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But Sir Alex Ferguson could manage a surprise for manager of the year

Since the Premier League began, only one manager-of-the-year award has been bestowed on an individual whose team did not finish top. In 2001 George Burley was honoured for qualifying for the Uefa Cup with an Ipswich team in their first season back in the top flight, leaving Sir Alex Ferguson scantly rewarded for a then unprecedented third successive title.

The Manchester United manager would not have minded the award going to a fellow Scot. He had already won five of the gongs by that stage, has gone on to pick up another four, and probably felt like everyone else that distinctions handed out by sponsors are of comparatively little merit next to honours won on the pitch. Yet Ferguson is currently chief cheerleader for Roy Hodgson as manager of the year. Even if an official award did not exist, the managerial achievement of the season would still be a topic keenly discussed at every level of the game, precisely because the game has so many levels.

If it is a little disappointing that the official award tracks the destination of the title so closely it is hardly surprising, because any other course would be fiendishly difficult as well as endlessly controversial. David Moyes, for instance, has never won a trophy at Everton, yet there have been several seasons when the results and consistency he has produced on a limited budget have been little short of astonishing. Then there are all the relegation firefighters and the managers down through the divisions who produce small-scale miracles against all expectation. Ian Holloway at Blackpool this season comes to mind, as well as Chris Hughton at Newcastle, Steve Cotterill at Notts County and Keith Hill at Rochdale.

Sticking to the Premier League to simplify the argument, this season alone there have been claims made on behalf of Moyes, Harry Redknapp, Martin O’Neill and Tony Pulis, yet realistically, with their present clubs at least, none of those is'’ going to get close to a title. Rafael Benítez, on the other hand, has been agonisingly close to a title. In addition to a major miracle in Istanbul and a thrilling FA Cup final win in previous years, his Liverpool side of last season suffered only two league defeats, positively parsimonious compared to the present situation where everyone has lost at least half a dozen, yet manager of the year passed him by. Benítez ultimately had to face the fact that even beating United home and away could not prevent his rival and adversary picking up a third successive title for the second time in his career. It is hard to argue against success on that scale.

So while Hodgson would be a wonderfully romantic and completely deserving choice as manager of the season for his magnificent feat in guiding Fulham to the Europa League final, logic and precedent are not on his side. Carlo Ancelotti is on course to win a league and Cup Double in his first season in England, and no one has ever done that before. Arsène Wenger managed it in his first full season in England, which was a considerable achievement in its own way and earned him the manager-of-the-year award in 1998, though it felt much more like his second season here as he arrived in September of 1996. José Mourinho won just the league in his first season with Chelsea, repeated the achievement the following year, and was manager of the year both times. So Ancelotti could feel aggrieved, to say the least, were a double in his first season to count for nothing.

Manchester United could still derail Chelsea’s title bid today, or to be more exact Liverpool could, and were the title to end up at Old Trafford it would be United’s fourth in a row, and no one has done that in the entire history of English football. Were Ferguson to claim such a success at the age of 68, breaking Liverpool’s record of 18 titles to boot, Hodgson might have to get on the pitch and score the winning goal in Hamburg to wrest the award from its most regular recipient.

The way Fulham’s fairytale has been panning out, however, you wouldn’t bet against him doing that. Even Ferguson is behind him, describing Fulham’s run to the final as one of the best British performances of all time, though he could simply be playing down Chelsea claims. It amounts to little in the scheme of things: it is only a talking point, a matter of opinion. But Fulham’s success is unexpected, Chelsea’s more or less demanded. And Hodgson has built a squad, with the help of considerable funds from his owner, whereas Ancelotti inherited an already capable one.

Here’s the weird bit, though. Hodgson is definitely getting younger. No one else in football management has ever managed to pull off that trick. Hodgson has not just reinvented the glory game, he appears to have stumbled on an antidote to stress as well as the secret of eternal youth. Why stop at manager of the year? Based on his Thursday performances there is still time to be the next prime minister.

And Mourinho to get an award for his own special skills?

Still no back-to-back European Cup winners in the Champions League era. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind. I’m not sure how much more beautiful-game drooling from grown men I could have taken in any case had Barcelona made it to Madrid. And splendidly though they performed in Rome, Barcelona were lucky to reach last year’s final, so it is perhaps as well that history is not going to be made through the inadvertent assistance of Tom  Henning Ovrebo.

There’s just one thing I still don’t understand, inspector. Barcelona paying Inter £42m plus Samuel Eto’o for Zlatan Ibrahimovic now seems even more like the silliest deal of the century, and that includes all of Portsmouth’s recently uncovered excesses. Eto’o is only six months older than the Swedish striker and had the clubs simply exchanged players without any financial adjustment many would have considered Inter to have got the better of the bargain. As it was they had an extra lump of money with which to strengthen to good effect, bringing in Diego Milito, Wesley Sneijder and Thiago Motta.

Ibrahimovic is far from a bad player and was Serie A top scorer and footballer of the year in his final season in Italy, yet he is finding the reputation of big-game bottler hard to shake off. He generally fails to make an impression in Champions League matches and has yet to appear in a final, let alone score in one. Whereas Eto’o has scored in two already, and now has a chance to score for different clubs in consecutive finals. When José Mourinho named his four most outstanding players in the world just over a year ago the other three – Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Kaká – already boasted Champions League medals. Even so he named Ibrahimovic the best of the lot, then said his goodbyes. Salesman of the year, anyone?

