Those Pre-Old Trafford Nerves

I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to feel like this!

I got up at 615 this morning to begin the journey to Sussex, and felt the same pang of nerves I've felt for the past few days. They've been building up for a while; as our winning run extended, I was gripped by a desperate desire that it should remain intact until today. I wanted us to have all the momentum we could muster by the time we hit the Crawley double-header.

And we did it. Now, we have to keep that self-belief going for another three hours.

My nerves remind me of our last visit to Old Trafford, appropriately enough considering Crawley's next opponents! I remember sitting in the car park before the game, feeling absolutely terrified! Part of me was scared of the national humiliation that Alex Ferguson's side might inflict upon us; part of me was thrilled at the thought of us bloodying his nose.

I'm not going to try to hide my dislike of Manchester United; I just can't help it, it's in my blood! The thought of us actually beating them tapped into something deep inside, and made ne feel as petrified as I've ever done about footy. Until now.

I feel something similar; not quite as intense, but definitely different from my normal Saturday morning sensation (which is usally a mixture of preparing myself for the worst and anticipating TV Burp!) I think the similarity is partly down to the unusual nature of the fixture lists; a double header with one of our rivals, just when we're hitting our stride, is too nerve-jangling to be true!

However, I think there's a much bigger reason for these sensations. We had to plumb the depths to do it, but Wrexham have finally found me an adversary I dislike even more than Sir Alex and his churlish charges!

TV Dream Dies

So Setanta has finally gone under. It was a long and painful death, and I'm afraid this will probably represent the moment where a cold dose of reality hits home.

There were suggestions in last Sunday's Non League Paper that The Confence would be able to find a new broadcaster willing to show the games. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm stunned by the notion: who on earth would do that? It was a notion which about summed up the head in the sand attitude of so many in football.

The fact of the matter is that money's gone, the high profile coverage is gone. Now we'll just have to crack on and make do. Perhaps the message to absorb is that we shouldn't expect the status quo to be permanent, especially these days.

When you see clubs like Real Madrid, Manchester United and Liverpool spend recklessly you wonder where it will end. They're insulated from the real world, but they have the security of knowing there are plenty of influential people out there who won't let clubs of such magnitude go to the wall.

The same isn't true of clubs at our level though, and we don't have to squander the same levels of money to get into trouble. Nothing's permanent, nothing can be assumed and those who assimilate this message most clearly will be the ones who thrive.

Fair Play to Fairhurst

All credit to Nathan Fairhurst-he's shown an attitude you don't seem to find too often in the modern game.

We tend to see players putting their short term advancement first these days-hell, Cristiano Ronaldo couldn't cope with losing thirty minutes of me-time against Manchester City last Sunday, could he?

So to see Nathan Fairhurst reject a contract with Preston in order to get first team football three divisions lower is quite something. He talks, most logically, about taking a step backwards in order to take a step forwards in the future, and in doing so illustrates that he has the sort of cool head we need as we continue to look for a way out of the turmoil.

But his signature is important for reasons far beyond that. For me the crucial factor which destabilised our promotion push was when Fairhurst's excellent partnership with Andy Fleming was disrupted to accommodate Andy Crofts.

Fairhurst had really settled into the role and was playing well when he was dropped-in fact the way he was marginalised made me worry that we were destroying our hopes of signing him permanently-a concern which grew when Crofts missed the last two games of the season but Tom Kearney was selected ahead of Fairhurst!

Still, Fairhurst has signed the dotted line, and he may prove to be Saunders' greatest coup. He spoke soon after he arrived of convincing the on-loan players to stay even though they were too good for The Conference. While his temporary signings represented his best pieces of business, I think it's fair to say that by the time the dust had settled on the campaign, Fairhurst was the on-loan player who looked most like he ought to be playing at a higher level. In signing him, Saunders has got the pre-season off to an excellent start.

Remember Us Robbie?

Robbie Savage isn't all that keen on playing in The Conference after all, it seems!

I said in an earlier blog that Savage tends to speak whatever happens to be in his mind without a great deal of consideration for what he's previously pronounced, so I shouldn't be too surprised to see him announcing his horror at the notion of playing in The Conference, just a couple of months after he spoke of his desperation to sign for us.

It's no great surprise that he has forgotten about us really; yesterday seemed to be his dream come true; his links with Manchester United meant he was the centre of media attention when Derby played them live on TV. He loved every second of it, as indeed he should, and I doubt if swapping that for a monthly pitchside Setanta rendezvous with Rebecca Lowe's going to tempt him away from that.

Unless ITV stick an advert over his post-match ruminations, of course!

Wilson's Move Evokes Fond Memories

Mark Wilson has moved back into the area and I must admit the news causes me to expereince a certain misty eyed nostalgia. During his loan spell at The Racecourse he exuded class. He was a quality player who looked a cut above the level he was playing at, and it should be remembered that we were a side pushing for promotion to The Championship at the time.

The tantalising thing about him was that he was nearly attainable. Perhaps we could have signed him permanantly; it was a long shot but if we'd gone up it just might have happened, or at least we would have been in a position to snatch him fairly soon afterwards, once his Manchester United career was over. As it was, we went our separate ways and, like Jim Harvey and Robbie Savage (the Liverpool loanee, not Bradley's finest), he goes down as one of those near misses we'll always wonder about.

Still, perhaps we should understand that the past is best left undisturbed. After all, Lee Roche was a player that had a superb loan spell with us and returned to us bringing with us great hopes that he would bring those qualities to us on a permanent basis. He ended up being released and going to Droylesden.

Giggs' International Commitment

Watching Ryan Giggs play in the Manchester derby reminded me of why I don't miss him in a Wales shirt.

Perhaps it's a fit of unreasonable optimism, fuelled by an impressive performance by Toshack's youngsters last week, but when I saw that Giggs was in the crowd at The Racecourse I couldn't help seeing the irony. He chose not to represent his country any more, and was hardly a reliable attender when he was available. At least he turns up now he's not needed!

The thing about Giggs against Man City was that he was his usual Man United self. Any decision that goes against him is followed by a stunned expression and a volley of dissent, no matter how clearly correct it was; every decision against a team mate when Giggs is in range is followed by the winger chasing an haranguing the ref.

I'm not saying he's the worst offender in football in this regard by any means, although his wounded expression does get under my skin a bit! What gets my goat is that he never seemed to do that when he was in a Wales shirt! I can't help feeling that his behaviour suggests he cared more about his club than his country; even if that's not fair, noticing his less committed demeanour in internationals made me wonder whether it was linked to his subdued performance for Wales compared to what he did for United.

Add in how rarely he turned up for friendlies in the past and the case builds furter momentum. How can he justify retiring from international football early to avoid burn-out? He saved himself countless hours on the pitch as a young man by not attending internationals-he should be fresh as a daisy!

It all made his stage-managed departure from his final international stick in my throat. He was given the privilege of an early substitution so he could enjoy a standing ovation, which shocked me. Quite apart from what I have just said, this was a competitive game. We were drawing at the time, there was still enough time to get a winner and at the time we still had a faint hope of qualifying for Euro 08 (Oh yes, did I neglect to mention he deserted his country aklf way through a qualifying campaign?) Even if our chances were slim, yoru final position in the group determines how tough your group for the next tournament will be, so there was plenty to play for. Maybe we shouldn't have turned what was a mediocre game into a sideshow for saying farewell to a mediocre international career.

To be fair to Giggs he didn't dump on the nation like the shameful Mark Hughes apparatchiks who deserted the scene when John Toshack, a gesture I genuinely admire him for. It's just that every time I see him snarl at a Premiership referee I feel a lot more proud to be Welsh than he is.