1. “I have of
late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth…”
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Emotionally, United fans are in a quandary. Should
we be excited for the future - or depressed the past is gone? In the latter
years of Ferguson’s reign many dared to wonder what life would be like without
him. To some the monotony of success had become too much. Every home game
brought sighs of anguish, groans of boredom and a laissez-faire attitude.
Another win, another three points, another pinpoint pass from Scholes - stick
it on the bill. It got to be that winning the league wasn’t fun anymore. It was
just another trophy. Life just was
and anyway what does it matter? We’re all destined for dust as Hamlet concludes.
The ecstasy of that first Premiership trophy or the night the treble was sealed
– those were moments confined to the past. As long as SAF continued we would be
consigned to excellence. Boring, predictable excellence. And then everything
changed. Moyes came. Moyes went. LVG arrived – so did six new players. Promises
were made and we were hooked. Pre-season was like being drunk at a wedding. Enjoyable
at the time but cringey when you see yourself dancing on the video. Yet, for
some, the giddy achievements of pre-season have not been diminished despite our
dreadful start. Six games in we have already lost to Swansea, MK Dons and
Leicester. We failed to beat Sunderland and Burnley but did manage a four nil
win over the worst team in the division. Since deadline day we have looked murderous
in attack but suicidal at the back. The midfield is soft and the back four
(used to be a back five) have clearly never met. The experienced Premiership
centre half LVG wanted in Vermaelen (weird) manifested itself as an Argentinian
left back with 20 odd appearances for Sporting Lisbon. Watching Evans, Smalling
and Jones limp off the pitch like very slow lemmings you wonder where this is
all headed. LVG predicted a few turbulent months. He got that one right. His
track record means no one is panicking. Yet having presided over possibly
United’s worst ever Premier League result at Leicester he must start getting
the basics right. And unless he and his coaches have a masterplan for the
defence, there are going to be more drubbings – and to better sides. It won’t be dull. But I confess to being happier when we
signed fewer players but won more games. Those United fans who moaned their way
through years of mundane success may find themselves crying with frustration at
our new found unpredictability. Some people are never happy I suppose. As
Hamlet said, “what a piece of work is a man?”
--
2.
Buzz
Lightyear: Do you
people still use fossil fuels, or have you
discovered crystallic fusion?
Woody: Well, let's see. We got double-A's.
At its
heart Toy Story is a tale about the old and the new. The moment Buzz Lightyear appears,
Woody knows life will never be the same again. He’s old hat. He has a choice:
sulk or fight. Like Woody, Wayne Rooney was, for a long time, the favourite
toy. No discerning fan will ever forget the first time they saw Rooney play.
When Ferguson signed him, the nation breathed a sigh of relief. He would not go
down the Gazza route under Sir Alex. And he didn’t. He just got old. Almost
overnight he became a relic of a bygone era. As the game got faster, he slowed
down. As greater emphasis was placed on conditioning, pace and skill Rooney
flirted with midfield and played second fiddle to Cristiano Ronaldo. The
dynamic forward that changed English football now resembles a toy bought a few
Christmases ago. He is the latest in a line of boy wonders who never quite made
the leap to manhood. Raul was the golden boy at Madrid, only to vacate his
prestigious number 7 shirt to Cristiano Ronaldo in 2010. Many of us watched
Iker Casillas debut (seder night 2000) with open mouths. How could an 18 year
old be that good? At 34 (a keeper’s peak) he now finds himself out of the side.
How and why? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it just happened. Maybe it’s
just life. Kids are, after all, forever discarding old toys in favour of
bright, shiny new ones. Buzz Lightyear could fly – Woody couldn’t. The modern
footballer plays with pace, aggression and purpose – Wayne Rooney doesn’t. The
ball carrying, hip swivelling styles of Sterling, Sturridge and Welbeck make
Rooney look very much the man who has played 600+ plus games at the highest
level. He looks lost. His double-A batteries are running out. LVG gave him the
captaincy because there was no one else. But he is not an idiot. It’s only a
matter of time before he realises that Wayne Rooney will not take him where he
wants to go - to infinity and beyond.
