The Devil In Me

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.

You always have to worry if it’s been a full moon and City are coming to visit. Perhaps the hairs will not have receded in time before they take the field. Fortunately, the only beasts unleashed at Old Trafford were those of Berbatov and Tevez and the Bitters were left looking like lemons again.

A decent run of results for the blue half (third?) of Manchester left them with every right to expect a performance from their team and the chance of overhauling their total from last year. The Blues I spoke to before kick-off intimated they would be “happy with a draw”. Knowing that we wouldn’t be I began to feel more confident.

To their credit the away fans did start a little louder but by midway through the first half we were in full voice and drowned them out completely. The banter was as enjoyable as any I can remember at OT this season.

Again, you have to admire the success of Ferguson’s rotation policy this year. We have played the equivalent of almost two league seasons of fixtures this term and the players have a hunger and a fearless determination running through their ranks.

Tevez was utterly superb and put in a performance worthy of a hat-trick. Alas, I doubt we will be seeing too many performances from him in a red shirt. He has whinged in the press on several occasions and now seems to have read The Gabriel Heinze guide to getting yourself transferred out of Old Trafford.

I hold out hope for the guy because he is a smashing player and Fergie rarely gets it wrong when knowing when to let go. He does though, look like a man close to the door. God knows what Ronaldo’s problem was. An utterly, utterly wonderful player, he makes me float at times. But his reaction to a completely sensible substitution baffles the mind. Can he really want to go to Madrid now?

I have a theory. Presuming that I was right about the Ribery bid (have faith here), he perhaps feels put in his place. Hardly what he would have wanted, but necessary for harmony in the camp. Two such public displays of dissent leave us scratching heads. I expect our summer to be savaged by rumours and recriminations. But then again. I could be wrong.

Man of the Match:

Berbatov looked like a £30million pound player. Where Rooney is stronger than a herd of Buffalo, and Ronaldo can shoot from forty yards with the accuracy of a sniper – Berbatov has the touch of a pianist.

The control he showed to bring the ball down for Tevez’s goal betrayed the laws of physics. There were several occasions when he harried the opposition and had the good grace to stick his boot in on a couple of occasions too.

I have mentioned before that he brings a lot to the side and with the team hitting form at the right time the knot in my stomach is beginning to loosen. We are not there yet, but the city limits of the Premier League title have been breached. Bring on Wigan.

I am fed up of hearing about the “four stonewall” penalty appeals. Let’s share some hard facts. Twice now Chelsea have been eliminated from Europe and launched vitriolic attacks at the officials in charge. On both occasions the referees in question, guys trying to do very difficult jobs under intense pressure, have received death threats from Chelsea fans. Anders Frisk retired immediately and Tom Henning Ovrebo was snuck out of the country under armed guard. Clearly, this is unacceptable.

In 1985 English clubs were banned from European competition for the disgraceful actions of English fans at the European Final. The issuing of death threats over a sporting match is exactly the kind of neanderthal behaviour that cannot be tolerated.

There should be a full inquiry launched immediately, by Chelsea Football Club, UEFA and the police, into the circumstances behind these death threats and punishment should reign down on the perpetrators with the full force of God.

If the fans of your club bring the game into disrepute you are responsible for their actions and liable for the consequences. Recently in Italy there have been bans imposed on travelling fans at several grounds and again I cite the ban on English clubs in the 80s.

The ramifications of this, if left alone, are potentially horrendous. I strongly recommend that Chelsea are banned from European competition until such time that they can prove able to control the actions of their fans.

If we live in a world where a man’s life is in danger because he did not award a penalty kick then something is gravely amiss. I hope action is taken soon.

There is a terrible air of gloom around the North East at the moment. It is hardly St. Tropez at the best of times but all four of their major teams are in serious trouble. The fans of the region deserve much better than what has been served up for them this season. I always expect one of the teams in the bottom three to put together a Herculean run of results in the last few games and save themselves. It has happened enough times for this expectation to be reasonable. See West Hams controversial late run or even Brian Robson’s West Brom for further reference. What is more, seasoned United watchers, for the last few years, have circled this game on the fixture list and written the word banana-skin next to it.

Ferguson has done an unbelievable job of rotating the squad this season. I expected Ronaldo to be left out, not just because of the game against Arsenal but because he seems to needle this club more than any other. This would not be a good time for him to get injured. Besides, the only completely undroppable player we have at the moment is Wayne Rooney. Contrast this to our opponents fortunes and you will note that Stuart Downing has started every single one of their league fixtures this season. Must have been tough work for the bloke.

The manager had complained about the early kick-off but fortunately it was the men in red who still seemed blurry eyed. I was intrigued to see how the partnership between Berbatov and Macheda might work but was alas pretty disappointed. I have tried to hold back the tide of negative opinion about the Bulgarian. I think he holds the ball up superbly and throughout December and January he made several very important contributions. Dare I say it, he also speaks to the media an awful lot less than Mr. Tevez does. Up here at the Riverside though, Berbatov did not light the blue touch paper. He gave the ball away with his first couple of touches and then seemed to drift off. Shame, I am sure he still has a lot to offer.

Middlesbrough huffed and puffed a little in the early stages but our defence seemed to have the making of them and the game started to remind me of quite a few others this season. We were in control, did not overexpend energy and just waited for our moment to strike. We have not contributed to the national stockpile of adrenalin as much as United teams of yesteryear. A few years ago it seemed as if our players used to jump down rigging with a cutlass in their teeth before the start of play. Now there is an icy calm and a sense of getting the job done.

Ticking off his 801st day of work well done was Mr. Ryan Giggs. His finish showed enduring class and the goalie didn’t even have the chance to move. The Boro centre backs didn’t seem to bothered about stopping him and if you watch the replay closely you can catch a glimpse of Giggsy checking his watch before deciding where to place the ball. The game was over.

The second goal is a good example of why I am in love with this game. Rooney’s first touch and vision for the through ball were utterly inspiring and Park’s finish was as clinical as any you will see in the league. It was also great that the move was started by Macheda and on this form Rooney must be the most fearsome opponent on the planet.

Boro are one of the few clubs left in this league who I consider the be run properly. Their chairman is a local boy done good who sticks with his managers and tries to do things the right way. The days of Ravanelli and Juninho are behind them but, despite the utter dourness of the Riverside and our recent run-ins, they are a good part of English football. It was heartening to see a banner in their stand saying WE SHALL OVERCOME. Somebody needs to tell their players that.

Thoughts on the Arsenal tie:

As the 95/96 season came to its nerve-jangling climax somebody remarked at half time of the game at St. James Park that United had been “murdered nil nil”. I feel a sense of deja vu here. We outfought, outclassed and outran the Gunners but only have a one goal lead to show for it. Newcastle (the murderers of quote past) went on to lose that game. Not for a second would I directly compare this United team with that Geordie choke machine but the precedent is there.

If Arsenal get their tip-tappy game going they are capable of scoring many a goal and teams that have gone for our throats this season, shamed as I am to say it, have done alright for themselves. I think we will have enough in the tank but beware an early Arsenal goal.