In light of recent events I thought an update would be timely.

First off let me congratulate Liverpool on their win last week – no sarcasm here, just a genuine well-played for beating the best team in the country. Most reds were predicting that we’d put away the title last week at home in some style but Liverpool were too good on the day. United looked lethargic, made uncharacterstic errors and Torres in particular exposed a few weaknesses at the back. Still the 1-4 scoreline was possibly a bit lop-sided but losing by one or six doesn’t really matter a loss is a loss.

The national euphoria surrounding the result was harder to take. Ok, so it was United’s first league defeat since November and ended an 11 game winning streak.Yes, it gives Liverpool and Chelsea a slight opportunity to take advantage but the feeling persists that the foundations for number 18 have been carefully laid, only a freak event could prevent United from equalling Liverpool’s title record. The race has hardly been ‘blown wide open’. Once again, Liverpool wanted it more, United made mistakes that were punished and then chased the game and were punished further but, aside from gloating about how United lost, let’s not make it out to be any more than that.

After today’s Champions League draw it would seem inevitable that United will be hot favourites to land the quintuple. Perhaps this is the real reason behind last week’s over-reaction to scouse glory. United have been handed the ‘easy’ side of the draw with Porto and then Arsenal or Villareal. All three are good teams, none are particularly scary, scouse or managed by a Dutchman with a brilliant track-record in tournament football (which is what the CL now becomes).

If United aren’t in their 4th European Cup Final this May there will have been an almighty loss of form or a large dose of the kind of bad luck Fergie was referring to this week when he dismissed talk of United performing a clean sweep. The bonus, as far as our title race rivals is concerned, is that Liverpool and Chelsea will meet again with the potential to bruise each other sufficiently enough to ease the path to the title.

Forget the nonsense spouted by Rafa last week, the most consistent team in Europe over the past 5 years have been Chelsea. Semi-final defeats to Monaco and Liverpool in 04 & 05, knocked out by eventual champs Barca in 06, by Liverpool again in 07 and the defeat to us last season means they’ve been in the last four in 4 out of 5 seasons and I’d back a repeat of last season’s Moscow final in Rome this year with, as seems inevitable in these cases, a Chelsea win to balance out the karma and satisfy the ABUs.