--
3. Fail
to prepare, prepare to Rafael…
Amidst the chaos that was the transfer window we
neglected to fill two key positions. No, not centre half or midfield (actually
yes centre half and centre mid) but right back and keeper. City and Chelsea
have two international keepers pushing each other - we don’t. And bizarrely,
having made do with one left back for years (despite Evra being clinically dead
for the last two) we now find ourselves in the contrary position of having
three left backs (four including Blackett) but only one right back. So what if,
let’s say, just throwing it out there in a whimsical fashion, Rafael gets
injured? Surely that won’t happen, I hear you scream. Well, in an eleven points
exclusive, I can reveal that Rafael is due to get injured in two weeks time. I
have been made privy to his injury cycle. It works much like a menstrual cycle.
He’ll get moody in the build up to his injury and is liable to snap at people
in training. In a quiet moment he’ll put it down to being hormonal. He then
gets injured (probably in the warm up), cries a little and eventually
apologises for his behaviour. Repeat once a month for the rest of his career. All
this makes the paucity of his replacement bizarre. This Saturday we play West
Ham at home. Not only will we need Rafael for balance, we’ll also need him for
his experience. That’s right having just turned 25 and with a whopping 158
appearances, Rafael will be our most experienced defender on Saturday. I’m all
for giving youth a chance, but I’d rather not give the opposition one while we’re at it.
--
4. “When the Gods wish to punish us, they
answer our prayers.”
Oscar
Wilde, An Ideal Husband
I’ve
waited my whole life for a long-haired South American forward. And now he’s
here the Gods have answered my prayers. As a youth I would
have visions of this mythical striker crossing himself repeatedly before
bursting into tears having scored from under the crossbar. In my dreams he had
ten tattoos – all of the Virgin Mary - and he smoked on the way to training.
(The tattoo thing is a modern addition to the dream. No one had tattoos when I
was kid. If they did they were genuinely hard. You crossed the road if you saw
someone with a tattoo. Now if you see someone with a tattoo you know it’s for
‘body art’. They are not hard.) Growing up this sort of player never came to
United. Salas teased us, Batistuta battered us but, finally, Radamel Falcao
joined us. And now we find ourselves with a new problem. What if it doesn’t
work? What if he doesn’t perform? What then? We’ve blamed Fergie leaving and Moyes
arriving. We’ve blamed Woodward for not signing players and we’ve blamed the
Glazers for not spending money. So what now? Previously we could look at the
money of City and Chelsea and righteously claim we couldn’t and wouldn’t play
that game. We were above that. Well we’re not – which is great - but I hope it
works. Because, having pestered God for 30 years for a long haired, left-footed
South American striker, I don’t think he’ll take kindly to me getting in touch
again any time soon.
--
5. M***f**er
Call me old fashioned but I like midfielders that
can run, pass, shoot and head. I like Bryan Robson. I like Roy Keane. Real
midfielders. A midfielder is not someone who hangs vaguely off the striker in
the attempt to score 20 goals 'from midfield'. Ever since Gerrard and Lampard
were relieved of their defensive duties it's been in vogue to search for a goal
scoring midfielder. That's fine. But they are not midfielders. They are
attackers. Adam Lallana is not a goal scoring midfielder. If he is then Wayne
Rooney is too. That is not to say we shouldn't expect goals from midfield, but
they are not the sole statistic we should be judging our new midfielders on. The
midfielder we are looking for (and he is not Herrera or Blind) is someone with
ordinary stats but who makes extraordinary contributions. A player who picks us
up when we’re down, calms us down when we’re up and is good enough to take the
ball against the best. Michael Carrick is a fine player but ever since Scholes
flirted with retirement we’ve required major investment in midfield. The heir
to Robson, Keane and Scholes is out there somewhere. Whoever he is needs to be
very good at everything. It’s what being a midfielder is all about.
--
6. “The lion runs faster when it’s hungry.”
The
biggest danger facing MUFC is millionaire footballers with no medals, lacking
the hunger to succeed at the highest level. Ex-players’ experiences with
Ferguson are littered with anecdotes of him refusing pay rises. Gary Neville
said recently “you’d go in to ask about money and come out with a worse deal
but feeling better off.” We can no longer play those games. Losing Pogba
persuaded the club to give Adnan a mega contract. Shaw is rumoured to be on a
similarly lucrative deal. Ferguson kept players hungry. If they wanted more
they had to achieve more. LVG’s job will be to retain that hunger in the face
of astronomical wealth. If he fails, we’ll fall even further behind the pack.
--
7. Words I never thought
I'd say
“At least Everton lost.”
Ho hum.
--
8.
