History is littered with examples of people making matters worse by being involved in something they don’t really understand. Nobody regards America’s involvement in Vietnam as a triumph, Madonna should never have acted and this week Gary Cook gave us this little beauty. His humungous stupidity acting as the perfect aphrodisiac for all victory celebrations far, wide and right in your face.

It took a while but I found it. Rifling through bags of my old stuff I finally got my hands on the thing I was looking for. The green and gold 3rd strip from 93-94 double campaign. Still one of my favourite seasons of all time and one our best for kits too. I think our away kit that year was all black and we looked demon when playing in it. This was the kit United wore when Hughsie and Ince scored an absolute peach of a goal with about 600 little passes between the two of them. It's the kit I'll be wearing to games from now on.

City must have been delighted to draw United in the Carling Cup semi-final as it means the council house will have a capacity crowd twice this season. This may be a strange set of circumstances for them to deal with, but getting into an almighty tizz over Gary Neville’s middle finger is a bit silly.

All United fans are to perform the following procedure. Place both hands over your ears, clasp your fingers together at the top of your cranium and gently but firmly lift your head out of the sand.

On the 3rd of January 1777 American general George Washington defeated the British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton. The Americans are still going on about this. On the 3rd of January 2010 Leeds beat Manchester United in FA Cup at Old Trafford. You fill in the blank.

This injured defender situation is getting ridiculous. At the moment, our treatment room must resemble a field hospital - players arms flailing around and medics frantically trying to issue the right medication to each of them. This ain't great because on Tuesday we face Germans and a tremendous chance to lose top place in the group.

It's nice to be back in the Premier League this weekend and back to the business at hand as opposed to all this business about a handball. FIFA's influence on the week's events has muddied their fair play policy in all the wrong ways, some games are fairer than others, eh Sepp? But FIFA's true crime against the game came a few years ago when they endorsed the FIFA console game. Park football has never been the same since.

Like a particularly plump man who was invited to dinner by Hannibal Lector, I had feared the worst about this fixture. Looking at recent form a massacre wouldn’t have been entirely unexpected. But I had a feeling that if we actually had a go and went for it we had a chance. So it proved to be. This was not the most attacking formation Ferguson has fielded in his 23 years at United, however, it was one with intent.

There have been a lot of grumbles about Real Madrid from our side over the last couple of years. The protracted Ronaldo transfer and the manner in which it was conducted has put an awful lot of people's backs up. Madrid are now seen as lacking class and respect to the red side from Mancunia.

Regular readers of this column will know all about The Crinkleys. They are a group of curmudgeonly old United fans made up of my Dad and his school mates who I often attend home matches with. One of their catchphrases, no doubt chiselled from decades of watching the team, is "they make us suffer". My goodness they did that tonight at Old Trafford.