I don't want Hull City to get a free pass to another season of Premier League football on Sunday. I don't want them to have an unfair advantage over Alan Shearer's Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Sunderland when relegation frenzy takes hold at 4pm.
I don't want the other three teams to stare at the final table with bitterness in their hearts, thinking Hull had it easy because they were playing a side that didn't care.
That's why I hope Sir Alex Ferguson picks a weakened Manchester United side at the KC Stadium. That's why I hope he leaves out Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs for the crunch game against Phil Brown's strugglers.
Because a team of United fringe players, a team of hungry kids and reserves with a point to prove, is the best chance Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland have got.
I'd like to see Nani out on the wing, dying to prove a point to Fergie after being left on the sidelines for so much of this season. I'd like to see Danny Welbeck up front, trying to live up to the assertion Ferguson made on Sunday that he'd force his way into Fabio Capello's World Cup squad next season. And I'd like to see Federico Macheda alongside him, bursting to recreate the glory of the crucial winners he scored against Aston Villa and Sunderland.
Partly, it's because I want United to have the best chance of beating Barcelona in Rome three days later. For that to happen, Ronaldo and Rooney have to be as fresh as possible and not carrying any knocks.
But partly it's because that for a match like Sunday, when United have nothing to play for but pride, Welbeck, Macheda and Gibson represent the best they have to offer. Even if Ferguson played Ronaldo in Hull, do you really think the World Footballer of the Year's heart would be in it knowing he was facing one of the biggest matches of his life so soon afterwards? Of course it wouldn't. No chance.
The title's won. He wouldn't have any appetite for getting kicked up in the air by Andy Dawson every five minutes. But Gibson will be up for it. He'll be up for every challenge. So will Welbeck. It'll mean everything to them.
Yes, I understand what Neil Warnock said on the radio on Monday night when he recalled looking up at a television screen on the final day of the 2006-07 season and seeing the team Ferguson had picked to play West Ham. He said it knocked the stuffing out of him.
Ferguson rested Ronaldo, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic because United were playing in the FA Cup Final the following week. United lost. Sheffield United went down. For Warnock, it was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow.
The dynamic this time is slightly different. Ferguson has the Champions League Final to think of, a match that is one of the most important in his entire career, an opportunity that comes along only rarely even for a manager of his calibre and a club of United's size and tradition.
He has a duty to his club to rest established stars that is far clearer than when he chose to omit players ahead of an FA Cup Final that was seven days away. Still, the team he put out that May day against West Ham two years ago went like this: Edwin van der Sar, Wes Brown, John O'Shea, Patrice Evra (Ryan Giggs, 58), Gabriel Heinze, Darren Fletcher, Kieran Richardson, Michael Carrick (Paul Scholes, 58), Alan Smith (Cristiano Ronaldo, 58), Wayne Rooney, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Not a bad side, all things considered. That's the point: the key wasn't in the line-up. It was in the attitude. "West Ham couldn't have come to Old Trafford on a better day," Ferguson said afterwards. "We had already won the league title and the edge was off our game."
The same thing will apply on Sunday. It will be about attitude, not reputation. And that's why Gibson, Macheda, Welbeck and Ji-Sung Park might just turn into Hull City's worst nightmare.
