The future of our Bulgarian goalscorer seems to be shrouded in mystery. Will he stay with us or will he demand a transfer after being slighted by the manager at Wembley? After finally hitting the sort of goalscoring form that United fans had been craving for his first couple of seasons, could we now be losing him after his most prolific season in a red shirt?

The most startling stat surrounding the 1st leg of this FA Youth Cup final is that more than 29,977 expectant fans turned up to watch the match. The attendance is even more startling given that it's Sheffield United's highest gate of the season (yes, including all competitions at all levels) beating the previous highest by fully 6,000 (cue the chant "Come to see United, you've only come to see United.

It's here, and it's not going unnoticed despite being surrounded by other events and achievements gained by the club's more illustrious and decorated first team squad. There's a certain hype about this year's FA Youth Cup final, nothing emphasised this more than the 24,000 tickets that had already been sold by Wednesday last week, Bramall Lane holds just shy of 33,000.

Ferguson gets charged with a 5 match ban when he made negative comments about a referee.

Now, he gets charged for a positive comment he made about Howard Webb before last weekend's game against Chelsea.

Even closest rivals Wenger and Ancelotti have expressed their surprise at this latest charge.

The season isn't over yet of course. We still have 2 league games remaining on our schedule in which we need to secure 1 point to clinch the title. We then have to prep for the massive encounter against Juventus on May 24th for Gary Neville's testimonial. After that, there's the little matter of a Wembley date against some team from Spain.

Remember when we were top of the table with a healthy lead over our closest competitors and threatening to run away with the title? That seems like such a distant memory now after back to back losses against our heated rivals. After going through the first half of the season entertaining thoughts of finishing the season undefeated, we now find ourselves with 3 losses out of our last 5 league games.

Big thank you to ol boy Brucie and his rearguard of Mensah, Bramble, Bardsley and Ferdinand for defending like a fortress at the Emirates. A special mention goes out to Welbeck who was making a return from injury and nearly nicked a goal shortly after coming on with a nice shot on the turn.

Our lead at the top has been chipped away at, but only by 1 pt instead of the 3 that many of us were anticipating heading into Saturday.

To no one's surprise, SAF has been charged by the FA for the comments he made about Atkinson at Stamford Bridge.
Were his words harsh? Yes. But they weren't an inaccurate assessment of the ref's overall performance.
The FA keeps holding managers accountable for their statements. When will we start seeing that accountability demanded for refs and their performances?

I'm reflecting on the scathing post that I put up yesterday and am wondering now if I was too harsh in my assessment. Clearly, we put on a second rate display (at best). But is it fair and realistic to expect the players that took the field to perform at the standard that we're used to expecting from our first team?

After the adrenaline high from THAT goal and the win from yesterday, the sobering reality set in: we are coming toward the final third of our league schedule. In race terms, we're turning the corner and heading down that last stretch.

Looking at what we have to face before we cross that finish line on May 22nd, there definitely seems to be some cause for concern.

The partnership of Smalling and Vidic maintain their perfect record and now have 6 wins out of 6 games started together.

As a sidenote, we also won the game by the way.

More to follow...

How have our defensive partnerships fared in the 25 PL games played thus far? Just as with the Chicharito post, this is another attempt to use simple stats to measure performance.

As of Feb 6th, 2011, we've played 25 league games and amassed a record of 15W 9D 1L. We have conceded 24 goals making it an average of 0.

Before I get berated for an upcoming post about our defense and how it could be perceived as Jonny Evans bashing, let me just say that I've still got that tiny ounce of belief that he will eventually come good. Whether it's this season or the next, it'll happen.

As a reminder, Jonny Evans was a part of our rearguard that made history in the 2008/2009 season going over a thousand minutes without conceding a league goal.

Well, for our competition anyway. Not so much for us. At time of writing this, it appears that Chelsea have signed Fernando Torres for something in the neighborhood of £50m.

As a replacement, Liverpool have agreed to pay Newcastle £35m for Andy Carroll.

Surprisingly, City have stayed relatively quiet after their early capture of Dzeko and haven't jumped back into the market.

Apparently, there's a rumor floating around that we're looking to land Kaka on a loan deal this month. I highly doubt the credibility of said rumor or the likelihood of it ever transpiring. But if it does, I don't think it would be a bad situation to be in. We have needed creative reinforcements in midfield for awhile now and this would be a good environment for Kaka to get his career back on track after the injuries/dip in form he's had recently.