Rio's Awful Christmas

Rio is strange at times. Apart from organising outrageous Christmas parties, his comments are also baffling at times. No he claims we were not good enough during the festive period.

'Nine points from four games is not satisfactory at all,' he said.

'I have had an awful Christmas period, losing to West Ham and my brother Anton scoring as well. But you have to take results on the chin and make sure you don't drop points in the next game.'

'To lose that game was very disappointing. But we got a response against Birmingham and got the result we needed. If we had dropped points on Tuesday we would have been in a bad position.

'We are still there or thereabouts in the league. If you had offered us this position at the start of the season, we would have taken it.'

Nine points out a possible twelve isn't bad at all and if you consider that from December 2 to January 1 United won six games out of seven, you will see that results don't get much better than ours.

It could have been perfect had Ronaldo converted that penalty but no use to weep over it any more. We have to make sure that Sam Allardyce's Newcastle career won't survive the two teams' clash at Old Trafford and keep on going.

But if Rio meant that his Christmas was bad because of the party and its consequences - well, then I can understand his point.