Clubs short of Europe’s class

City are obliged to be mortified at their dismissal by Sporting Lisbon, who are having a notably moderate season in Portugal, but at least Roberto Mancini’s players roused hope and excitement by winning the home leg of the tie in midweek and went out because Sporting scored away goals and they didn’t. For United, there weren’t even such slivers of consolation. They were beaten in both matches with Athletic Bilbao and were conspicuously, some would say overwhelmingly, outplayed over the three hours.

As a basis for comparison of national standards, the collision wasn’t calculated to nourish English self-belief. Athletic Bilbao are scuffling modestly half-a-dozen places from the summit of La Liga with a points total roughly half that of the leaders Real Madrid. If England’s champions couldn’t begin to cope with the unsung challengers from the Basque country, the omens for Sir Alex Ferguson’s ambition of raising his team to the level that would enable them to compete with realistic prospects of success against the two heavyweight powers of the Spanish game must be viewed as direly discouraging.

Many will suggest that removal from the Europa League may be as much a cause for relief as for regret at Old Trafford and the Etihad stadium, saying the tournament is such an alien and uninspiring environment for United and City that the abruptly granted freedom to concentrate on their Premier League struggle will be welcome. But the team selections made on the way to the exit didn’t betray a lack of commitment. There was no obvious sign of the indifference to outcomes that used to be a frequently disfiguring influence on the Carling Cup. And just as it was possible to attribute sincerity to Mancini’s apologies for the defeat by Sporting, so it is difficult to believe that Ferguson’s compulsion to fight for every prize put in front of him temporarily faded from his nature in this case.

The evidence indicates that City and United were ousted not because they didn’t care enough but because they weren’t effective enough. City have yet to prove that all the expensive and (in most instances) impressive acquisitions their position as the planet’s richest club has allowed them to make have melded into a fully integrated team, the kind of unit whose collective impact is consistently greater than the aggregate of even remarkable individual talents. They seldom unravel dramatically but they are prone to losing their stride, like an uncertainly co-ordinated thoroughbred, and their performances are less reliably dominant than they should be. Ferguson is, of course, a master creator of team spirit, the steely sense of togetherness that has, of late, contributed hugely to the capacity of a squad blemished with significant flaws to blur in the record books their inferiority to the outstanding Uniteds of earlier in the manager’s reign.

Lifting a 12th Premier League title last season had to be acknowledged as one of the most prodigious feats of the Glaswegian’s career and if another championship is added in the next couple of months (something the bookies see as an odds-on probability) the impression of having driven his personnel to over-achieve will again be strong. He has, it need hardly be said, a fair amount of brilliance at his disposal but its manifestations can be erratic, and running through whatever problems develop are the difficulties engendered by the fact that for two or three years now the midfield has been persistently short of the quality long considered the norm for United under Ferguson.

There is, quite naturally, much media celebration of the playing longevity of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. But all the respect and appreciation merited by those two magnificent veterans shouldn’t prevent us from recognising that Ferguson’s willingness to turn to them as often as he does reveals a troubling inadequacy among younger players. That it has taken exposure to Europe to emphasise United’s weaknesses simply underlines the already glaring truth that the Premier League is nowhere near as marvellous as its cheerleaders claim.

Maybe Chelsea, after their thrilling surge to survival in the Champions League against Napoli at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday, will confound the form pointers and go on to cut a glorious figure in the greatest club tournament. Those who have faith that Chelsea are unscathed by the turmoil of recent weeks, that the old guard are rejuvenated under Roberto Di Matteo and that neither the quarter-final opposition of Benfica nor the lurking presences of Barcelona and Real Madrid will derail them, can wager on a historic triumph in Munich on May 19 at odds of 10-1. Even if I had emerged from Cheltenham with fewer financial wounds, I wouldn’t be joining such optimists.

Star earns days in the long grass

Kauto Star is entitled to a place in any elite of the greatest steeplechasers of all time (Eddie Keogh)

Even when bookmakers are swinging butchers’ cleavers at the bank balance, the betting is always a secondary consideration at the Cheltenham Festival. Wagers consigned to doom can certainly pull on the emotions (sometimes in my case over the past few days with the force of a tug-of-war team of sumo wrestlers) but the experiences of exceptional horses and their human allies, from the jockeys and trainers to the owners and stable staff, magnetise our concerns far more urgently.

Naturally, in keeping with the truism of sport that triumph for some means disappointment (and often misery) for others, empathising is likely to be a torturous process. Kauto Star ended his participation in Friday’s Gold Cup like a great fighter finding the towel tossed into the ring before the contest had properly begun. And then we had to reconcile that sad sight with the pleasure evoked by witnessing the joy brought to three of the most admired men in jump racing, Tony McCoy, Jonjo O’Neill and JP McManus, when the stayers’ stayer Synchronised devoured the challenge of Cheltenham’s punishing rise to the winning line and provided them with the supreme prize in steeplechasing. In that instance, admittedly, the strains of the dilemma were eased by the warming awareness that National Hunt’s version of immortality was long ago secured by Kauto Star’s plethora of record-breaking achievements.

A unique total of 16 Grade One victories, including two in the Gold Cup, four in the Betfair Chase at Haydock and five in the King George at Kempton, merely hint at the quality, consistency and versatility that entitle him to a place in any elite of the greatest steeplechasers of all time, however limiting the criteria. Late last season the noisy demands for retirement of the wonder horse provoked by a couple of alarmingly unimpressive performances during the campaign drew resolute defiance from his trainer Paul Nicholls and owner Clive Smith and it was vindicated by the accumulation of further glory at Haydock and Kempton. But it will be a surprise and a worry if those devoted nurturers of Kauto Star don’t decide now that the 12-year-old’s competitive days are over.

Call time on double act

There was an appropriate ring of revulsion in the statement by the British Boxing Board of Control that followed its midweek decision to strip Dereck Chisora of his boxer’s licence. However, the welcome condemnation of Chisora’s propensity for outrageously disreputable behaviour — the anarchic troublemaking that reached particularly squalid depths in Munich last month when he punctuated the scenes before and after his failed attempt to take the WBC heavyweight title from Vitali Klitschko by slapping him on the jaw, spitting water into the face of Klitschko’s brother and fellow world champion Wladimir and then becoming involved in a brawl with that other reliable source of offensiveness David Haye — will have substance only if the time spent in boxing oblivion is lengthy. The hard attitude to Haye conveyed in the board’s statement should also produce a drastic response if he seeks renewal of his fighter’s licence. Perfectly matched double acts deserve equal treatment.