Analysis, but not of the psychiatric kind, is what Matthew Harding Stand season ticket holder and columnist Giles Smith provides following a six-goal match and seven days of headlines…


Should Fernando Torres have buried that chance at 3-2 and left Man United relying on the by no means impossible but statistically unlikely event of yet another Webb-driven penalty? Could he have, as they say, 'done better' - 'done better' being, essentially, another way of saying 'scored'.

Well, possibly. And I should probably admit that, as Torres closed in, I was drawn magnetically to my feet by the assumption that he would, indeed, 'do better'. Not exactly easy, though, that chance, given the necessary speed of the run, the pincering and potentially shin-removing movement of two central defenders as Torres moved within shooting range, and the advance of United's goalkeeper, the extraordinary David De Gea, who might not be anybody's idea of reliable but can at least make himself into a handy draught-excluder once in a while.

And either way, Torres didn't bury it - didn't find time and space in which to get a shot away, in fact - enabling anyone who so wished to add another 90 minutes to the time on the clock since the striker last managed a goal and a particularly unhelpful statistician to point out that the only other person in our side to have gone this long without scoring is Petr Cech.

All of which remains, of course, painful to contemplate - and rather annoyingly distracting, if we may say so - though not, perhaps, as fundamentally mystifying as some people seem to enjoy making out. These are the people who feel the matter calls for psychiatry and describe Torres' problem as 'a lack of confidence'.

Is it, though? And how would we be sure in any case? He doesn't seem to move like an unconfident footballer. He doesn't seem to pass and trackback like an unconfident footballer. He doesn't seem to take up positions like an unconfident footballer.

Torres

Might the problem not be, quite straightforwardly, a lack of service? Might it not be about a strategic failure on the part of others to work out, as yet, how to supply him with what he needs? Torres had one chance in the entire game against Manchester United, and he had, in effect, to create that for himself from just over the halfway line. It wasn't an untypical story. He seems to spend a vast amount of time moving in anticipation of balls that never come - waiting, for example, while Daniel Sturridge comes inside and shoots from an impossible angle, or waiting for the delivery of crosses from overlapping full backs on both sides which never reach him. In those circumstances it wouldn't matter whether he was Robbie Williams or Godfrey from Dad's Army, confidence-wise.

Let's put this confidence thing away, shall we? Torres has gone 1000 minutes without scoring. But, for comparison's sake, I've gone more than 12 years without catching a bus outside my house. But my failure to catch a bus outside my house has nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of confidence on my part, in relation to the catching of buses. It's entirely to do with the fact that buses don't come down my road. So what can I do?

Same goes for Torres.



Wayne Rooney said afterwards that the point Manchester United somehow and incredibly retrieved from the wreckage of their defending on Sunday could be the difference between winning and losing the title at the end of the season.

He could be right. It was certainly a neat way to put a gloss on the fact that United had just fallen two points behind City.

Imagine Rooney had put it another way, though. Imagine if he had said that the non-penalty bafflingly awarded by Howard Webb when Danny Welbeck contrived to tangle his foot with a leg belonging to Branislav Ivanovic and then fall over inside the area, could turn out to be the difference between United winning and losing the title at the end of the season.

It would have been an equally accurate summary of the outcome, all things considered. Yet, in the warm afterglow of the occasion, it wasn't a vision of the future on which Rooney felt inclined to dwell, for some reason.

All credit to United, though. They don't give up, do they? They're famous for it. They'll carry on tangling legs in the penalty area and falling over to win penalties until the last available minute, if necessary. One can only admire them for it. And, as Rooney has suggested, it's the stuff of which champions may yet be made.

 

Within moments of Fabio Capello's high-minded resignation over a point of principle, the odds came through from William Hill on the next England manager. Harry Redknapp was favourite, inevitably, after the favourable resolution of what people in the literary world are referring to as 'the curious incident of the dog's bank account in the nighttime'.

Jose Mourinho was on the list at a surely implausible 12/1 (Not a hope, surely. England manager is no job for an ambitious man with all his faculties in the prime of his life.). Guus Hiddink, also, was included at 20/1, as was Carlo Ancelotti (33/1) and Glenn Hoddle, too, at 50/1.

No mention, though, of AVB. Gareth Southgate? Yes. Alan Shearer? Yes, again. But AVB? No. For goodness' sake - even Nigel Adkins is on there at a hopeless 66/1. Of all the blows aimed at our manager in recent weeks, this, surely, was the lowest.