Manchester United: Blog: Big-four clashes are key

United legend and popular pundit Pat Crerand gives his personal take on the 2009/10 fixture list...

Like any fan, I always look to the run-in as well as the start of the season when the fixtures come out.

While our run-in looks good on paper, we could find ourselves playing teams fighting for their lives at the bottom. The Premier League is a very difficult league to win, because as well as the top four, you’re meeting teams fighting their own battles, and all of them want a piece of you.

We’ll play Sunderland and Stoke City in May, and both could be fighting for their lives. We’ll meet Chelsea in April, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. By then we’ll know what we have to do and how the top is shaping up.

I expect it to be a case of the usual suspects competing for the title. City will have spent a lot of money by the time the season starts and they’ll be hoping to be up there, but I think we can expect a bigger challenge from Liverpool.

Last season will have given Liverpool a bit of a lift - with better home form, they could have won the league. Like us, they are one of the teams everyone else wants to beat. How you react to that decides who’ll finish top.

I think more so than ever we'll have to beat the big teams to win the league. I know it didn’t work out that way last year – we didn’t have the best ‘big four’ record – but this time it could come down to who takes points off who.

Another huge factor will be how United react after the European fixtures. In an ideal world you’d want all your games at home after playing in Europe, but that’s not the case – we go to Liverpool after Matchday 3 and Chelsea after Matchday 4.

Still, we talk about this issue every year and the lads know what’s needed. We’ve got the players and the experience to do it again, and the manager has been getting it right for the last 20 years. He’s been through it, done it and he’s obviously getting something right in terms of the trophies we’ve won.

You can read Paddy's full season preview in the next issue of Inside United, on sale in early July. The summer issue is out now.

The views expressed in this blog are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Manchester United FC.

Edwin van der Sar