Right footers have left the building
According to Scientific American 15% of
the world are left-handed. Up to 19% are thought to be left footed (though this
is a harder statistic to nail down). So for United to sign 5 left footers (6 if
you include Herrera who’s probably two-footed as every player ever to play for
Marco Bielsa had to learn to peel an orange with both feet while playing in a midfield
7) is somewhat anomalous. It is not beyond the realms of possibility for LVG to
start with Rojo, Shaw, Blackett, Blind, Mata, Januzaj, RVP, ADM and Radamel
Falcao. That would be 9 left footed outfield players. If Anderson sneaks his
way into the side as an emergency right back (we only have one don’t forget)
LVG could field 10 outfield players all of whom are left footed. Imagine the
scenes. There’d be lots of wonderful technique and plenty of beautifully
weighted passes. The outside of the boot would be used more than if a thousand
Seba Verons played. The players would have a strict code. Anyone who blasts the
ball with their laces as opposed to caressing it calmly into the top corner
will be out. The queue of players lining up to take a free kick will stretch
back to the halfway line. It would be wonderful. We’d lose – but in many ways
we’d still be winners.
--
9. Rule
number 1 – there are no rules.
It’s a funny old game. So said Greavsie. And for
all his gin dribbling nonsense, he wasn’t wrong. It’s certainly funny listening
to modern managers banging on like management consultants. The powerpoint
presentations of Andre Villas Boas have made him one of Europe’s richest men,
while helping him achieve precious little on the pitch. The ramblings of Brendan
Rodgers and his evangelical mission to make players better, you know, people
never cease to amaze me. Jose Mourinho for his part brought the idea of total
control to these shores. He could predict every scenario and every score. He
knew every player, every team, every permutation – nothing was left to chance. Football
was no longer a beautiful game it was a science. Mourinho, as we all know, took
his cue from a certain Louis Van Gaal. LVG is not a manager; he’s a
trainer-coach in charge of every forensic detail at the club. Everything must
be planned. It makes sense. But football is a fluid game. It ebbs and it flows.
It’s instinctive and at times, chaotic. It’s about character and it’s about
random, unpredictable moments of magic. Not every pass can be accounted for,
not every step can be planned – there must room to breathe. With the attacking
talent we have the players must be released from their shackles. There must be
planning off the pitch but freedom of expression on it. The players must stick
to LVG’s vision but that vision must allow for improvisation. Because it’s a
funny old game and, when it comes to attacking football, there really are no
rules.
--
10.
(Won’t) see you next Tuesday
Here is Moyes legacy in a simple
mathematical formula:
Don’t get into Europe X mentally broken
squad + first round exit from Carling Cup = Hardly any football this season.
Moyes. Cheers.
I’ll miss Champions League Tuesdays the
most. Mondays were made bearable by the thought that United were playing again
in a few short hours. And now, thanks to Moyes, that’s been taken from us. To
quote Eddard Stark, “winter is coming”. And it’s going to be boring.
--
11. Is no longer Ryan Giggs
When
Giggs retired both this column and MUFC were left with a problem. What to do
with the number 11? For United the choice was clear: retire it (either
definitely or indefinitely) or find an appropriate successor. Fortunately they
chose the latter with Giggs handing the shirt to Adnan Januzaj personally. At
its most poignant retiring a shirt is a mark of respect. In the tragic
instances a player passes away, I fully understand a vacant shirt number. But
at its worst retiring a shirt is an admission of defeat. It’s an
acknowledgement that the best has been, no one will ever be better and thus we
should all spend our lives talking about the past. Nothing frightens me more
than being stuck in the past, reminiscing about the glories of yesteryear. I
want more. And I want it now. We should always be looking for the next number
11. The fuss about shirt numbers is, at times, extraordinary considering how
little it means. Great players make even the most ordinary number stand out.
Think Henry 14, Beckham 23, Van Persie 20 and, of course, Evans 6. Yet two
numbers hold a special place in football: 7 and 11. Wide players. The players
that make the hairs stand up, who thrill as they glide past hapless defenders. Giving
Adnan Januzaj the number 11 shirt was bold but right. He is the future of this
club just as his predecessor was 300 years ago. I love that we didn’t retire the
shirt but gave it to Adnan as a challenge. He has been dared to be as good as
Giggs. Whether he gets anywhere near only time will tell. But watching him try
will not be dull.
