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No Fear For No One

It’s been a day of big talk, and not much else. So let’s document the big talk for your future reference.

First up, the great Rafa Benitez, whose arrival at Liverpool was heralded — by many Scouse fans — as The Revolution (Rafalution?) only for said revolution to be shattered by, em… rotation. He’s had this to say: “I do not have any preference now who we play next, but I would be more than happy to face an English side in the final. This victory shows the power and strength of the Premier League. We have fine clubs who are among the best in Europe, a league that is the same and players of quality who are some of the best in Europe.

Next in line, Sir Alex, who had this to say: “I think the Premier League is the strongest in Europe. For a spell it was the Spanish league – I remember about seven or eight years ago they had three teams in the semi-finals and Spanish football was really strong, but I think the English game has now reached that level.

Cesc Fabregas had this to say after their win at the San Siro: “When you play against these kind of teams and players like Kaka and [Andrea] Pirlo you have to play with no fear. We play football because of nights like this. Scoring that goal was one of the best moments of my career.”

I haven’t managed to dig up any quotes from the Chelsea camp, and their statuesque manager, but I’d assume similar talk from Terry, Lamps and Co. This Guardian article creams over the greatness of the English league.

Of course, it was a different matter that two Premier League clubs, yesterday, despite dominating the hell out of their respective games, in time honoured English traditions, bowed out in penalty shoot outs. I guess, however good your league may be, some habits die hard.

But then this is a Man Utd blog, so we will not cream ourselves over the beauty of English football, but stick to our niche. So continuing with the theme of being brave (and having no fear) here are two more quotes:

Park Ji-Sung: “We don’t mind who we play next. Maybe it would be good for English football if we drew an English team but, for me, it doesn’t matter. We don’t worry about the opposition because we have good players and we’ve shown our quality this season. As long as we concentrate on our performance, we can beat anyone.”

And Johnny O’Shea: “It obviously proves the Premier League is probably now the best league in the world. It is great to be a part of it and we are not looking to avoid anyone or get anyone.”

So as you see, no one is afraid of anyone, so by that logic we should get to watch exciting, fearless, attacking football from here on, no? If only pigs could fly…

Slightly changing the theme from fearlessness to injury ravaged players, skipper Neville completed an incident free 70′ of reserve team football against Sunderland. United reserves lost, by the way.

And at the time of writing, I haven’t a clue on EVDS’s injury status. Although I’ve read reports saying that he may be out for a couple of weeks at least. If that’s the case, it would surely pave the way for a Ben Foster debut against Derby, which to be honest, after yesterday’s result, isn’t the worst place to make your debut.

And what the fuck is this woman on about? Did she find just Sir Alex to pick on? Has she forgotten Arsene’s “Martin Taylor must never play football again’ rant? I am not condoning Fergie’s over the top reaction, but if you have an article targetting mental managers, then Arsene I-fought-with-Alan-Pardew (not to mention, I don’t see incidents that implicate my players ) Wenger, is also well on that list.

How do these French blokes charm the media? It was a rhetorical question, please don’t bother answering.

Anyway, sorry to end this rather meandering, and extremely incoherent, post like this, but that’s how I get to fill another quiet day.

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