You'll be able to count the number of teams who come away from Citeh with anything on one hand and still have some change. They are, quite frankly, a simply awesome team who are streets ahead of anyone else in this league. So they should be, they've spent the thick end of £500m in the last couple of years, which dwarves even Liverpool's mental spending policy. When you've got a line up that includes the likes of Aguero, Balotelli, Yaya Toure and Nasri which allows the likes of David Silva to be "rested" you know you're going to be up against it. That said, we created some of the better opportunities before they opened the scoring just before half time. Ba was guilty of missing two great chances, one after a superb reverse ball from Ben Arfa which he hit straight at Joe Hart. Up until the goal, we defended pretty well and Krul was restricted into making just one real save from the nutty Italian. A daft hand ball from Ryan Taylor Over the Wall led to a penalty that was converted by Mad Mario - which was proceeded by an odd 'arms-folded' celebration that only he could get away with. Any chance of getting back into the game was pretty much signed off, with Taylor again being the culprit, with some silly dithering on the ball that allowed the fastest 16 stone bloke in the world to coolly finish.

We might have imploded in the second half - that was my fear. However, we came out the blocks and immediately started attacking - with Sammy causing a few problems down the right hand side. Ben Arfa was so close to making it 2-1 with a brilliant run that resulted in a shot off the post when it really deserved a goal. Had that went in, you never know. Mind you, on the other side of the coin, they could well have stepped up a gear and punished us Man Utd. style. Their third was another avoidable one after Ben Arfa's daft challenge in the box. We were to be rewarded for our hard work though with a consolation goal just before the 90 minute mark.

We didn't deserve to win, nor did we deserve to draw - but we did come out with this game with some credit. Man Utd. don't seem to be the team they once were, so it isn't out of the question for us to go there and pick up a point. That said, they are no pushover and we rarely get anything at Old Trafford. I've said before this run of games though, our season won't be defined on these three games - it is the ones before that where we picked up points that we didn't last season. For me, that is progress.