So here we are again. That one day of the season. Manchester United at Anfield in the Premiership.


In my schooldays I used to get convulsed at a pending Bradford derby; I've seen (and indeed felt) the tension of Barca-Real and the Glasgow confrontations on television as well as other somewhat lesser footballing causes of abnormal human behaviour. Yet for us Reds even the Merseyside derby pales into insignificance alongside this one.


For the past few days I've followed every distraction I can muster to avoid thinking about the arrival of Ferguson and his crew. But as every day shortens and the witching hour gets ever nearer so the internal bodily functions behave increasingly erratically. Truth is, I hate this date probably more than any other in the whole calendar, not simply the football one.


Even the away fixture is nothing like as powerful in its impact because I've come to switch off from that and simply avoid getting utterly wound up by refusing to watch any aspect of the game on screen. If the worst comes to the worst any bad result never happened and I can actually manage a night's sleep. But not the Anfield game.


We've managed to come out of the last three home games with a great big cheesy grin and on reflection I think it's fair comment to say that Manchester have underperformed on each occasion. Could it really be that they've bottled it under the most grotesque (to them) atmosphere? Hard to say. Rooney's record certainly suggests that, his only strikes being courtesy of a Dudek gift and from the penalty spot. Indeed he's admitted in a tabloid interview that being physically sick beforehand has not been out of the question.


And so on the basis of that bit of straw clutching do I look ahead to 12.45 on Saturday. Strangely enough, in a game which always threatens to start cagily there have been fairly early goals, often out of almost nothing, while another somewhat unusual feature of both fixtures has been that the team conceding first has fought back to win. Perhaps surprising since in games of such tension, you might have expected one goal to be enough.


One thing that an early goal does do is change the game as a spectacle; it destroys any caginess. When that doesn't happen invariably the contest peters out as a spectacle.


But for all that, in this fixture, Liverpool have invariably dominated for large parts. Whether that's the result of being urged on by the Kop or conversely because the crowd has got through to the United players is debatable, but there is no reason at all why that should not once again happen on Saturday. The big question for me is whether we can, just for once, make the most of our good approach play. For sure, give the likes of Rooney, Hernandez, Young or Giggs the kind of chances we've been squandering and we'll suffer for sure.


In this of all fixtures there'll be no hard luck allowances from the Kop if we miss any open goals or worse still spot kicks; if we fail to hit the target with gilt edged opportunities. Because don't we just sense that in doing so a sucker punch would seem all the more inevitable.


I don't believe in him upstairs so there's no point at all in me joining my hands, but if I thought for a single moment that this would be a way to a clear-cut 3pts, I guess there'd be plenty of scope for a change of mind.

Mike Hopper