The Devil In Me

What we have seen at Old Trafford this year, and all around the world, was not really the United we have come to know and love. With the exception of Macheda’s goals I can think of very few moments from the past season when I sat on my chair and thought “this is United, this is why I follow”.

We had the look of a dogged team, there were a few flashes of extravagance, mainly from Ronaldo, but nowhere near enough bravado to stand comparison to the heroes of yesteryear. I felt at times this United team was the can of spam compared to the Sunday roasts we have been raised on. It is churlish to complain, of course, when you are winning trophies but something is missing.

In particularl with the Carling Cup and the Club World Cup, it was almost as if we were collecting them rather than winning them. The spending in recent seasons has put our squad out of sight of even Chelsea in the quest to challenge for honours but there is something amiss in team spirit.

It is a United tradition, stretcing way back to the days of Billy Meredith, to have at the core of the side a maverick. A divinely gifted player who riles the opposition, outclasses them and has a bond with the supporters borne of having a “roll-your-sleeves-up” attitude and a touch of arrogance.

Although not arrogant in any way Robson’s sleeves were so far rolled up they met in the middle and the guy would have died for the shirt. Cantona and latterly Keane were heirs to Meredith’s tralblazing. During the sixties Denis Law’s attitude to authority made Marlon Brando look like a convent nun.

Where is that player now? We have the supremely gifted Ronaldo, but he seems to wind us up as much as the opposition, although he always, always wins me over with his football. Rooney is the closest I suppose but the x-factor is not quite there. Tevez’s dispute with the club breaks my heart as he could be the true talisman of the team.

What is without question is that we currently lacks a character, somebody mildly psychotic, to fire them up in the heat of battle. We were slaughtered in Rome, absolutely murdered and I couldn’t see anywhere on the park where it was going to turn around. How I longed to see Norman Whiteside trot on, a la Anfield 88, and start making things even.

He is not there, in fact, there are no Big Norms at the moment. The problem, I think, is because we are getting the players so young now they are indoctrinated into the United mythology before maverick tendencies can develop.

I would suggest we missed a trick here. If Ballack had come he would have been a hero for us, nobody really likes him but he is brilliant- a perfect fit for United, shame he didn’t. Looking around world football I cannot see that attitude too obviously anywhere. It is that attitude that I crave to see again on the pitch. For all of the merits of the current heroes, there is something slightly lacking in charisma.

Nonetheless, our shortcomings are far less yawning than those of our rivals and major surgery is not required over the summer months. I do, however, expect changes we may not see coming. Ronaldo, Tevez and Ribery will occupy most of the column inches over the next 10 weeks but be ready for something you don’t expect. The one maverick we definitely do still have is the manager, and he still has a few tricks left up his sleeve.

There has been an elephant in the room all season. It was easy to ignore it while United were winning and throwing silver cups over their shoulders back onto the pile. Now we must face up to the reality. The team has not put in a really good performance all term and finally we have been shown up for it.

In truth I always hoped it would be just around the corner but it never arrived and, spectacularly, any hint of it vanished without trace on Wednesday evening. Barcelona fully deserved their victory and frankly made us look like stone-age mugs.

This was not the neo-tactically adept Fergie at work. The team looked like a series of doodles on a piece of paper followed by the words “that’ll do”. Who can blame him. We have won so much this season without hitting anything like top gear, why not think it could work one more time in Rome. It didn’t. At all.

I feel very much like I did after the spanking we received in the San Siro two years ago at the paddled hands of AC Milan. Without any positives to dwell on. But, you know what, I am wrong.

Much like in that game United faced a team of great players putting in the performances of their lives. We have won the league, which I think we would all have picked as the most important trophy at the start of the season, and, well, we have our health.

Barcelona were outrageously good and our players just didn’t turn up. I think we all still feel, despite the recent success, there is a Roy Keane/Bryan Robson shaped whole in the midfield. Hargreaves should be back next season and that will help things along enormously. He, maybe more than any other, is the player we really missed in Italy.

This is not the time to change jobs, leave the wife, sell all the players and start again. Simply, we have been beaten by a better team. In all honesty I felt our players were getting a little hubristic in the build up to this one so maybe this jolt will do them the world of good.

The season is over, we have done well, now it is time to start ignoring those Ronaldo headlines.

Watching Phil Brown pick up that microphone and sing like a drunken uncle at a christening then reading he and his chairman are “mates”, I couldn’t help but think some people are just made for each other.

The great goatee himself will be back at Old Trafford next season and will probably give his half-time team talk in Lou Macari’s fish and chip shop, possibly wearing a hairnet and trying to up-sell haddock. I can’t wait.

One person who can do facial hair is Pep Guardiola, a man who looks like he could croon, dance and play the piano without embarrassing anybody. His piratically charming Barcelona side will be taking on our own team of champs and I am worried that we are desperately overrated.

In much the same way as Hull were going to be top four in November and Phil Brown the new England manager. From what I am reading at the moment, all United have to do is show up, play the best game of football in history and then walk off with the trophy. Piece of cake.

Evra has been in stunning from lately but I do wish he would shut up. There must have been a queue of journalists outside his front door last week waiting to be told how ‘he could keep Messi under control’ or ‘je suis le best left-back in the world’. Apparently, Evra feels he ‘controlled’ Messi in last year’s semi-final.

Did I watch the same game? In my memory those two matches were more terrifying than camping in a haunted forest with a serial killer. Messi looks an immense player to me and, good as postman Patrice is, the guy might have extra motivation to make mincemeat of him now. As usual, I hope I am wrong.

