The Devil In Me

The goatee beard arrived at the press conference and was followed in by Rafael Benitez. The beard announced that Torres and Gerard had both come through ‘light training’ and would be in the squad tomorrow. As far as smokescreens go I am sure that the organisers of the latest Kylie Minogue concert are quaking in their boots.

Having just spoken to my ‘friend’, a man more scouse than a twelve stretch for stealing the hubcaps off a glue sniffing factory, I can inform you that the watch grabbers are quietly confident, if for no other reason than it is about time. Being a superstitious old fool I have similar thoughts but never mind.
To the team sheet!

VDS
(Anelka)

Wes Rio Vidic Evra
(Not Gary yet) (Lets hope the back is okay) (Veni, vidi) (Groundsmen)

Hargreaves
(90 minutes please)

Nani Scholes Giggs
(new Ronaldo) (volleyball) (Chest wig)

Rooney
(articulate)

Berbatov
(goalscorer?)

The last two trips to Anfield have been very stressful affairs. Even those with the longest fingernails in the business were unable to play guitar for several months afterwards. Our on-paper record against Benitez-pool makes for some enjoyable reading, apparently their most prolific marksmen against United in recent years has been one John O’Shea, and we have recorded enough 1-0 victories to make an Italian World Cup Campaign drool with envy. That reading though, does not tell the full story. Even the most generous fans would admit we were more than pleased to drive home with three points from the last two; some may even go as far as saying we were lucky. So why, dear God why, do I feel more confident about this trip than the ones in the recent past? 

Despite Liverpool currently occupying top-spot and their usual, pre-season ‘this year we’re gonna do it wac’ posturing, I think that they don’t believe it.  I think that every scouser is secretly cringing inside at the thought of this fixture. Their two great hopes, $tevie Mbe and Torres, are both crocked and they simply don’t have the confidence to win without them. Their farcical board situation means that everybody secretly know Benitez could be out of a job at any moment, and, of course, Carragher has chosen this week of all others to release his addition to that most worthy of fields, the footballer’s autobiography. “The owners are destabalising the club!” He wails in those poetic pages. Yes Jamie, but your book is doing nothing of the sort. 

Unusually for a man with a goatee beard Benitez strikes me as a man of pride. He will want to improve his record against us and he has such experience at fluking qualification from the Champions League Group Stages that he may not even worry too much about Tuesday’s game. Fergie always thinks ahead to the European games, always. Benitez could start with half-fit Gerrard and half-fit Torres, which may or may not help them, but Sir Alex may also field Fletcher and O’Shea. It will be difficult to guess the teams in advance but surely the strongest we have got should beat them.

The players returning from the England set-up should do so with a spring in their step, that would include people like Rooney and Ferdinand but again, tellingly, not Gerrard. Tevez will want to to put in the kind of performance that reminds his international selectors he is good for something other than earning red cards (he has got two in his last three Argentina matches).  There is also the matter of Dimitar Berbatov’s, hopefully, inevitable debut. The stage is set then, the crowning of a new forward maestro and the early season crushing of Liverpool’s title hopes too. I feel so confident about this I have even arranged to watch the game with a Liverpool fan. The only problem is, it just doesn’t work that way does it?

I have a horrible feeling that Fergie will start with Gary Neville, who I am certain is not yet match sharp. I also think that he might go for a cagier formation when, at the moment, Liverpool are there for the taking. Capello’s England decided to go for it this week and it worked out for them, if we adopt the same approach we could record a famous victory. But maybe Fergie, like me, has had a look at his fingers and thought he might want to strum some kum-by-ah over the coming weeks. The result will be on the team sheets for this one.

Proof that everybody needs a hobby could be found in the fact that I was up long past my bedtime last night checking to see if we had got our man. There have been moments of excitement down the years as a fan of the Reds, but I don’t think I can remember a transfer deadline day providing such drama in the past. Deep in the injury time of signings season we have scored an important victory over our rivals.

