A worrying start to David Moyes' reign at Manchester United

Manchester United will face trips to Liverpool and Manchester City, as well as hosting Chelsea, in their opening five fixtures of the 2013/14 Premier League season.

Combined with a potentially difficult away trip to Swansea on the opening day of the season, David Moyes will have a tough start to his new job as United boss and will be thrown right in at the deep end.

I don't want to use the phrase 'if he lasts that long', so I shall simply say "the silver lining is", that the run-in is a pretty straightforward affair - Southampton away on the last day of the season looks a bit of a tricky one, and it'll be interesting to see if the game I always personally look for - Everton - proves to be the usual massive stumbling block to our title campaigns that it has been of late, since that's towards the end too.

Otherwise, save for hosting Liverpool at Old Trafford with a few games to go, there's not much to report about the finale. I'm not too pessimistic about our chances of doing well at the start, but I am slightly concerned about how we'd fare against your mid-table meat and potatoes fixtures should we have a nightmare and drop points in three or four of that opening lot.

In order to balance out that doomsaying, I will leave you with the thought that were these last season's fixtures, we'd have been able to lift the league title with a victory over Liverpool at Old Trafford.