Perhaps our left back could call Mr. Brown for some tips on pride preceding a fall. Or perhaps not, Alan Shearer is probably the better phone call this week. On the other hand, Barca have Thierry Henry so our egotistiscal credit card of karma is in far less debt than the Catalans’. Phew.

I suppose many of you watched the Hull game looking for revealing morsels as to who will be rested and therefore saved for Rome. Me too. United upheld their longstanding support of the England team by giving Gary Neville (86) a start and allowing him to join up with the next national squad. Congrats on the call up Gary, alas, I fear you will be in a suit on Wednesday.

The back five pretty much picks itself, VDS, Evra, Rio, Vidic and O’Shea. Moving forwards things get a bit more tricky. Many of you have written and stated that we should play a team to stifle Barca’s forward moving jamboree and play on the counter.

I am afraid not. This is the European Cup final and we are Manchester United, so we attack. Okay. United will play four four two and I suspect that Fergie will want to pull some kind of tactical rabbit out of the hat to outwit an opposing manager young enough to be his great-grandson.

In the last two European finals he has done this with nifty wing shifts. Were it not for Messi I would expect to see Ronaldo on the left but the tracking back is far more likely to be done Park so he will get left flank and Anderson and Carrick will be in the middle.

A part of me thinks he might play Ronaldo as centre forward to bulldoze through their central defensive injury nightmare. However, when it comes to the job of bulldozing - there is only one Wayne Rooney. Which puts Ronaldo on the right wing, where he can still do plenty of damage thank you very much.

So, is it Tevez or Berbatov to partner Wayne up front? Drumroll please… it will be Berbatov. Fergie will count ball retention high up the pitch as important and the Bulgarian is far better at keeping it than the Argentine. Also, public shows of dissent do not a happy manager make.

Bench: Giggs, Scholes, Kuszack, Rafael, Tevez, Wes/Evans and probably Nani.

I have no idea about the outcome, but nonetheless come Wednesday, United we shall stand. Good luck guys.

I have no interest in the statistics. If I loved numbers I would have become a mathematician, or Carol Vorderman. I love football and I lament that on Saturday we did not see a great game of it. No matter, for only the fifth time in English football history a team has completed a hat-trick of national championships. This latest team of Alex Ferguson’s, despite its lack of consistent flair, must now be placed alongside the greatest the nation has produced.

Many of you will see the numerical reality of matching Liverpool’s championship vitories as a reason to gloat and stoke fires that already burn brightly. That would be wrong. We have endured terrible abuse from our Liverpudlian cousins, in the case of many of us - for the duration of lives. Certainly, after their victory at Old Trafford the vitirol was as horrendous as I can remember.

Two wrong don’t make a right guys. Now, and in the future, we must rise above that kind of behaviour. I did not become a football fan to exchange insults over Munich and Hillsborough. I did not become a football fan to increase the miseries of others. I became a fan of this game because of the connections it helps me share with my family and friends and because I derive inexplicable pleasure from the ungovernable beauty this game can produce.

United’s star is flying high now, perhaps the highest it has in our history, but eventually all empires will crumble. There will be lean times in the future and displaying grace in victory now, will bode well for the times to come.

Enjoy this for what it is. A tremendous title victory by a good team with some great players. Despite the ramblings of Benitez, a team that can swat aside every opposition attack for fourteen fixtures and win twenty seven games in a season categorically deserves to be champions.

The game on Saturday, as I expected, was a far nervier affair than desirable. We were more than fortunate to get three points from Wigan and Arsenal, in fairness, outplayed us for large parts of the game. It is the last thing he would want, but Wenger has my sympathy. He has been booed by his own fans this term despite being the most successful manager in their history. I am not at all surprised to read this morning that he is tempted by the advances of Real Madrid.

Attention now shifts to the final against Barcelona in Rome after this most arduous of league campaigns. I am terribly sorry Mr. Shearer, but we will not be fielding our strongest team against Hull next week. See you on the sofa again next season.

Barcelona have been massively underrated by the British press this term and the game will be a gauntlet of danger. I shall post my expected line-up this week, in the meantime please e-mail me your thoughts on team selection.

United are Champions of England once more. We have a duty as fans to behave with a bit of class over the next few months. Enjoy the victory, but not at the expense of others.

Cheers.

Religious doctrine states that pride is a sin, worthy of damnation and an eternity in hell. The dictionary is a little bit fluffier about things but even so, Pride looms large on the horizon this weekend.

It seems only yesterday that Wenger and Ferguson were locked in battle, a la Wolverine and Sabretooth, but the recent match-ups in Europe have tricked people into thinking that it will be an Arsenal team of kittens that shows up at Old Trafford today. I have a sneaking suspicion that is not the case.

Arsene Wenger has proven to be a man who can both win and lose with dignity and I do think that his teams have class. He is not, however, a loser. It is just possible that with Arshavin, who is yet to play against our defence, Arsenal could put in a performance today and send me back to the realm of sleepless nights.

You would think that the Arsenal players are already on the beach in their minds but if Wenger can motivate them then they are a real handful. In all honesty, when I had wiped the sweat off my brow on Wednesday I thought we were poor. Perhaps even lucky. This game will be no walk in the park.

In general if you need a win at home to clinch the title you tend to get it but this is Manchester United. For all of the joy and glory there is also a lot of suffering. If we can navigate this fixture without any fuss I will be surprised, relieved and overjoyed. But if we do, somebody else’s pride will take an almighty fall.