I think we all knew that getting this guy was important. With all the hullaballo surrounding those last few hours the question arises ‘is he actually that good?’ I think so, he is a good age for a player and managed to score 23 last year for Tottenham. This, while being derided by their fans for being a bit of a misery-guts. That is not bad at all. Over the last two seasons he has displayed the kind of talent that suggests he is a player who can do things which others can’t. I really am looking forward to this.

Key, and I think the clincher, is that he definitely wants to come to United. After all of Cristiano’s rubbish the injection of an enthusiastic new team member may be just what we need to lift the gloomy faces that we saw in Monaco.

Clearly, it would be insane to get too excited too soon, but as mentioned above, I don’t exactly have any hobbies. Bring on Liverpool.

Looking back at domestic football history there are a few moments that stand out as title deciders. In recent years Jose Mourinho’s super-confident arrival and the emergence of Roman Abramovic’s chequebook stand out, in the nineties Kevin Keegan’s outburst and the Eric Cantona’s signature are obvious watermarks. Block it out as they might, Liverpool fans will remember the day Kenny Dalglish resigned all too clearly, they knew it was only downhill from there. But has the last, last minute takeover, and spending jamboree, that occurred at the City of Manchester Stadium on Monday just handed the title back to the Mancunians in red?

A tedious and horrible summer for United fans has just ended in precisely the fashion they would have liked, and they have Manchester City to thank for it. Not even the most imaginative of pundits has dared predict a Premier League winner emerging from any team other United and Chelsea for the 2008/2009 season, and whilst the neutral would maybe prefer to see Arsenal’s colours on the trophy in May, the pundits have probably got it right.

There is a wafer thin difference between the quality of the teams and only John Terry not being up to the job separated the sides in Moscow. For years Chelsea have been using Kenyon’s knowledge of Ferguson’s transfer targets to gazump United (please read the moves of Essien, Mikel, Ballack and Robben for proof of this). This year it seemed as if both were trying to find the last piece of the jigsaw in an attempt to outdo their rivals. As the clock struck 12 on Monday night, United had their man and Chelsea, palpably, did not.

Robinho, far from turning into a Pumpkin, has become a Manchester City player. Mr. Kenyon and his cohorts are left holding little more than a glass slipper (perhaps the same type that JT plays in), something essentially non-existent and certainly not the marquee new striker they were hoping for. United have gone home with Cinderella.

City fans will treat the takeover with a sense of startled delight, but they are far too experienced a bunch to get carried away immediately (maybe). I imagine they will rub their eyes before reading the morning’s papers to make sure it is all true. In time, City could well become a force in the league if this latest round of promises to their beleaguered fans proves to have substance. But for the time being, the first act of their new owners has been to trip up the neighbour’s main rivals. Happy as the average bluenose is with Robinho’s arrival, they would all have preferred to nick a player off United at the last minute if they could have done.

Not so, and if United march to the title again next may we may have to extend a grateful handshake in the direction of Eastlands, it would be rude not to.

Footnote: Apparently City’s new owners turned down the chance to save crisis-ridden Liverpool before Thaksin approached them. This just keeps getting better doesn’t it?

This was a tale of two defences really. Dick Advocaat knows a thing or two about organising a backline and Zenit were brick like in defence all night. Gary Neville’s latest return was rather a nervy one and he needlessly conceded the corner that led to their first goal. Alas poor Rio, immense all game but criminally at fault for no. 2. It must be a pretty thankless task being a defender, he will be getting grief about his fabled ‘concentration lapses’ for months now and he was brilliant for every other minute of the match.

Criticisms of United not producing a final product at the moment are founded. Every time Rooney had the ball he was playing from the half-way line at the left hand side of the field, I just cannot make any sense of that. With Nani, and latterly Park, on the pitch we should have the wingers to provide service for a front man - yet it is now glaringly obvious that after 4 games no Manchester United striker has scored this season.

