It might also bring a welcome touch of humility after those bombastic pronouncements from Stamford Bridge, where they call football a “product”, talk about their support not in terms of attendances but as a “worldwide fan base” for the flogging of shirts and target global supremacy by 2014. United are scarcely paragons in such matters, and the most compelling reason for wishing them well in The Showdown, as Sky TV is billing it, lies elsewhere.
For all his faults, Sir Alex Ferguson turns out teams that play football the way it was meant to be played. Adventurously and with flair. These are not characteristics one readily associates with Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea, whose game is power-based. They are George Foreman to United’s Muhammad Ali. Tactically, the contest should provide an interesting contrast in styles. Both teams favour a midfield diamond of sorts, but the respective facets are very different.
Chelsea’s wingers were key in their back-to-back championships, yet they have forsaken them this season, consistently omitting Arjen Robben, Shaun WrightPhillips and Joe Cole for the big matches in favour of Claude Makelele, Michael Essien, Frank Lampard and Michael Ballack, whose natural habitat is the central pastures.
Intriguingly, United have flown to the top of the table on the wings Chelsea have chosen to clip. With the maturing Cristiano Ronaldo on one side and the rejuvenated Ryan Giggs on the other, they possess the attacking brio and breadth Mourinho’s leviathans lack. Genuine wingers, as distinct from wide midfielders, are an endangered species, and while the Premiership is a broad church, with room for all persuasions, the good old outside-right and left should be nurtured wherever he is found.
If United are championing their cause, more power to the Manc elbow. Another dissimilarity today is at the hub of the two teams, where Chelsea possess strong ball-winners in Makelele and Essien, who enjoy tackling and do it well. The same cannot be said of Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes, and of the four men in United’s version of the diamond, Giggs is the best tackler, so we are hardly talking ring of steel here.
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Two years ago, when United ended Arsenal’s record-breaking unbeaten run, they did it with an in-your-face mugging of a bruising physicality that they are no longer equipped to administer. Their chosen weapons now are pace, kaleidoscopic movement and sleight of foot, with the left flank their most promising line of attack.
Mourinho has tried Paulo Ferreira, Khalid Boulahrouz and most recently Geremi at right-back, but is not convinced by any of them. He will be aware that none has the game to contain Giggs at his resurgent best. For their part, Chelsea are reliant on the new, improved Didier Drogba, lauded by Mourinho as the best striker in Europe on current form. Injured during the midweek Champions League defeat in Bremen, this tower of power missed training on Friday and was still receiving treatment yesterday, but he is expected to start. His clash with Nemanja Vidic should set the anvil sparks flying.
With Drogba on the treatment table instead of in the interview room, it was left to Joe Cole, United’s scourge in the past, to provide the Chelsea perspective on their biggest match of the season to date. In May last year Cole scored at Old Trafford when Chelsea won 3-1, and near the end of last season he weighed in with a personal favourite as the Blues wrapped up the title in a 3-0 win.
“United have a lot of big players playing well, and when that happens the team clicks,” he said. “We’ve been very impressed with them, but we’re more than capable of winning the game. They say they’re the best side, we say we are. Come 6 o’clock, we’ll see who is. If we play at our top level, we’ll win.
“This is every bit as big as when we played Barcelona inthe Champions League, maybe even bigger, because we have to meet the United guys when we join up with England, and we don’t want to go there having lost. It’s not a nice experience.”
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Ronaldo, among others, has suggested Chelsea are not as good as last season. Cole shrugged and said: “Only time will tell. We’ve got to win the league. The best team always wins the league. We’re chasing because we’re three points behind, whereas in the last two seasons we’ve run away with the league and had it sewn up really early. It’s good that United have set us a new challenge. We are looking forward to clawing it back. There’s no apprehension, everyone is really excited.
“I don’t think the pressure is any different chasing or being chased, either way you have to win. In the last two seasons we’ve trailed off in April and May because we’ve had the league won. This time I’m hoping it will go all the way and it will be more exciting.
“United will not have enjoyed watching us win the league for the last two years. That will have hurt them. I’m not too interested in the psychological side of it, but I know that if we win, the lads are going to be on a high for the next three or four weeks.”
There was a contrast in styles, Cole admitted. “Giggs and Ronaldo are world-class players and they’ll give our full-backs a tough afternoon, but we expect our diamond to control the midfield. On a big pitch like Old Trafford, keeping the ball is half the battle.
“The first 20 minutes — the first few tackles — will set the tone. This isn’t a Champions League tie, it’s an English game with lots of English players and lots of tackles flying in. We want a good, hard game, played with passion.” Amen to that.