It's a no-brainer for me. Away goals should count over 180 minutes of European ties. Extra time should be a clean slate.

Finding it bizarre that a lot of people are bringing Liverpool's integrity into question regarding the title race and "possibly" wanting to lose to Chelsea. Fergie and Rooney talked about Liverpool's "pride", but yet no-one has even mentioned another deciding factor..........

...........Steve Bruce and Sunderland.

Wonder if anyone is going to set the ball rolling with the conspiracy theories that the former Man Utd captain and legend will get his side to lie down and let his mentor and former club take an easy 3 points?

I see the FA have finally seen sense by not punishing Fulham for resting a few players, despite West Ham's protests. If only, they'd have shown it earlier in the season when imposing a suspended fine on Wolves for exactly the same thing, when both results have shown that in the long run, the decisions made by McCarthy and Hodgson were the correct ones.

Non-starter surely. Even if Bruce went into the game without commitment his squad are not going to want to lie down. I assume they will be on a bonus related to league position. At the moment they could finish anywhere between 9th and 13th which I would guess would relate to a fairly big difference in bonus payments. I could well be talking out of my Iestyn though.

It's more likely that Bruce will lie down for Fergie than Liverpool for Chelsea. I want us to beat Chelsea as we obviously want to beat the best, but I'll be surprised if we stick a full strength team out after midweek.

So the home team, having had the advantage of the decisive match at their stadium, should also get the advantage of having extra time (and possibly penalties) at their stadium as well, with no drawbacks at all?

TBH I think I'd scrap the whole away goals rule anyway. It puts too much pressure on the home sides in the first leg not to concede, and distorts many second legs as well.

The Liverpool-Chelsea match is the decisive one. If Chelsea beat Liverpool, it doesn't particularly matter what Sunderland and Man United do.

There is an obvious reason why Liverpool wouldn't want to help United, they would overtake them as the most successful league side in the history of the English football. IMO that matters far more to the supporters than it will to the players or manager.

Benitez and the players still have the chance of 4th, and even if that's not possible they will still want to get Thursday off their minds and end a horrible season on a high. And while they enjoy helping United take the title by beating Chelsea, it's not like they wouldn't take great delight in screwing up our title bid.

I think the figure I've seen for the difference between Sunderland finishing the highest they can and the lowest is something like £4m. That's an enormous amount of money at stake for a club like Sunderland for a couple of games. There's also Sunderland's home record at stake. They've lost two games at home all season.

For me everyone has made the right noises over these games. Unlike in the last few seasons where United's opponents in some of the last few games virtually congratulated United on their wins over them before the games had been played.

I love the way so many people have bought into this whole "Liverpool or Sunderland might throw their match" bs over the last few days, because usually it's the same people who bang on about the amazing honesty and integrity of the English game, and that any dodgy antics are always perpetrated by those sneaky foreigners.

Okay, generally, teams prefer to play away in the first leg. But there's no proof to which is an advantage. Teams may prefer to build a lead in the first home leg, then wait to nick a goal in the away leg to kill the tie off. Swings and roundabouts.

Even our "chairman" doesn't want us to win on Sunday.