The League Cup gets underway for us tonight with a new sponsor (Capital One) but an old adversary in Newcastle and as opening round fixtures go, we couldn’t have landed any much trickier than this.
Trying to make any kind of prediction in this tournament is never easy. The United side that runs out tonight is going to be at best a second-string side and is likely to feature some of the more prominent youngsters from the reserve ranks.
Fergie has already gone on record as saying that the priority is our next two Premier League fixtures so he won’t be taking any risks with the personnel in this one and I can certainly see a much-weakened defensive line-up as we can’t afford to lose any more of the first-teamers.
To a large extent, the same can probably be said of Newcastle though. They know that if they have anything like the Premier League campaign that they enjoyed last season this season then Champions League football is not a complete impossibility and so I suspect that this competition – whilst being a realistic target for silverware – will also come down the pecking order, at least in these early stages.
I’m not going to analyse this one too much. I think it will be a pretty open affair and I can see goals so that will form the basis of my bet.
The bet is 3 points OVER 2.5 goals @ 1.61 with Stan James.