This was a pretty tough game and the Reds really didn’t seem up for it. Zenit kept frustrating us and Scholes (Rio-esque, great game, 1 bad mistake) certainly didn’t cover himself in glory. Perhaps it was the strange nature of the occasion or perhaps it was simply that we got beat, but could there be a growing feeling of discontent going through the squad right now? I hope not, but Friday was an all round glum experience, I hope it proves to be an isolated incident.

Fratton Park is a place we haven’t had a great record over the past few seasons so to get a win with such a threadbare squad is quite satisfying. After seeing Chelsea and Liverpool record such ludicrously flukey results we would have been under more pressure in the Monday night doldrums slot. The players responded and the movement of our play was much more polished than it was at the same stage last season, lest we forget some of our more skillful players are still on the way back. We’ll just keep doing our jobs and see what happens. It was a bit of a comedy goal but what price odds on Darren Fletcher for the Golden Boot now? All in all this was a United performance that calmed the nerves a bit. They were slick today but can get slicker and soon the goals should start going in.

It was important to get a win on the board before we head off to Monaco for Friday’s Super Cup match. By the time we return to Premier League action against Liverpool on the 13th of September we will be a fixture, and possibly a few points, adrift of the others.

Fratton Park has been about as much joy as dinner with the mother-in-law in recent seasons and turning up with such an untried squad rattled the nerves slightly before kick off.

Fortunately the boys played. This current United system is certainly a different vintage to the swashbuckling wing play we have seen from Fergie’s sides down the years, but it does the job. There is a real slickness to our movement all around the field and I can’t imagine than anybody enjoys defending against us.

Vidic and Rio are looking as solid as ever and if we are to continue averaging one goal a game they are going to need to stay that way. Whilst far from overconfident, this match has convinced me that the world has not caved in after the departure of Quieroz. All we need now is a goal or two for Tevez and Rooney against Zenit St.Petersburg and then we can really get going. Darren Fletcher cannot sustain the charge for the Golden Boot on his own after all.

Not the end of the world but not the end of a summer of discontent either. Ferguson will be hoping that the midwinter will not be as bleak as things appeared to be after this game.

To look at things honestly we must give credit to our barcoded cousins. They ran and chased every ball, as did we, but their commitment was a match and they deserved their point. You would think that the superior quality of our players would carry us over the line in fixtures like this but today it was not to be.

This puts into stark focus how reliant we are on Ronaldo’s goals and the lack of cutting edge we showed was a worry. Rooney is indeed my favourite player at the moment (sorry Rio but you’re just not good looking enough) but we still don’t have somebody with that ‘Mark Hughes’ quality of winning games from nowhere.

So with our sharpest weapons seemingly on the treatment table and potentially in the shopping basket it looks like we could have a fairly sluggish start to the season. This has happened before but this time our first four games contain fixtures against the Roubles and the Bindippers. This could get ugly because Chelsea are most certainly out of the traps.

Goals against Portsmouth are a must.

Just quietly, the word around town is that Berbatov was at Carrington yesterday having a medical and the team photo has been delayed until Friday.

You heard it from thedevilinme first.

Towards the end of last season and certainly over this summer the growing discourse about the Premier League’s impregnable top four has developed into a deafening scream. Last year, Everton in fifth place were a whopping 11 points behind their neighbours in fourth and that placement was effectively decided weeks before the season ended in the Merseyside derby. After Tottenham began comically the Toffees became the great blue hope to break the quadropoly. Now it seems as though we were all fools to even hope. The stark fact is that Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea have occupied the top four spots for four of the last five seasons and the gap is getting wider. Why?

In the 1990s we had champions from Manchester, London, Leeds and Blackburn and very nearly from Norwich, Newcastle and Aston Villa. AS we approach the end of this decade we are likely to have seen only 3 different teams win the league. To say that it is the fault of Sky or the Champions league that our league is becoming so brittle is now a pretty empty argument. Rupert turned up in 1992 and the Champions League was formed a year earlier, those systems were already in place.

