Manchester United and Liverpool Fans Are Not Their Usual Confident Selves

It was interesting to follow the "Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid" transfer saga from the usual "he is not for sale at any price" to the inevitable £30 million deal.

But more intriguing is the underlying "it won’t affect us" battle between supporters of Liverpool and Manchester United.

Many United fans are claiming losing a key player as valuable as the Spaniard will upset Liverpool’s title challenge, while supporters of the Merseyside club claim the loss of Alonso is hardly in the same bracket as United’s sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to the same Spanish giants.

The bigger picture

Rafa Benitez has acted quickly to cushion the blow and averted the eyes of the Anfield faithful from any doom and gloom with the potential signing of Alberto Aquilani from Roma.

But no matter who is brought in or what is done to distract the fans attentions, one thing is clear and not easily ignored.

Selling your top players is not the best warm-up for a new season, no matter what club you are, and definitely not two weeks before the first league game.

The fans are quite rightly sceptical and the "our problems are not as big as your problems" is hardly great preseason title banter.

Both weakened teams

Amazingly, we may be in a unique position going into this top flight campaign, with both of last season’s top two sides possibly being weaker in August than they were in May.

With United losing Ronaldo and deciding against Carlos Tevez, it would not have been too far of a stretch to imagine Liverpool going into the new season with the upper hand, but the failure to hold onto Alonso puts any advantage in doubt.

After all, Sir Alex Ferguson's United side are seasoned champions, who over the years have coped brilliantly with losing key players and also retaining their title.

The red half of Merseyside have, in this generation at least, no such pedigree and have been building a side under Benitez for several years now but never came closer to the Premier League trophy than they did last season.

Surely, all they had to do was hold onto that squad for just one more year.

Hard to call

However, we do not know what goes on in the mind of the Spanish manager, and after all, Alonso was not always part of his master plan at Anfield. Therefore, it may not be the blow many believe it to be.

Had it been Steven Gerrard or Fernando Torres, then maybe delight from rival fans would have been more "you have no chance" than the earlier mentioned "our loss is not as bad as your loss."

The fact that many Liverpool fans are not overly confident, despite Manchester United losing their best player, shows the champions have plenty of respect from their rivals.

But supporters of the champions having a little less faith in their side speaks volumes about how tight a season we are looking forward to.