It’s only 9 AM on a Monday morning and my stomach is already turning over and over.
This time next week, we’re going to know if the treble is a realistic goal or if, perish the thought, we are bottlers just like Arsenal.
It’s not every week that contains two matches of any time as big as a Champions League quarter final second leg and an FA Cup semifinal.
The fact that they’re against Chelsea and Man City make them even more important to us.
If you’d said to me at the start of the season that, come April, the treble would be on with the league looking pretty good to be won with plenty of time to spare, I would have laughed at you.
That we’ve got this far is thanks in part to Fergie’s brilliant man management, the form of Nani, Berbatov and Hernandez and, crucially, the timely return to form of Wayne Rooney after nearly 12 months out in the cold.
The more difficult of the two legs against Chelsea is out of the way, but that doesn’t mean that the home leg is going to be easy.
It’s difficult to imagine Chelsea not scoring at some point in this match—although the longer they play Torres, the less likely they are to score.
A solid performance with a first half goal from us would be nice, but it's still going to be a bloody scary night tomorrow.
Then it’s City at the weekend.
One of the annoying things about this season has been the fact that it seems to fall to us, repeatedly, to prevent our rivals from winning anything.
With the Carling Cup last year and FA Cup this year, it’s almost like we, personally, are being tasked with preventing City from ending their trophy drought.
To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
To deny City another showpiece final with another late goal would be absolutely delightful.
There’s no doubt that, at some point, City will challenge us for the league title given all the money that they have to throw about. If they have developed a taste for silverware by then, it’s going to be more difficult to stop them.
However, if we’ve drummed it into their heads that they ARE bottlers and that we ALWAYS come out on top, it’s going to make it a lot more difficult for them to pull through.
It matters for us, too.
In one week, this season could go from having one of the most exciting climaxes we can remember, to being a damp squib that we remember only for the missed opportunity.
The weeks of piss-taking at Arsenal for throwing away three trophies in a week will be a distant memory if we manage to throw away two, and then find ourselves scrapping to hold onto our lead in the league.
It will also hurt, deeply.
So, I know we say this every week, but this really is the biggest week of our season so far.
Unless we end up in two finals at the end of May, so it will probably remain.
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