Well, I haven’t even had time to do a review of the City match (I’ve had chance to watch it through again though and it was less painful to watch than I thought it was as I do intend to give my thoughts on the match) but such is life as for anyone involved with Manchester United that we have to put Sunday’s game behind us and pick ourselves us for another important match just two days later.
Yes, tonight, we travel to Aldershot Town for our Carling Cup Fourth Round match.
Aldershot are currently playing their football in League Two which is obviously now the fourth tier in English football so there’s quite a distance between the two teams but I think it is fair to say that Fergie will be fielding a team tonight that will be unrecognisable from the one that plays in the Premier League.
We saw a few clues in our opening Carling Cup campaign as he handed debuts to the likes of Pogba, Fryers and Cole and whilst Cole didn’t really get enough time to make any impression either way, Fryers looked very good and Pogba improved as the match progressed. Of the three, I would certainly expect Pogba to feature tonight and it might even be that Fergie plays the other two and maybe even a couple more of the young reserves at some stage.
However, it won’t be a complete team of kids, we do have some of the senior players in need of action and, similar to the first game in this competition against Leeds, this might be the chance to give the likes of Owen and Berbatov a run.
As for Aldershot, well, they enjoyed a very good result over the weekend as they beat Dag & Red 5-2 away from home but that came on the back of four straight league defeats and it is their home form which has been letting them down somewhat having won just one of their six games at the Recreation Ground so far this season.
It seems pointless trying to analyse this one too much but I think we’ll win here tonight. We’ve done well in this competition for several years now and whoever Fergie picks will play to the best of their ability and, given the talent we have in the youth ranks allied with the top notch pros we have in the experienced ranks, that is often more than enough for most teams and it will come as almost as big a shock as Sunday’s result should we get a thumping here tonight.
Picking a decent bet isn’t easy though. The bookies expect us to win and win easily. They also seem to think that there will be at least three goals scored but, judging by the prices, seem to think that Aldershot will score at least one goal of their own and I’m not too convinced about that so the bet is going to be based on us keeping a clean sheet.
The bet is 3 points Both Teams to Score NO @ 1.83 with Stan James.