The European Champions League draw will take place in Monaco within the next 24 hours. UEFA’s rules will see the 32 qualified teams allocated into eight groups of four. Each will contain a top seed, plus one club from the second, third and fourth pots. These are determined by a UEFA ranking system which makes it virtually impossible to work out who exactly Manchester United will be drawn against BUT there are a number of clubs who will definitely be avoided.

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Transfer rumours are a dime a dozen. Very few have genuine substance so they should always be taken with a huge amount of cynicism. Yet they cannot be completely ignored in case there’s the slightest grain of truth in them. Some media outlets are obviously more reliable than others so Truly Reds is prepared to report the gossip and give a rating of 1 to 5 as to how believable it’s likely be. A rating of 1 can almost certainly be dismissed out of hand while a 5 may give the story some merit and warrant a small wager. Have a look at the latest United transfer gossip being reported but be warned – only believe what you want.

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Football often throws up some delicious ironies. They often happen when least expected with not just one coincidence, not even two or three but as in the current season, a hard to believe FOUR times – and that’s only if I happened to overlook any other instances. Just imagine what the betting odds would have been back in August for the following combination of winners to happen simultaneously. Perhaps every one of them was simply written in the stars.

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Former Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty once famously said that “If your name is on the Cup, nobody can take it away from you” and how right he was! While there are 37 other games to recover from a bad decision or an unfortunate incident in the Premier League, once a Cup game is lost, there is no opportunity for a comeback. The Champions League draw could have been worse for United as an always difficult, long trip to the Ukraine has been avoided as have Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid until at least the Wembley Final. But the task of getting there will by no means be a walk in the park.

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Former Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty once famously said that “If your name is on the Cup, nobody can take it away from you” and how right he was! While there are 37 other games to recover from a bad decision or an unfortunate incident in the Premier League, once a Cup game is lost, there is no opportunity for a comeback. The Champions League draw could have been worse for United as an always difficult, long trip to the Ukraine has been avoided as have Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid until at least the Wembley Final. But the task of getting there will by no means be a walk in the park.

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Wynn Grant over at the brilliant Football Economy has highlighted some research done by the egg-heads at the Professional Football Players Observatory (no, I hadn’t heard of them either) that believes that, of all the teams in contention for the Premiership title this year, Man United are the most likely ones to be lifting the trophy come the end of the season. From Football Economy:

“Manchester United are on track to win the Barclays Premier League title.   That’s not my view, but is the conclusion reached by the Professional Football Players Observatory (PFPO), a research organisation based in France and Switzerland. Read the full story