and seems to have found a rich vein of form. He goes on to another level every year. We can only be happy with that."

And there's some quotes from Giggs himself:

"I am certainly enjoying my football more than ever," Giggs said. "It is for other people to judge whether I am playing as well as I have ever done. But I am playing quite regularly and the team are playing well."

"I am not going to sprint in behind defenders like I used to but I use my experience to get on the ball and try to create from there," he said. "You know without even looking sometimes that a colleague will be there because the movement is so good. I was pleased to sign for another year and look forward to being a part of this team."

The Telegraph concentrates its article round comments from Robbie Savage:

"Ryan was unbelievable,'' Savage added. "When he was a winger, he was incredible. Now he's redefined his role and he's still incredible. He's so hard to pick up. He can play in the middle of park, out wide, up front. Ryan's 35 and every time he plays, he seems to get man of the match. He's a credit to himself and to the game and, for me, he's the player of the year.''

On the subject of the player of the year, with Giggs recent form putting him into contention for it, there's a few mentions of whether Giggs or Vidic should be so hailed, with The Times firmly in the Giggs camp:

While Rio Ferdinand and Vidic, the centre backs, have played a key role in the assault on all fronts, Giggs has been arguably United's best player this season and has emerged as the favourite to win the end of season player of the year awards.

While in an interesting article on The Guardian Blog, Michael Henderson favours Vidic:

And yet, if you look at the team that Ferguson has constructed so artfully, its success is rooted in a refusal to concede soft goals. That is generally how championships are won. The key man is therefore Nemanja Vidic, that steel door of a centre-half, and surely Footballer of the Year if the award is to go to the player who makes the greatest contribution to the champion team's performance.

The article also includes a demonstration of the bias against us when it compares Liverpool and Man Utd:

In Liverpool's glory years the men honoured by the football writers were Callaghan, Kevin Keegan, Emlyn Hughes, Terry McDermott, Ian Rush, Steve Nicol, and, with two prizes each, Kenny Dalglish and John Barnes. United, by contrast, have seen only Cantona, Roy Keane, Teddy Sheringham and Cristiano Ronaldo (twice) garlanded in their two decades of dominance. Shome mishtake, shurely.

Note that that's the football writers prize.
There's also news that Rooney may or may not start on the bench against Fulham on Wednesday, with The Telegraph quoting Sir Alex:

“Wayne should be ready for the game on Saturday against Blackburn. We’re quite confident of that and he may have a slight chance of being fit for a place on the bench on Wednesday.”

And there's an article in The Mail which gets me nervous about the Champions League returning before I really should do:

Sir Alex Ferguson, who has only beaten Mourinho once in a dozen attempts, will see next Tuesday’s Champions League clash as his biggest challenge of the season.

United are in command at the top of the Barclays Premier League, in the last eight of the FA Cup and the Carling Cup final, with the Club World Cup already in the bag.

Ferguson will warn his European champions how threats can emerge from the most unlikely places — Mourinho’s Porto knocked United out of the Champions League on their way to winning the trophy in 2004 — and if any team look capable of halting United’s bid for history it is Inter, nine points clear in Serie A chasing a fourth straight title.
They have lost only twice in the league in Mourinho’s first Italian campaign but the former Chelsea and Porto boss was hired to win Inter’s first European Cup since 1965 and he has already made two personal checks on United, who visit the San Siro for the first leg of their last-16 clash.