If you go back to the 2001/2002 season then you will note Newcastle finished 4th and were closely followed by Leeds United, God rest their souls. In 2002/2003 the Geordies had climbed to 3rd and both Blackburn and Everton were close (much closer than this season) in pursuit in fifth and sixth. This hegemony is therefore recent, 5 years recent and it is getting worse.

Something else happened in the summer of 2003 that may have changed our game even more significantly than the advent of the ‘Sky era’. Roman Abramovich purchased Chelsea and pioneered the now common trend of not just millionaire chairman, but billionaire chairman. There had been clubs in the past that had thrown huge sums of cash at their teams to become successful, please note the obvious examples of the ‘Galactico’ Madrid and Lazio, and whilst they were resented by their rivals at the time an all-powerful dominance did not emerge.

The difference in the case of Chelsea is two-fold. Firstly, Abramovich is determined to become the best, his resolve is obviously made of titanium and he is not in this for the short-haul, you also expect billionaires to have something of a stubborn streak and he is no different. Secondly, they appointed Jose Mourinho as manager. Love him or loathe him, Mourinho was the decisive factor in Chelsea’s early success and by some furlongs the most gifted and intelligent manager of his generation.

For two years Chelsea were in a different class to their contemporaries and only did not progress further in Europe because of an exceptional Barcelona team and an exceptionally lucky one from Liverpool. The other clubs had to step up their game and the only one in the country with both the resources and a manager of ludicrous resolve was of course Manchester United. People talk about there being a top-two now and they are not wrong, you could easily make a case for Wenger being the pound-for-pound best manager in the league but that isn’t enough.

At the risk of sounding like a business report for a second last season we were all exposed to the books at United, Chelsea and Arsenal. United, as we know are, 600million pounds in debt, Arsenal owe 400million on their new stadium and Chelsea have a quiet loan agreement for 600million pounds with the man they call Roman. That was the top three clubs in the country last year and collectively they owe enough money to fund an expedition to Mars.

Of course the other clubs are not going to risk going into that kind of debt trying to catch up and only Chelsea with their sugar daddy, and United with their giant stadium and global appeal, can hope to survive such terrifying mathematics.

Despite Scudamore’s recent enthusiasms about the Premiership product, the reality is that a decent sense of competition and fairness has been completely eradicated by this situation. The Premier League’s chief is a blind man who has only managed to perfect the art of licking his lips at piles of money.

This week I read that the 78million for Kaka deal is still on and frankly if this ‘money-from the moon’ trend does not stop then we are in trouble. United and Chelsea look unbeatable by all but themselves at the moment and while you can say ‘good luck to them’, McDonald’s for breakfast lunch and dinner will get boring after a while. In short we could fall out of love with the game, some already have. Love hurts they say, in a footballing context it costs too.

Stratospheric businessmen are difficult to control, Thailand can’t even keep an eye on its biggest crook, but systems can be adapted and rules can be followed. To save the game in our country we need to change the structure of both the Premier Leaugue Commision and the F.A. Scudamore must go and a panel, including some ex-players, must be brought in to replace him.

Structures need to be implemented so that instead of deducting teams like Bournemouth 17 points for going broke clubs are deducted points for overspending from their revenues. If, for example, there was a single point penalty for every million pounds a club overspent by, then United and Chelsea would both start next season at -600points. Some may say they could still win the league with their squads but I am not sure I would feel sorry for the guys from London (United are in debt against their will, Chelsea are embracing it greedily).

Whilst I do think that it was Abramovich’s irresponsible ambition that started to poison this league it is now a collective responsibility to save it. Finger pointing is for another time. The suits in charge of the Premier League need to make changes and changes now, because they are in danger of killing the golden goose. Personally I preferred it when that goose was a White Horse, running across the Wembley turf, but it is still football, and it is more important than profit and loss.