George:
Intriguing Premiership game today between the teams of Fulham and Manchester United.
Cottagers are 9th in the table with 23 points.The team made insecure start of the season, but now is slowly cmimbing up the table and may soon intrude the Euro places battle.
But today I will bet against Fulham and the main reason is the Thursday game team played afainst Basle in Europa League.Yes, Cottagers won and secured place in the knock out stage of the tournament, so the mood in the team will be great, but I think the next game comes too soon for the team.Hodgson and his players had less than 48 hours to think over and celebrate the 3:2 win over Basle in tense and exhausting game.I just don't believe they will be in appropriate physical and psychical condition to face the Red Devils today.Sometimes for more unexperienced teams the big wins are followed by big falls, and I doubt this may happen to Fulham today.
Yes, some key players will be fresh - Duff, Dempsey and Hangeland will start today, but I doubt the team will look good as a whole, at least not for full 90 minutes.
For the game today Davies, Kamara, Johnson and Ki-Kheon are still out of the squad.
Manchester United still keeps the gap to leaders Chelsea 3 points.If they win today they will put the Blues under pressure again.
Actually the Red Devils played too in midweek - they beat Wolves at Old Trafford 3:0, but that game was on Tuesday and I think I can call it some kind of training game, as McCarthy put experimental squad and gave his top players rest, so he gave up the game even befor it started.
Unfortunately for Ferguson the injury crisis in the team is still on - Evans, O'Shea, Ferdinand, Da Silva brothers, Neville, Brown and van der Saar are all still missing.In addition Vidic is doubtful for the match today.But the maager found a way to get out of the situation using his midfielders as centre backs and the result is not bad at all.
Traditionally United played successfully against Cottagers, but in the last season the pattern was broken in a crazy game for the Red Devils.Then they lost 2:0 at Craven Cottage, received 2 red cards and deepened the crisis in the team.But now the situation is different so I expect
Manchester to find the winning way against the tired Fulham again.I bet on Away -0.75 AH.
