Red Alert With Steve Shanyaski

A the time of publishing this article on Monday, United are still top of the league, we’re through to the fifth round of the FA Cup, and Liverpool’s dominance of the English Premier League was almost as short lived as a Chelsea Manager’s career.

I’ll enjoy the next few days and smile to myself, thinking about that Bruno free kick that took us a goal ahead of Liverpool until the final whistle.

I know it perhaps seems childish to none-United fans to care so much about Liverpool’s failure, but knocking our oldest rivals off their perch brings me great joy. In the German language, there is a word for it which is ‘schadenfreude’ – taking pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. That sums up how I feel perfectly. After we faced Liverpool last weekend in the 0-0 Premier League visit to Anfield, and I felt we had missed an opportunity to seize the game then, it was always going to be a fascinating second matchup – on completely different terms due to the knock-out nature of a cup tie.

I thought we were tenacious, our heads never went down after conceding first again, and there were some stunning performances to note. Pogba, yet again, got the Sky Sports man of the match. His defensive work has massively improved, and we needed his height and desire to tackle and work off the ball. It’s hard to believe he’s the same player many of us were moaning about only a couple of months ago, and he seems to have woken up from his three year coma and is playing like we knew he could – with some extra tweaks from Ole in that he’s prepared to work so hard off the ball for the good of the team rather than instant personal glory.

Another two players that put in stunning performances were Rashford, and once again Luke Shaw – who has become a much talked about player throughout the Premier League. With Luke Shaw and Rashford to deal with, the Liverpool defender Rhys Williams could not cope with them whatsoever.

Also, its worth noting that Rashford has struggled these last couple of weeks in a right-wing role, but played left-wing again this weekend and looked so much more comfortable and he was like a different player from recent games. Ole has to give up on the idea of making Rashford play on the right and Martial on the left – and leave them to battle out amongst themselves who should be the left wing first pick.

Cavani is absolutely class, and has so much knowledge to rub off onto Rashford, Greenwood and Martial I hope that is the case. Perhaps Greenwood could play the right wing role, where he’s comfortable. My only worry with that is that he’s still young and prone to overuse. It was fascinating to see Bruno started on the bench on such an important game, but started against Fulham in the week, but what a super-sub appearance he made with that stunning free kick. It’s hard to think of another player that hasn’t made such an transformation to the United team after his arrival without thinking back to those days when Eric Cantona arrived from Leeds. Let’s hope Bruno can help bring the success to United that the King did.

This week we face Sheffield United on Wednesday and Arsenal on Saturday. Although the Blades are struggling down the very bottom of the league with only a single win, they have come close many times to getting their second win so should not be faced with any complacency.

I’m sure we’ve got more than enough to beat them, though. I expect we’ll face this game second in the league after a Man City Tuesday win, so motivation and focus on every game must be of the highest level. Arsenal’s form has been undulating this season, and as ours has been ironed out a month or so ago, I hope we’ll walk away from this week's fixtures with an even greater team bond, and remain at the top of the worlds greatest football league.