How was it for you? April1:city are a massive club. Joke. Now apparently Balotelli will not play for city again, at least this season. Anybody want to bet that he does? 2: It’s a huge game and an even bigger win amid the backdrop of superb support at Blackburn as our red-shirted heroes pull clear of city in what would appear to be a decisive move in winning a twentieth championship. Well that’s Plan A. Let’s hope there’s not a Plan B! 3: So, whatever the outcome this season, some believe Fergie will hand over the reins, maybe with a high-profile dual role to begin with, and he seems to have his own ideas on who should succeed, clearly believing Laurent Blanc has the credentials as he said in an interview with French radio station RMC Sport: “When Laurent played in Manchester he followed our training methods very carefully. That’s very intelligent and obviously he has qualities as a coach because he has made Les Bleus a winning team again. As in 1998, it has established a balance between young and experienced players.” He also went on to talk how impressed he was with Blanc reintegrating the “unfairly treated” Patrice Evra to the international team. With some of the names being bandied about, the man who took Bordeaux to the French title may not be a bad shout. 8: Mark Hughes’s long, miserable face returns to Old Trafford and leaves equally glum as we beat his team 2-0, leaving them perilously close to the drop. 9: On the 100th anniversary of the sailing of The Titanic, it’s remarkable to think that the money spent on that ship is exactly the same as Kenny Dalglish has spent on Liverpool’s current side, ie, £200m. So what’s the difference? Well, one is a sinking ship, and the other is The Titanic. 11: A performance none of us saw coming sees Wigan deservedly beat us and, all of a sudden, the nerves are back. 13: Liverpool are after another director of football after the US owners decided to make Damien Comolli the scapegoat for their poor league season and dump him, rather than actual manager Kenny Dalglish, who remains in charge, we hope, for a long, long time. 14: Less than a month after Bolton’s Fabrice Muamba “died” on the pitch during his team’s cup game at White Hart Lane, young Livorno midfielder Piermario Morosini collapses and is unable to be revived during a Serie B game at Pescara. The match was immediately abandoned and the Italian FA called off

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An undercover Red’s view from the home end at city. This could be a long summer

We’ll be doing a summer special, which might not be half as special as we were thinking a few weeks ago. We’ve got some decent material lined up including exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand and Louis Saha. We’ll be doing the usual ‘Technique’ end of season report too. It will cost £3, have extra pages, a £40 note hidden in each copy and be available in the usual shops mid June. Subscribers will get a copy as usual. Right, a problem. We’ve kept the cost of UWS the same for years and we have no plans on increasing it. The mail costs, however, are beyond our control and stamp prices keep rising at scandalous levels, especially for oversees copies. It’s a proper nause as we have more UWS subscribers than ever, but what can we do? We don’t want to increase the sub costs but we have no choice.

We’re not sure what they will be yet, but we’ll honour all current subscriptions, even if it means fulfilling them at a loss to ourselves. We’ll put the new prices on our website at uwsonline.com when we can work them out. The website is going alright by the way. Good Reds on there and decent weekly articles from Meatbag. It’s a tenner a year and we often put insider bits and bobs on there.

UWS/Red Issue Coaches Away Match Executive Coach Travel

Sunderland £28 Sunday 13 May (3pm kick off) Chorlton Street 9.30am. Bishop Blaize 9.45am.

To Book Please Ring Our 24 Hour Answer Machine Service Or Text 07854 655537 Mad cyril

Much as I am loathe to write match reports in a monthly column, such was the deadline for this month’s UWS and the magnitude of the derby, that this is pretty much unavoidable.

Incidentally, in January, most of us would have happily taken being on level points with two to go but 10.30pm on a Monday night following a derby defeat when drink has been taken is not a time for perspective.

It is just minutes after the final whistle at the Etihad, disappointment and despair are the feelings as I watch the worst dressed fans in football, ALL head to toe in souvenir shop shite singing along to the DJ playing The Beatles while waving blow up plastic clappy things. Like everything they do, it is contrived.

