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Radio City's Alan Irwin

Posts: 61

Alan Irwin is the Voice of Everton for Liverpool's Radio City 96.7. An experienced radio journalist, Alan commentates on all of the Blues' matches and is well placed to provide insightful blogs on the progress of the team.

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You may have noticed my absense in recent weeks. Well, it's great to be back and it's quite incredible that even when your team is struggling you can't wait to return.

Having missed my first Everton match for a good few seasons due to a commitment in the United States I'm more than looking forward to the visit of Manchester United to Goodison on Saturday.

And thank goodness I don't reside in the USA! How can they get excited over what they call football, along with their version of a game of rounders? On top of that it's a little more difficult to access Premier League football, by no means impossible but you certainly need to know the right bars.

So, it's great to return to blighty, even if it is on the back of defeat at Arsenal.

I didn't manage to catch the full 90 minutes but based on all subsequent reports and highlights, it appears it was certainly a game of two halves. Unfortunately a performance for 45 minutes again on Saturday will probably yield the same result.

Top teams are able to turn it on when necessary and we'll need to be at our very best to claim our first home win of the season.

We all know we need a major victory to boost confidence and defeating Manchester United would definately achieve that. It's not that simple of course but not impossible! It's eleven against eleven on the day and I'm going to remain optimistic (probably based on my enforced absence last week and my desire for real football again).

Team wise I expect the boss will go for his favoured option of 4-5-1. Many feel we should be playing two up front at home, but there are occasions when needs must and meeting a team that can break as swiftly and positively as United is one of those.

We've conceded far too many goals already so it's a game where we must somehow keep it tight for as long as possible, stay in the game and hope that we can nick something ourselves.

I think I'll happily settle for a draw on Saturday and then our season really does need to get up and running at Bolton on Wednesday. That would tee us up nicely for the visit of Fulham next weekend.

We should be taking all the points from those two games and then we'll hold a respectable mid-table position and put aside all this silly talk of being sucked into a relegation scrap. Simply, we won't.

We are too good for that and there are still a number of teams in this Premier League who are not!