Published: 23 January, 2014

ARSENAL
IF you’ve just walked in, there’s a simple system to work out the score: If Manchester United’s glory-glory fans are wearing red scarves, they’re winning.

If they are losing, out come the green and yellow scarves, those ye olde United colours which are meant to tell us that everything that’s wrong is all the Glazer board’s fault.

That’s the same board who Sir Alex Ferguson said on his smiling book tour that he didn’t have a problem with and you didn’t hear a squeak about last season.

When United were champions.

But och aye, along comes David Moyes, insistent that he wants to knock Manchester United off their perch, and all of a sudden it’s green and yellow.

The thing is, for every one man that feels a little sorry for Moyes – he’s always seemed like a nice enough gargoyle to me, with his a warm science teacher manner – there’s 15 men saying, “noooo – not having that, we’ve been waiting for this”.

The delight in United’s seventh placedness is quite a waterfall.

It’s an eruption.

Like when all the frozen forest animals come alive in Narnia once the always-winter Witch has been beaten to a bloody pulp by a remorphed Aslan.

They don’t linger on that scene in the book, but he whops her and everybody is happy and binge on Turkish Delight.

With United being so utterly ineffective, there is a feeling of similar emancipation for all of us, such has been their hold on us.

They were always there, ruining weekends, kicking sand in our face.

Now, there’s a festival feeling, almost like it doesn’t really matter who wins the league from here on in, such is the collective joy.

United, at last, are no longer fearsome.

The bullies defeated.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
CRIKEY.

I know Jose Mourinho had a bit of a crow about Man Utd’s title chances at the weekend, but are Fur Coat No Knickers FC really going to sell them Juan Mata?

OK, so it’s hard to take Man U seriously this season after all the top teams have deprived them of much needed points.

*And yes, Michael Carrick may have sounded like the Black Knight from Monty Python when he said the 3-1 loss to Chelsea on Sunday was “but a flesh wound” to their title chances,  just as the recent 2-1 humiliation at Old Trafford by Spurs had been a “mere scratch”.**

And it’s true David Moyes’s post-match comments at Stamford Bridge (“The job is to finish first and we’ll try to do that, blah, blah, it’s a massive challenge, blah, blah”) bordered on an infringement of the copyright Arsene Wenger has had on such phrases since 2005.***

But for Chelsea to sell a playmaker like Mata to Man U? That’s almost as silly as Arsenal sending Robin van Persie up to Old Trafford and gifting Fergie the title. Oops!

It doesn’t bother us – we’re too busy worrying that Spurs will bring Dimitar Berbatov back and Emmanuel Adebayor might stop scoring.

On that last point, however, we can probably rest easy.

Everyone’s favourite Spurs striker**** has just beaten Dennis Bergkamp’s Premier League goal tally and he’s bound to go after Thierry Henry’s. So keep on saying whatever it is you’re saying to Manu, Tim Sherwood, and let’s do what Man U can’t seem to: keep on winning.

*  Apart from toptastic Arsenal who couldn’t even beat the champions at Old Trafford.
**  Not Carrick’s actual words. At all.
***  This may not be true either.
****  Ditto.
CATHERINE ETOE