All may not be lost, city still have to go to a Champions League-chasing Newcastle and play a survival scrapping QPR while our remaining two fixtures are against teams with (hopefully) one arsecheek on the deckchairs seeing the season out. city’s squad is stronger than ours in every department though. It will be with a £20m-plus player in every shirt. Every player in that city 11 would walk in to our team, whereas the reverse simply isn’t true.

Frustratingly though, it could and should have been over before this game came about. Elimination from the Champions League and then a Europa League many predicted to be a cakewalk didn’t register as much as usual because, since the turn of the year, it has all been about the two-horse race for the league.

All I can think of is Park against Toure in centre mid being like Luke Chadwick fighting Tyson. Never before have city been our on-pitch rivals – off the pitch, certainly – even when there were two divisions between us, but never in most of our match-watching lifetimes has a derby meant so much. Look at the importance given to winning the League Cup semi against them two years ago in a competition nobody cares about.

As Gary Neville opined: “I was a United player for 18 years but I never took part in a domestic game of this magnitude.”

To lose it on goal difference would be especially galling considering the 6 -1 at Old Trafford but, had we kept our concentration for the last few minutes while cruising with a two-goal lead against Everton, this would all be irrelevant, as it would be had our defence not allowed Kompany a free header in first-half stoppage time. What, however, would be even worse, would be if city do drop points in their remaining games and we fail to take maximum points in ours.

Player Rooney

Goal Welbeck vs Everton

Moment That sinking feeling when Everton equalised. Taking just a three point lead into the derby was always going to be dangerous

Two penalty decisions send the ABU hoards into overdrive

Sign of the times Half and half scarves at the derby. Do one, global football tourism

Frustrating The lack of shots taken against city

Talking point

New one month

Villa fans in tier three. Neck-ache all round to heckle them

Good Roberto Martinez’s revitalised Wigan Athletic. Hope they stay up

Bad United’s end at Wigan

Ugly United’s end at city

Questions

Why did so many regulars miss out on the derby? How did we let the eight point lead slip?

Will Fergie get the funds he requires? Hope The singing section takes off next year. Old Trafford has been embarrassingly awful at times this season.

RM

the rest of the weekend’s fixtures as a mark of respect to the 25-year-old. 15: A 4-0 drubbing of possibly the poorest team to visit Old Trafford this year just about keeps us safely at the top. Villa themselves slip closer to relegation. 20: Ched Evans, the Sheffield United striker, is jailed for five years for the rape of a young woman in a hotel room. 22: Another four home goals should be enough to secure three points but some slack defending ensures Everton a share of the spoils and our lead at the top is now down to three points with an inferior goal difference. Plan B anyone? Prozac? Heroin? It’s going to be a long eight days… and an even longer summer should it all go wrong; and Roy Hodgson won’t mind his cool reception on his return to Anfield: he left with the three points as West Brom turn over Kenny Dalglish’s poor Liverpool side. So would he have liked a good reception from the Kop? No thanks, there was “no need to give me a good reception because they didn’t like me when I was there”; Robin Van Persie wins the professional players’ Player of the Year. 23: It’s St George’s Day, and the best thing about St George’s Day is the red and white T-shirts and flags… it makes it so much easier for everyone to spot the dickheads. 24: Connor Brown, Sheffield United ex-team-mate of the convicted rapist Ched Evans, is himself suspended by his club following his pond life outburst against the young victim of Evans’s rape. In it, scumbag Brown wrote on Twitter: “If u r a slag, u r a slag, don’t try get money from being a slag,” … “In a Premier Inn with 2 footballers after a night out. Expecting tiddlywinks? And ruin a poor blokes life?! #golddigger #chedevans #freeched” … “How can there be any evidence if the silly bitch can’t remember anything... There’s some birds in this pub who would defo get the #ChedEvans treatment... think #ThereButForTheGra-

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