IT MAY be rather premature to talk of a crisis at Manchester United, given that they lie within three points of the summit of the Barclaycard Premiership, but Sir Alex Ferguson made no attempt to hide his disappointment at his team’s latest setback last night. The United manager talked of being blighted by “individual errors”, to which David Beckham was quick to own up, but there was also a suggestion that his team had made the less forgivable mistake of taking victory for granted.
“We’ve got no divine right to think that, just because we’re Manchester United, we can just walk over teams,” Ferguson said. “We’ve got to work to earn that right to beat teams. You get a lot of surprising results in this league, because all the teams are so determined to stay in it. You get some incredible results at times, and, more than ever, I think you have to earn your victories. Bolton Wanderers were fantastic in that respect and they deserved their win.”
Beckham was more concerned with the broader picture after last night’s unexpected defeat reawakened memories of last season’s disappointments, although he admitted that it was his failure to clear United’s lines that had presented Kevin Nolan with the only goal of the game.
“It was my mistake,” he said. “If it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have lost. At most, you can afford to lose four or five games in a season. We will bounce back, but we know we need to start winning very soon.”
Perhaps the most telling observations came from Phil Neville, the defender, who said that the defeat was an unwelcome return to the form of last season, when Bolton were one of six visiting teams to win at Old Trafford in the Premiership. “It’s results like this that cost us last year and these are the ones we have to eradicate,” Neville said. “This time last season, we lost to them and it was a sign of things to come. We can’t start letting that happen again.”
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Sam Allardyce, the Bolton manager, was more keen to praise his 20-year-old match-winner, Nolan, whose curriculum vitae now includes two goals at Old Trafford and one at Anfield. “He’s a fantastic young player who doesn’t get the credit he deserves,” Allardyce said. “Possibly because he’s at Bolton and because he’s not an elegant player in the David Beckham or Ryan Giggs mould, he doesn’t tend to get any of the limelight.”