Twelve months ago, Manchester United were all but written off for achieving anything in the coming season. In fact, winning a Cup was the best we could hope for.

The majority of United fans wouldn’t have thought a Premiership title possible, especially as Chelsea had signed Ashley Cole, Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko. There was an air of puzzlement. Surely Arsenal and Liverpool wouldn't have better sides than us as well? Our own bias is always going to get in the way of reality, to one degree or another, but surely our bias couldn’t allow us to believe we had a decent enough side, when in fact, we were only going to be good enough to claim the last Champions League place?

There was a pressure on us that had grown for the past three seasons, and was now at bursting point. Despite not finishing outside the top three, the failure to win the league in just three seasons apparently was justification for the heaps of criticism that came our way. Sky Sports went so far as to say: “Such is the expectation at Old Trafford these days that failure to win the Premiership for a fourth season in a row will be depicted as a catastrophe for United.” Catastrophic? Is that really how bad things were getting?

'It was a pressure Sir Alex Ferguson knew only too well from his early years with the club, when desperation for success was almost unbearable'


They penciled us in for fourth place, and the catastrophic United season was upon us. It was a pressure Sir Alex Ferguson knew only too well from his early years with the club, when desperation for success was almost unbearable. It was a pressure he had combated once before, but could he do it again? And could he cope with the competition thrown up by Jose Mourinho at Chelsea?

Sky's assessment went further and suggested that just as Liverpool had dominated the 80s then gone into decline, so United had dominated the 90s and were about to follow suit. It was Chelsea's tujrn to become the pre-eminent force, and United must be prepared to bide their time. Chelsea's spending power under Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich showed no signs of slowing down.

United made a profit in the transfer market last summer, with the sale of Ruud van Nistelrooy and John Obi Mikel (transferred to Chelsea without kicking a ball for United) eclipsing the £14m paid for Michael Carrick. Fans complained about that kind of money for Carrick and questioned whetgher he was good enough. In fact
the former West Ham midfielder came second only to Paul Scholes last season as our most consistently great passer, with an 83.4% accuracy rate, scoring six goals, including those two crackers in the quarter-final of the Champions league.

Only Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney had more league appearances for us, with one and two appearances more respectively. No we couldn’t compete in terms of cash with Chelsea in the transfer market, as we couldn’t for the seasons before, but in terms of bringing in quality players, nobody has brought in more than Ferguson in the past four seasons. Michael Ballack, the player many of us had hoped would sign for us for years, was totally eclipsed by Carrick last season.

But of course the bigger problem was how well Ronaldo and Rooney would get on after their World Cup spat in which the Portuguese youngster was blamed for getting his England club mate sent off. Would they be able to play together? Would they get on sufficiently well for Ferguson to keep his faith in the pair?

Well, I’m almost getting bored with praising Ronaldo. I run out of words to describe the season he’s just had for us. He picked up more major awards in one season than any player in the history of the game; He was the third highest scorer in the league, with 17 goals in 31 starts, and had the highest number of "assists" in the league, providing 14 goals for his team mates.

Likewise, Rooney had a massive impact on our season. After a slow start following the utterly ridiculous ban by the FA, Rooney banged in plenty of goals, several of which we will see on the next “Top 50 United goals.” I could watch his goals against Portsmouth, Watford, Milan and Bolton, to name a few, over and over again. And who could forget his goal ten minutes from time against Everton, which took us into the lead, on the day that felt like we’d won the league. He was joint top scorer for United last season, alongside Ronaldo, with 23 goals in all competitions.

Sky couldn't have got it more wrong if they had tried. And they left us with a final summery: "A greater impact in the UEFA Champions League will be expected, but a cup may again be the best last season’s Carling Cup winners can hope for.” Why? Because we’d sold Ruud van Nistelrooy, and we’d only brought in Michael Carrick.

The press were generally of the same opinion and United had an incentive to prove everybody wrong. The fans, the players and the manager were striving for, probably more than ever, a league title to shut everyone up. We’d felt the pressure, sat in our seats at Old Trafford on the opening day of the season before the whistle blew, hoping we could start the season with something special. Little did we know then that we would win the game 5-1. Little did we know what lay ahead.

We saw our lads lift our ninth Premiership trophy, making John Terry’s recent comments about feeling the title is theirs all the more laughable. We’ve got our trophy back, we’ve signed quality new players, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for Carlos Tevez, and now we can wait patiently for our 10th.