I am kinda loving these CL spot Battle Royales we keep seeing at the end of each season. So much fun. I am a Chelsea fan, so probably biased but I had us drawing with Pool and losing to Utd and winning the rest of our games, and I had us in third place. There are so many factors to think about. Both Chelsea and Arsenal have to play Man Utd, by then Utd will have won the title, so it depends whether they can be bothered, if they were still in the CL I would say no, they would field kids, but Utd have nothing left to play for. Maybe SAF will use those games to experiment or try blooding some youth anyway. To me, other than our game, the game you need to be careful of is the Wigan game. Wigan always come to life with 6-7 games left and pull off the great escape, and they did pretty well against City last night too. For me, now we have beat Fulham, if we beat Liverpool and stop you winning at SB, we are in the top 4 (Barring a total meltdown).
Do you think SAF will be content for the media to say "they only won it by 5 points when they had a 15 point lead. What if City had...."? He will want as many points as possible. There are no other distractions. Chelsea's record of 95 points can still (just) be broken. Winning the title early will allow Utd to play with freedom. Any Arsenal or Chelsea fan thinking it might be the right time to play Utd should think again.
It could go either way to be honest. No side Fergie puts out ever goes out to lose, but it could go either way. You really think it would be better to play them when they still need points to wrap up the title?
I agree Bodanki, it could go either way, but I think Utd will be more ambitious and less inhibited. Chelsea have had some recent success when Utd have retreated and defended too deep to try to preserve a lead- handing the advantage to players like Mata and Hazard. I can't see that happening when the shackles are off.
Don't think we'll lose to United. Benitez of late seems to have Fergies number so if we put out a strong side we should get a draw at least. No team has come close to matching the consistency of United this season and they have made themselves very difficult to beat. They virtually always score at home as well so it will be tough. No matter what Fergie says publicly, complacency will definitely creep into United's game, be it against us or like yesterday. Our points record is safe IMO. As for top 4 if we beat Liverpool we only need to win our home games and that guarantees us 4th minimum, virtually.
