A GOLDEN investment, unassailable domination and a place in the pantheon: Sir Alex Ferguson is taking in the view from the very peak of sporting achievement. It is only the bipeds who keep on letting the Manchester United manager down.
Rock Of Gibraltar, the horse in which he holds a 50 per cent stake, won the Prix du Moulin at Longchamp last weekend to break Mill Reef’s 30-year-old record by claiming a seventh successive victory in group one races. After the Breeders’ Cup at Arlington next month, the colt will be retired and his value at stud has been estimated at £20 million. That comfort will not have been of immediate help to Ferguson after his side’s 1-0 defeat at home to Bolton Wanderers on Wednesday.
His cantankerous ambition has football as its natural habitat and it would be flippant to suppose that he can readily replace a stadium with a racetrack as the focal point of his life. Even so, Ferguson may soon be forced to make the transition. Neither he nor his club could accept a second consecutive trophy-less season.
Talk of failure would be premature were it not for the fact that the difficulties were widely feared by supporters. After five Barclaycard Premiership games, United have managed five goals. In another year they would routinely knock off that total in a rampant 90 minutes. Now, however, staffing levels have been allowed to fall and the three recognised forwards cannot get through the workload. Diego Forlán has still to break his duck, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has to cope with an augmented responsibility and Ruud van Nistelrooy looks unlikely to match last season’s tally of 36 goals. Instead of bowing their heads in respect, rivals are starting to shake them sceptically.
“It happens to a lot of players in the Premiership,” Sam Allardyce, the Bolton manager, said of Van Nistelrooy. “They burst on to the scene and are an unknown quantity in their first season and then, to some extent, they can get found out.” He was not much impressed by United as a whole. “When they had the ball we would drop deep on to our 18-yard line, where we would say: ‘You’re not going to get down the sides or behind us’,” he said.
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There is some hokum in all of this because United have, for years, been annihilating teams who suppose they can protect themselves with such tactics. The difference now is in the jaded mien of Ferguson’s team.
He reversed his decision to retire last season because, in addition to a salary of some £3 million, he was attracted by the prospect of proving himself all over again. The chastened silence of the critics would have been a melody to his ears.
Ferguson returned to first principles just when they may have been least appropriate. He did consider selling an icon or two to fund an overhaul of the squad, but remained true to his instincts. Despite the furore over the departure of Jaap Stam, sold to Lazio for £15 million, Ferguson is often noted for an almost pathological loyalty. He values the ethos of a tight-knit group, particularly when it features great talents who can reward his faith in them. So he will champion a Roy Keane or an Eric Cantona when all the world rails against them. Ferguson, indeed, loves the siege mentality and, implausibly, has taken to depicting mighty United as embattled because of the carping of journalists.
Maintaining a stubborn trust in his men, however, can only work so long as the manager is not pledging himself to failure. He is making his stand on difficult terrain. It may have been wise to transfer Stam, but Laurent Blanc, the replacement, is approaching his 37th birthday and the vestiges of greatness merely allow the Frenchman to survive, rather than prosper, in the Premiership.
While there will be no quibbles about Rio Ferdinand, the £29.1 million acquisition from Leeds United exhausted the budget and prevented Ferguson from making widespread alterations. In any case, the transfer window is now shut, just when a breath of fresh air is essential at Old Trafford.
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Ferguson is gambling that stability is not stagnation in disguise. Such are the resources that a United resurgence is always possible, but the niggling concerns threaten to obstruct progress. Although Ferguson gets annoyed with disparagement of Juan Sebastián Verón, there is no doubt that this great player’s subtle approach is out of kilter with the full-throttle United style. Yet the team has to turn to the Argentinian while Keane and Paul Scholes are injured.
As ever, Ferguson prefers the struggle. He does so in the realisation that, at worst, the directors could soon have to recommence a surreptitious search for his successor while the crowds wait quietly but eagerly for him to be gone. It is up to Ferguson to prove that he is not the man who, at the very end, lost the gift of being right.
Where United are coming up short
Despite the great wealth of his club, Sir Alex Ferguson has left himself short of cover in midfield and attack with the transfer window closed. United have only six frontline midfield players (Arsenal have seven, Liverpool ten) and three strikers (Arsenal have five, Liverpool four).
Compared with United’s nine players in midfield and attack, their main Champions League rivals are better stocked: Real Madrid have 12, Bayern Munich and Barcelona 13, AC Milan 14 and Inter Milan 15.
Ferguson has broken the record transfer fee paid by a British club three times in the past 15 months (on Ruud van Nistelrooy, Juan Sebastián Verón and Rio Ferdinand), having previously done so only once since the Premier League was formed in 1992 (on Andrew Cole in 1995), yet they finished in a Premiership-worst third place last season and are seventh at present.
United have suffered seven home league defeats in the past 11 months. Before that sequence they had lost seven home league games over the previous 6½ years. United have scored just twice in their past six league matches at Old Trafford.
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