The depressing truth about the title race

I woke up this morning and two headlines caught my attention: 'Szczesny out for six weeks' and 'Nani out until April'.

This Arsenal team is not likely to go on an amazing run and win all of their remaning games in the league (the bookies don't even offer soccer odds for that anymore). Thankfully, neither are United, so the last games of the season are all about who messes up less often, and a lot of that is down to who has the best luck with injuries.

So, not great news for us this morning. I can't believe our luck really - it finally looked like Almunia was gone for good, with the emergence of Fabianski and Szczesny this season, but with the first Pole guaranteed to miss the rest of the campaign, and now the second one out with a freak injury from that Alves free kick, here we are once again at the most crucial point of the year with Almunia as our only option.

Will his performance in the Nou Camp turn things around for him? Not likely. I appreciate his efforts on Tuesday night a great deal, as he was one of the few players to cover himself with any glory, but one good performance will not suddenly make him a title-winning goalkeeper. Expect a few howlers from now until the end of the season, let's just hope we out-score our opponents often enough.

The injury to Nani is, of course, good news for us. Along with Vidic and Hernandez, he's been a stand-out performer for United this season, and one of the only players who can really provide a spark. Also, with Park and Valencia both out it really limits Ferguson's options out wide. If he's having to start Scholes and Giggs together as he did at Anfield too often, they'll get overrun fairly often, as they did at Anfield.

I realise it's a bit strange that I'm comparing the two teams without really looking at tomorrow's FA Cup game. I'll be honest, I haven't given it much thought. After losing the Carling Cup, I guess I don't have much faith in these players to handle the big occasion of a cup final, whereas the league seems somehow more winnable. As managers often say, every game is a cup final from now until the end of the season, but it's a different vibe altogether; in cup games you can get freak incidents like the Koscielny-Szczesny cock-up against Birmingham and it's game over, but in the league you can benefit from other team's mistakes too, and I really feel like United will drop more points than we do from now until the end.

How will tomorrow affect the title race? It's so hard to tell. If we lose it will dent our confidence big time, I'm sure, but at the same time we will have far fewer fixtures than United, and with our injury-hit squad I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. However, if we win it would be a third defeat in a row and a huge dent to United's confidence, and the cup would serve as a welcome distraction from the title race, meaning it's not all or nothing for the Premier League.

So, put simply, I don't know. I also don't know what kind of lineup both managers will play and that makes predicting a result almost pointless. United have had more rest than us, and it would be less surprising of Wenger to rotate his team a bit, and with Almunia in goal I'd say that gives United the edge. We'll see.

For now, my priority for tomorrow is that we don't get more injuries. van Persie is fit, supposedly, but should we really gamble with him at this stage? We've seen the difference he can make this season, and to lose him now would probably be the biggest blow of all.

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