• United can regain top spot by beating Blackburn
• They will have to do so without Wayne Rooney

As someone who spent the afternoon after his side’s Champions League defeat watching his horse win at Aintree, Sir Alex Ferguson is a man who understands the racing phrase “course and distance”. Which is why, with five Premier League games remaining and two points to claw back, the Manchester United manager is likely to turn to the veterans who have travelled this path many times before.

“In one way, the racing was a release from it all,” he said before taking the champions to Blackburn for the first of those five games. “It takes you away from the grind of the job here and it was good for me to get out.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about football at Aintree; you can never stop thinking about these kinds of games. But even if we had got through against Bayern Munich, it would still have weighed greatly on my mind. I always analyse games and it is very important to do so in defeat.

“And now we will have to depend on the experience of some of the players. I think this is a game for Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, and probably Gary Neville. That experience is useful. Blackburn is never an easy place to go. The pitch is not very good; it is bare and will be lively now that the weather has turned. But we will take massive support there. We will have 7,000 supporters.”

In Frank Lampard, Michael Ballack and John Terry, league leaders Chelsea can match the experience of Giggs, Scholes and Neville. However, Ferguson said the one advantage Manchester United have is that Chelsea know one slip at this stage of the season would give them no time to recover.

Manchester United will play most of their five games before Carlo Ancelotti’s team take to the field and, unlike earlier in the season,when Darren Fletcher and Michael Carrick were pressed into service as makeshift centre-halves, the club are not bogged down with injuries.

“I am stronger, squad-wise, than I have ever been,” Ferguson said. “The test is as much mental as physical, but they have to go for it. They can only achieve it by winning those five games. It is straightforward now in terms of how those games fall. We don’t play in midweek and I have the strongest squad I’ve had all season.”

However, the most important member of that squad, Wayne Rooney, may not be back in action until this Saturday’s Manchester derby. Although Ferguson was still vehemently critical of the way Bayern’s players encouraged the referee to dismiss Rafael da Silva at Old Trafford, he absolved the Germans of blame for targeting Rooney’s already-injured ankle and said he would have expected his players to have done the same.

Nevertheless, if he took a risk by starting a man whose injury – sustained in the closing seconds of the first leg in Munich – had been expected to rule him out for three weeks, Ferguson said the decision was not his alone. “He [Wayne] had burst a blood vessel in Germany,” he said. “But, once the swelling had gone down on the Sunday, Steve McNally [the Manchester United doctor] said he could be ready for Wednesday.

“I said I doubted that very much, but Steve said that the swelling and the bruising had gone and the scan was perfect. The work Wayne did on Tuesday persuaded me to put him in a practise game with the other players. He was perfect – shooting and tackling all over the bloody place.

“Then you have to decide if it was worth the risk. I spoke to him on the Wednesday morning and he said he’d had no reaction. He wanted to play.”

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• Goalkeeper’s injury not as serious as first thought
• Samba backs Jason Brown to fill Robinson’s boots

Paul Robinson, the Blackburn Rovers and England goalkeeper, was today ruled out for up to four weeks after tearing a calf muscle against his former club Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday.

Robinson pulled up midway through the match at White Hart Lane with the initial prognosis being a six-week lay-off. But Rovers have now confirmed they hope he will be back quicker than that.

“It looks like we will be without Paul for up to four weeks,” said the Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce.

The news remains a blow to the player as he battles to claim a place in England’s World Cup squad despite stiff competition from Robert Green, David James, Joe Hart and Ben Foster.

The 30-year-old was replaced at White Hart Lane by Jason Brown, who was making his first league appearance of the season.

The Rovers defender Christopher Samba is confident the 27-year-old former Gillingham player can plug the gap left by his injured team-mate.

He said: “We have keepers and whoever plays we trust to cover Paul Robinson and to do his best.

“If Jason delivers on the pitch what he delivers in training every day, then there won’t be any problem. He plays well for us when he plays and we will have no worries at all. We know we will be fine.”

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• Midfielder sent off in Hull’s 1-0 defeat at Blackburn
• Boateng avoids three-match ban with successful appeal

The Hull City midfielder George Boateng today succeeded in an appeal against his dismissal at Blackburn Rovers and his three-match ban has been withdrawn.

The Football Association announced the verdict, which was determined at an independent regulatory commission hearing.

Boateng, 34, was dismissed in Wednesday’s match at Ewood Park after the match referee, Lee Probert, determined his challenge on Morten Gamst Pedersen merited a straight red card.

The Hull manager Phil Brown criticised the dismissal after the match, which the visitors lost 1-0, saying: “To say it is a nonsense is an understatement. It is clearly a clash of heads and a brave challenge by both players.”

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