United Road Take Me Home

I think the operative word tonight will be 'counter-intuitive'. It's not a word that I've ever had cause to use before, and I'm not totally confident that I could fully explain what it means. Indeed, it's probably the kind of ghastly, trendy jargon - like the pearler 'ideation' - that the pumped full of Power Manual Toss vessels who appear on the Apprentice would use. But it's the word that popped into my head as I plunged my hands into a sink full of dirty pots and tried to make sense of what I'd just watched on the telly.

United lost. My natural reaction at this point in the season, given that it's our second consecutive defeat - a fact that will be drummed home incessantly between now and Tuesday night - would be to give in to despair, to wallow in gloom, to embrace darkness. To flail at the cruel hand of fate, or the cruel hand of the referee that didn't point to the spot. Or the cruel hand of Sir Alex for handing in a team sheet on which he'd scribbled the words Kieran Richardson, tantamount to giving the opposition a one-nil start in my book.

Normally I'd know for sure that it was all over. Chelsea have won it and there's nothing we can do about it. I'd spend the evening in the mother of all moods, enveloped in black misery, vowing that that's it, I'm never putting myself through this again. But not this time. This time I'm going to be counter-intuitive.

A few minutes after pressing 'Publish' I will be downstairs getting nicely sloshed listening to the mighty fine new album by The Bees. Then I'll watch Borat. I'll remind myself that this was always likely to be the game where we'd come unstuck, given the fact that it's sandwiched between the two Roma games, the first of which was more testing and tumultuous than we could ever have possibly imagined. I'll remind myself that the intricate play didn't quite come off tonight, but it will again. I'll remind myself that though our finest players were fitful and indifferent tonight, next time they won't be.

I'll think against what I would usually think. Which I think is what it means to be counter-intuitive. I think we'll still win the league. I think, you think I'm right.