Back on the road our journey continued to Royton - a suburb of Oldham - where I had arranged to meet a business friend of mine who is an Oldham Athletic diehard - a 'real' Latic and don't let any Wigan fan tell you different. We had a couple of beers in The Clayton Arms that is 'attached' to the home stand of The Latics at Boundary Park.

After, he went off to see his game against Swansea City (the game finished 1-1) and me and '18 Years A Blue' set off to Old Trafford via bus and tram. Two hours later, we arrived at the ground and was mixing it up with the thousands of other Chelsea fans anxious to gain admittance to the ground.

Arriving at our seats (padded I have to add - not bad for £45) the look, the feel and the atmosphere of Old Trafford was absolutely stunning. Old Trafford IS simply the best League ground in the country and her status, appearance exceeded all of my expectations.

However from the inside as stunning as Old Trafford is, outside is a completely different story. OT's infra-structure leaves an awful lot to be desired. I think I have an 'X-Files' idea as to why Man Utd DO NOT have fans from Manchester.

"YOU SIMPLY CANNOT GET OUT OF THE VICINITY OF THE GROUND QUICK ENOUGH," and Mancunians know this and this is why they let everybody else suffer the inconvenience.

On Saturday Chelsea fans were seated in the Stretford End and 50% of both the South and North stands. To access these areas you have to make your way through 'Coronation Street' type streets (without the cobbles) and then over a footbridge, down some stairs and then you arrive at the outskirts of the stadium.

Once through the turnstiles you take your pick as to which narrow staircase you want to climb to your designated seat. What I mean by narrow is that you are lucky to be able to have two people climbing the concrete stairs side-by-side. When you are dealing with the safety of thousands of people every week, safety seems to be a second concern.

The stairs maybe adequate enough to cope with fans arriving in dribs and drabs but to me they do not look that safe leaving when the game is over, and you have thousands of people looking to make a quick exit.

Once you have negotiated the stairwells safely to the outside you then have to queue for a considerable amount of time to return back over the footbridge and back into 'Coronation Street' country.

In our case on Saturday it took over 45 minutes to get over the bridge and that wasn't the end of it. Thousands of fans made their way towards the tram station. Now bearing in mind that the game ended just after 7pm, the time table of the trams had changed.

We couldn't get a bus back to town for love nor money, so we got on our toes and walked back to Manchester, along with many others down the A56 and by 9pm we were waiting at the bus stop for the bus to take us back to Royton, where we had parked the car.

By 10pm we were on the motorway and we finally arrived home at 3am on Sunday morning.

Theatre of Dreams....... PAH!!! YOU ARE HAVING A LAUGH!

COME ON CHELSEA!

40 YEARS A BLUE!