United out to avoid hairy moments at Hayes

I've had a couple of shocks to the system this week.

One was the completely unexpected, but truly marvellous, beard sported by David Beckham in England's 3-0 win over Belarus. You don't see many fully bearded footballers these days, let alone those with facial hair of a different colour to that on top of their head. It impressed watching Sunderland manager Steve Bruce so much that he decided to give the former England skipper the Man of the Match award, despite the fact that he [Beckham] was only on the field for half an hour. Well done Becks.

The other was Danny Crow's revelation that he "doesn't start scoring till October". This will come as a shock to United fans, most of whom probably didn't realise that he starts scoring at all. I did laugh when I heard Crowy labelled "CUFC's Carlos Tevez" on Radio Cambs the other day, because the similarities between the two are becoming more obvious by the week: Neither of them score many goals, but do run around a lot to no great effect, and get a lot of love from fans for it. Both are short and, er, a bit dumpy, and both have increasingly preposterous hairbands. Hopefully Crowy has no plans to join a band playing shantytown/urban music, I'm not sure the world is ready for that.

After that superb goal last week I shouldn't mock I suppose. And Carlos Crow and his team mates have a good chance to add to their respective goal tallies tomorrow when we face lowly Hayes and Yeading. With Willmott and Parky set to be sidelined, it will be interesting to see which way Lingy chooses to go; will he pick the obvious replacement, Jordan Patrick, or will he decide to play the slightly more experienced Sam Ives out of position?

For me this would seem like the ideal opportunity to blood JP against opposition who, with all due respect, are unlikely to be the strongest we encounter this season. But on the evidence of his reign so far, I think ML will opt for the safety-first option of Ives. Hayes have only picked up one point from a possible 18 in their last six games, so regardless of the line up, a United win is really the only acceptable result.