I HAVE a confession to make. I didn't go to Old Trafford the other night. I was going to go, up until very late in the day, but in the end I just couldn't face it.

After all, there's the Valencia trip coming up – and hopefully another tie after that against PSV Eindhoven – as well as a long-distance trek to Crawley Town in the FA Cup.

On top of all that, of course, season-ticket renewals are on the horizon.

Set against this was the sinking feeling of what we were likely to get from the game at Old Trafford – which sadly turned out as most of us suspected it would.

It's not that I won't go to games I think we're going to lose, but I am losing my enthusiasm for matches where I don't think we'll even try to win.

So instead of cheering on the lads in Manchester, I went to the pub.

It's my belief that we approach games against the "Big Six" with too much apprehension.

Fear is debilitating and prevents you from expressing yourself.

We seem to go into games at Old Trafford, the Etihad, Stamford Bridge et al worrying far too much about what the home team might do to us, rather than what problems we could pose them.

On paper, at least, the line-up at Old Trafford didn't look too bad, but appearances can be deceptive.

We may have had three strikers on the pitch, but one of them was playing deep on the left wing while another was effectively a midfielder, which left Peter Crouch isolated on his own up front.

In fact, our wingers were playing so deep that they were the ones who gave away the penalties which decided the game.

I'm no coach, but I have a pair of eyes. I also know all about statistics, so I was pretty sure it wasn't going to work.

We predictably sat too deep, gave away too much possession and created too few chances ourselves.

If you give a team like United 71 per cent of the possession on their own ground, they're going to do something with it. The sad fact is they didn't really need to break sweat.

Even though both Blackburn and Newcastle have taken points away from Old Trafford this season, I realise Sir Alex Ferguson's team remain a daunting prospect on their own turf.

They also put eight past Arsenal and hit four against Chelsea this season.

My complaint is we never seemed to give ourselves a fighting chance, and when I see that we're two goals down with Kenwyne Jones still holding a deep midfield role, I know we're not going to be getting anything for our efforts.

There's a school of thought that you can't go to grounds such as Old Trafford and expect to play football without being massacred.

With that in mind, I decided to look up our away record against the "Big Six" – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd and Spurs – since we were promoted to the Premier League.

Of the 22 games we have played at their grounds over the past four seasons, we have won one, drawn two and lost 19.

In doing so, we have scored eight goals – four of them at White Hart Lane – and conceded 57.

To make a reasonable comparison, I also looked at Wigan's away record against the same teams over the same four-year period.

I chose Wigan because they are a club who tend to play a very open game, home or away.

They too, have a record of one win and two draws for a total of five points, while their goal difference is – wait for it – scored eight and conceded 58, almost no difference at all.

So why don't we play our own game and not worry too much about tactical tinkering?

After all, the stats tend to suggest it doesn't seem to be doing us any good.

We have good players and a good manager ... and we are capable of giving a better account of ourselves than we often do in these games.

But I see that as being positive, rather than negative.

I'd rather see us throw caution to the wind every now and then – which means when you've got a throw close to the Liverpool penalty area with a few seconds remaining, and Rory Delap is on the pitch, that you go for the glory, not hurl the ball towards the corner flag.

Games against the "Big Six" won't decide our Premier League destiny.

It's the games against our peers that are crucial and, in that respect, we all know this Saturday's visit of Sunderland is far more important than the game at Old Trafford.

All the more reason, of course, for "having a go" against the likes of United. What do we have to lose?

In the meantime, here's to a return to winning ways against Sunderland.