Away days

That lacklustre FA Cup tie against the other Red Devils is now behind us, and now we have a home match against either Leyton Orient or Arsenal in the next round.

That aside though, we have to concentrate first on a tricky first leg encounter in Marseille, a team that has only lost twice at home all season, once in the French Ligue 1 and the other in the CL group stages. A score-draw against Marseille should be enough for us to qualify for the next round as I believe we'll win it at Old Trafford. Still, there can be no discounting any team in the CL at this stage of things.

Marseille, mind you, is only the start of a series of tricky away matches for United. At the weekend, the Devils travel to Wigan. In previous meetings, MU has found games at Wigan to be easy wins, but the Wigan players did well in Old Trafford this season until they went down to nine men. Who knows what they'll do on home ground.

After Wigan, on March 1, United play their rescheduled match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. It doesn't matter that Chelsea have not been doing too well of late. When the big teams play each other, the games are still tough no matter what form the teams are in.

Five days later, a trip to Anfield is on the cards and like any MU-Pool game, it promises to be a cracker. Liverpool have been doing well under King Kenny and will pose a serious problem. Frankly, I'm glad Liverpool are doing better. They are a team with history and it would be a shame for them to be doing badly. I have a grudging respcted for them.

MU's away form has been quite horrendous and hopefully they'll be able to do well against these teams. They need to because four points over Arsenal is not that big a gap.