• 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.”

Manchester UnitedSir Alex FergusonBlackburn RoversPremier LeagueTim Richguardian.co.uk

Today’s fluff is feeling buff

Sic transit gloria mundi, as The Mill is fond of remarking, gravely but with a hint of a weary smile beneath its gold-rimmed pince-nez, its beaver skin-fringed academic gown billowing magisterially on that final postprandial turn around the bin park at the back of Clapham Junction Asda, pausing only to snuffle through a pile of remaindered prawn sandwiches and to encase itself in a protective night-time cover of discarded bubble wrap. All things must pass. The plumpest berry must wither on the branch.

And amazingly Joe Cole is now 28 and about to fall through the cracks at Stamford Bridge and end up somewhere vaguely depressing like Real Zaragoza or Turkish giants Argantazablispor, or Sunderland. Chelsea’s twinkling, frowning, squandered tyro fantasista wants a 50% pay rise, a Ben 10 Ultimate Omnitrix and an alternative reality where he goes back six years and doesn’t bother learning how to “track back” and “do a job in there” and instead concentrates on perfecting his 360 degree helicopter donkey kick cushioned reverse donkey kick and has much more fun playing for West Ham or maybe even Real Madrid or Barcelona.

Also in the Sun, Real Madrid or Barcelona are “weighing up £70m swoops” for Wayne Rooney. Franck Ribéry is trying to decide between Madrid and Chelsea. “I don’t think it’s a soap opera that will drag on for long, I think things will be decided within the next two or three months,” he said, painting a vivid picture of a soap opera that drags on for too long. Wigan will bid £5m for 28-year-old Mallorca striker Aritz Aduriz, who sounds like a slightly disgusting Hispanic processed rice-pudding dessert.

Alex McLeish is about to give up on Kenwyne Jones because he’s too expensive. José Mourinho is putting on his bicycle helmet, picking up his carbon fibre lance and making his eyes go really wide and scary and getting ready to “battle” his former club Chelsea for Benfica’s Angel Di Maria.

Roy Hodgson will bid £1m for Kamil Glik of Piast Gliwice and formerly Real Madrid. Glik, 23, is described as a “Polish hardman”. Blackburn have fly-tipped South African disappointment Elrio van Heerden in the front garden of Turkey’s Sivasspor and Birmingham’s Gary McSheffrey is on the move to Sheffield United. “Gary is a player I have always liked,” said Kevin Blackwell, fingering his Gary McSheffrey pencil case and lightly teasing his Gary McSheffrey “ëdo” with a comb.

In the Mirror Owen Coyle has got ideas now he’s at Bolton and wants to sign Manchester City reserve and Slovakia World Cup star Vladimir Weiss, who will “light up the Reebok”. Paul Ince is now the favourite to replace Coyle at Burnley. Gary Megson is also in the frame, as is the Huddersfield manager Lee Clark. “I’ve had an open and honest relationship with Lee,” says Town chairman Dean Hoyle, putting his hand on your knee.

Attention-hogging, foot-stomping, tutu-wearing five-year-old American beauty pageant princess Marouane Chamakh has promised to do one from Bordeaux to somewhere else by the end of the month. “It’s not a decision you take on a whim,” said the 25-year-old Moroccan. Juventus are thinking of getting rid of Ciro Ferrara and appointing Guus Hiddink as their part-time manager. In the Mail Arsenal are after bandage-wrapped, deep heat reeking wheelchair-hog Louis Saha, described as “hindered by injuries”. Chelsea want to sign the new hot Spanish sensation Sergio Canales from Racing Santander. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Arsenal and Manchester City are hovering unpleasantly.

In The Times Birmingham and Wolves have expressed an interest in hacking, stomping, whinnying Hull City pit pony Stephen Hunt. Sunderland are “monitoring the position” of Salvador CabaÒas, a Paraguay international who apparently has “a complex tax situation”. And Gordon Strachan is bent on building a new hoop-shirted Jerusalem in a grey and largely unpleasant land by signing Gary Caldwell, Barry Robson, Willo Flood, Scott McDonald plus the ghost of the deceased wing legend wee ginger Jinky “The Jinker” Jocky McJinkery.

According to Goal.com Marouane Fellaini’s dad, who is called, Abdel Latif Fellaini, thinks he might go to Chelsea. And “reports surfacing in Germany” from a seething, bubbling underground report depot suggest Milan are “locked in negotiations with Wolfsburg” over the Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko. Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung claims Milan have made a “fresh approach”, perhaps involving a swap deal with Dutch lumberer Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who just can’t seem to find anywhere he really fits in and seems destined to wander endlessly through the desert of elite, indecisive top level European football clubs, shunned and taciturn and sand-blasted and perhaps wearing some kind of cloak.

Transfer windowManchester CityBirmingham CityWayne RooneyReal ZaragozaBenficaBlackburn RoversChelseaSunderlandReal MadridBarcelonaWolfsburgBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk