Shivers of Pleasure

Before getting to the main course of the match today, let's get the other stories out of the way. David Lacey on The Guardian blog has a piece about how awful it is for British clubs to be doing well in Europe:

Same again then. The Champions League is becoming a TV repeat best suited to UK Gold between episodes of Only Fools and Horses. The renewed presence of four Premier League teams in this season's quarter-finals may be a cause for national pride but the rest of Europe must be stifling a yawn.
Europe used to be a relief from the English treadmill. Now it has jumped on.

Is their no competition that can satisfy everyone? After the criticism of the Carling Cup, then the FA Cup, now the Champions League. Do these people want the moon on a stick?
Patrick Barclay in The Times has a nice piece on why David Moyes would be a good choice to replace Sir Alex:

But Moyes gets the best out of just about everyone and has the Ferguson trait of being quick to recognise and discard exceptions. That he has the esteem of his peers is emphasised by League Managers Association manager-of-the-year awards in 2003 and 2005.

Despite the coincidence that he and Ferguson were born in Glasgow and passed through Drumchapel Amateurs, Moyes is less extrovert than Ferguson. His modesty and willingness to learn were displayed at Preston North End, where he looked forward to receiving the wisdom of Sir Tom Finney (rather as Ferguson, in his early days at Old Trafford, liked to talk things over with Sir Matt Busby).

The step up to Everton tested Moyes’s nerve, but it survived and now he has guided them to an FA Cup semi-final against Ferguson’s United. They will not be favourites; they seldom beat top-four sides, which suggests that Moyes has gone almost as far as he can.

So he is ready for United. He even gets on so well with the incumbent that Ferguson could stay for a near-seamless transition; there has never been such an opportunity for a big club to avoid the sort of bitterness that attended Bill Shankly’s move aside at Liverpool, or Jock Stein’s at Celtic, or, indeed, the distraction that Busby’s shadow represented for men such as Wilf McGuinness and Frank O’Farrell at United.

And onto the only game of the day. The papers obviously concentrate on the press conferences yesterday, with Sir Alex on top form. Daniel Taylor, on The Guardian's sports blog, has a good article looking at some of the history between Sir Alex and Liverpool, with some great quotes:

Yet Ferguson has so much personal history with Liverpool it is difficult to imagine that a man so ferociously partisan and competitive has not felt the first rush of malicious pleasure about inflicting more of the misery on them that they once inflicted on United.
"It isn't just a job to me," he once said. "It's a mission. I am deadly serious about it – some people would say too serious ... we will get there. Believe me. And when it happens life will change for Liverpool – dramatically."

And Ferguson, when everything is said and done, loves to see Liverpool hanging on United's coat-tails. In September 2002, he was interviewed by this newspaper after United had lost two of their opening six league games and Alan Hansen had described Ferguson's position as "the greatest challenge of his career". Ferguson has always resented the fact there are so many ex-Liverpool players on the Match of the Day sofa. "My greatest challenge is not what's happening at the moment," he said, "my greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch."

That quote will be around for as long as there are football pitches, even if it was a classic case of Ferguson trying to rewrite history. Liverpool's decline can actually be traced to the end of 1990, their last title-winning year, and it was another three years before United finally won the league. Yet Ferguson delivered his line with the dramatic effect of Robert de Niro. "And you can print that," he exclaimed. Point made.

And I love this from yesterday's press conference, in The Guardian:

Ferguson mischievously noted Benítez never celebrated his team scoring a goal. "My instinct is to celebrate because I'm a football man and that is what football supporters do," he said. "I'm a football man."

Excellent stuff. And his bit on "Rafa's rant" is also pretty good, from The Times:

Ferguson looked back on the tirade with amusement yesterday, saying that he would have to swot up on Sigmund Freud before he could understand Benítez’s comments.

“I would need to read more of Freud before I could really understand all that,” Ferguson said. “I don’t know where it came from and I’m not really interested. It never bothered me then and it doesn’t bother me now.”

And Benitez continues to talk rubbish:

"If [Steven] Gerrard had scored and not hit the post in the last minute against Stoke the situation could be different but the facts would be the same," he said. "Maybe I should improve my English [if Ferguson doesn't understand]. My English is not the best, it can improve, but I put the facts across rightly. I'm sure he could understand clearly."

So we were 7 points behind, we're now seven points ahead (with a game in hand) and yet it all comes down to one miss against Stoke? Right.
On the Rooney comment Sir Alex had this to say, from The Daily Star:

“Wayne has had plenty of stick over the years, playing against Liverpool.
“As a kid, his loyalty was to Everton so, it’s understandable. Now, he is at United and he wants us to win. I don’t think it’s anything out of the ordinary."
And the United boss insisted Rooney’s remark would have no bearing on his treatment from the Liverpool fans at Old Trafford today.
"I don't think the Liverpool fans need any encouragement, don't you worry about that.
"Their target tomorrow is very obvious. It always will be.”
Ferguson also insisted out that the interpretation of the word ‘hate’ was the problem.
"The word is not used the right way. Everyone uses the word because it is easy to say ‘I hate this, I hate that.’
“What's the other word, ‘dislike,’ but nobody uses dislike.”

And Henry Winter points out that someone has said something worse in the past:

Gerrard, Liverpool's captain, has admitted in the past that he "wants United to die''

And yes, I've cut the quote a bit to make it worse...
The Daily Star also has a quote from Vidic:

“It is the biggest game you can have.
“Even before I came here I knew how big it was, everyone in Serbia does. It is not just a derby for England, it is for the whole world.
“Everyone dreams about being involved and I am happy to have that chance.”

While The Telegraph have Rio playing it cool:

Rio Ferdinand insists that the Spaniard's ill-advised outburst has had little impact inside Old Trafford.

He said: "I don't think we can get interested in stuff like that until the end of the season, when the medals are given out. If we are the winners, then we can look back at things that happened during the season and what were the turning points of the season.

"But until then, you can't really say what has changed the title race. We've not won it yet, though, and until we have won it, you can't say it was a turning point.

"We have played consistently well since [the World Club Championship in] Japan, but that all counts for nothing if we lose two or three games before the end of the season and don't win the League.

"If we start saying it was that point of the season that turned it for us and we end up as runners-up or in third place then we would look pretty stupid

Graham Poll's column today is a bit strange. I don't really get this:

Alan Wiley will have been in a bit of a quandary this week as he looked ahead to today’s match at Old Trafford.

Referees like to plan for their games, especially the big ones. As this is the first time that Wiley has been appointed to referee a League encounter between the two North West giants since December 2002, he will relish the challenge.

I'm not, nor ever have been, a referee, and I don't get how you plan for a specific game? Surely every game should be refereed in the same way? And Graham Poll doesn't explain at all, instead he starts going on about how Liverpool might play. And after this long digression concludes that:

Wiley, the Premier League’s most consistent ref, may have to go into this without a clear game plan and respond to whatever challenges the match throws up.

Right.