Manchester United can't keep hiding behind De Gea and Smalling if they're to look like champions

Manchester United need to be afraid of PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday night. For the Dutch visitors, this is as big as it gets, and they'll be revved up at the prospect of doing the double over United, and putting one over a former Ajax icon like Louis van Gaal.

PSV were never expected to beat United in Holland, but having done so they'll be full of confidence and raring to go. Van Gaal will be well aware of all that, and it's up to him to transmit all that to his players, to make them understand what kind of a night they're in for.

All money down, United should win. But they'll need to be on their guard, far more so than they were at the weekend when they were lucky to get away with all three points.

Marcos Rojo's daft late penalty, sticking his foot in when there was absolutely no need, is typical of United's sloppiness at the moment. It'll be interesting to see if he starts the match, actually, because United need to keep their discipline if they're to start putting in the sort of performances that they need.

And it is a performance, rather than just a win, that they need now. Paul Scholes said the other day that he's yet to see a display from United this season that would mark them as potential title winners, and I'd have to agree with him on that one.

They're not convincing anyone. Time and again they're relying on David de Gea and Chris Smalling to bail them out, and those two have done great work covering up any number of crimes against football discipline.

That's not to say that United won't rumble along to win the title this season, even if they don't step it up. The last United side to win the league was a very poor United side who were pulled along by Robin van Persie in perhaps his best-ever season, and Van Gaal's side might pull off something similar.

But if they win the league, it'll say more about the quality of the opposition rather than how good they are.

Manchester City were taken to pieces by Liverpool on Saturday, absolutely humiliated. So you might think that a trip to Italy to take on Juventus would be the last thing they need right now.

Yet it often doesn't work that way for players. Sometimes you need a really big match to pick yourself up, and it doesn't get any bigger than this trip to Turin.

Juve have struggled for goals this season after letting Carlos Tevez and Arturo Vidal go, but their new stadium has become a mini-fortress in Europe in the last couple of years. It's a big ask for City to go there and win, but if they can it'll be the perfect way to bounce back from that Liverpool match.

If they don't get a result? Things will only start to look tougher, with Southampton visiting them at the weekend.

The one bright point for them is that the Saints rely heavily on Graziano Pelle, who is a fairly static player. Christian Benteke is not too dissimilar, actually, and if Liverpool had started with him at the weekend then things might have been different, since it was the Reds' speed of movement that totally knocked City off balance.

And it's that sort of football they might run into against Juventus on Wednesday night. Either way, they'll have had three very tough football matches in the space of a week - and losing all three would be a real blow to their campaign.