The Arsenal manager blamed defeat by Spurs on his young team’s lack of mental strength – but he assembled the squad

It is odd that Arsène Wenger should blame Arsenal’s first league defeat by Spurs this century on a lack of maturity. “We lost a game we couldn’t afford to lose in the title race and that shows we are not mature enough,” the Arsenal manager said after conceding his side had dropped out of contention through dropping three points at White Hart Lane.

It is odd because Wenger could have pointed at Danny Rose’s wonder strike, Heurelho Gomes’s goalkeeping or Thomas Vermaelen’s injury instead of suggesting insufficient mental strength was responsible for defeat. Managers ought not to be encouraged to make excuses but Wenger’s attitude seemed to be that the points were there for the taking had Arsenal only wanted them enough.

That is a bold stance to adopt, to say the least, when you are going into a local derby with your captain and best player injured and your main striker available for only the last 22 minutes after a five-month lay-off. It was an away game, after all, and Spurs had plenty to play for. Outstanding as Arsenal’s record against Spurs is under Wenger, you cannot win them all and it was faintly insulting of Wenger to say, that, “if you want to win the title, this is the kind of game you can’t lose”.

Surely that is Wigan away (where Chelsea lost), or Burnley at Turf Moor (where Manchester United lost), rather than Spurs at the Lane, where Liverpool and Manchester City lost this season. Last season, as a matter of interest, Chelsea lost at Spurs while United, the eventual champions, were held scoreless. Arsenal are only one place above Spurs in the table and Harry Redknapp’s side, even before their three points from the north London derby, were ahead of Liverpool, Aston Villa and Everton, so Wenger was either setting himself an unrealistic target or displaying a hint of arrogance in identifying a trip to the neighbours as a must-win game. Things change in football and in blaming his own side’s shortcomings, whether real or imagined, Wenger appeared to overlook the fact that Spurs have improved quite a bit under Redknapp and would not look out of place if they manage to get a toe-hold in the Champions League.

If he really wants more maturity in his team Wenger could try swapping Theo Walcott for Ryan Giggs, bringing back Martin Keown to join Sol Campbell or perhaps re-signing Jens Lehmann from Stuttgart, though it is unlikely that he will. Patrick Vieira would have been another obvious choice but City got there first. It is fair to say Vieira’s impact at Eastlands has been muted, neither as good nor as bad as people were predicting when Roberto Mancini made his surprise January swoop, though it is elsewhere in Manchester that maturity, or experience, as Sir Alex Ferguson prefers to call it, has been put under the spotlight in recent weeks.

All the time that Wayne Rooney was playing like a force of nature and looking like the shoo-in for the season’s individual awards that he still remains, United found their experience, in the form of the Treble veterans Paul Scholes, Giggs and Gary Neville, plus Rio Ferdinand and Edwin van der Sar, was not really being put to the test. Rooney was beating teams on his own, or at least proving such a distraction to opponents that the old heads in the team could easily find space and time to work out the best plan to get the ball back to him. It was great while it lasted, and Scholes and Giggs in particular deservedly won praise for still making valuable contributions at such advanced stages of their careers, but once Rooney was taken out of the equation the gas escaped from United’s balloon with an almost audible hiss.

Results yesterday breathed new life into what appeared a completed title race, though certainly until Scholes’ last-gasp winner at Eastlands the impression was that United had been blown off-course by failing to navigate a tiny, two-week period when Rooney was unavailable.

Equally, while people are now saying United were bound to miss the goalscoring input of Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez, they were not saying that as late as a month ago, when United surpassed their league goals tally for the previous season. United won the title last season with Ronaldo below his best and wanting away, Rooney frequently played out of position and Tevez failing to command a place in the starting line-up. This season Dimitar Berbatov lost confidence and dynamism and Michael Owen became injured, yet Rooney’s brilliance swept all of those concerns to one side. Only when the tap was turned off did United realise the easy jibe about being a one-man team contained more truth than was comfortable.

Even then the situation might have been retrieved, but Ferguson seemed to wake up one match too late to the frightening discovery that Rooney had been doing all his side’s running. He may still live to regret opting for experience and maturity above pace and penetration and picking Scholes, Giggs and Neville for the showdown against Chelsea, with Nani left on the bench. Given his time again he would probably do things differently, but time does not return, even if Chelsea allow United a second bite at a seemingly lost title.

That’s the whole problem with maturity. You can have way too much of it. Chelsea’s not-quite-pensioners may beg to differ, along with Scholes, who in addition to winning yesterday’s derby has just won a new contract for a further year at United. Good luck to him, not least with getting his manager to actually keep his annual promise about using senior players sparingly. While everyone knows he cannot go on forever, Scholes may just have provided the season’s most unexpected twist. It is a good thing Alan Hansen, who introduced United’s golden generation so eloquently, has not so far ventured the opinion that you’ll never win anything with old men.

• ‘We knew we would be fresher’ says French midfielder
• Ageing United trio find third game in a week tough

According to Florent Malouda, who engineered the opening goal, Chelsea came to Old Trafford with a plan. “We knew we would be fresher than United, we didn’t have a game in midweek,” the French winger said. “That’s why we started the game so quickly. We knew if we kept at a high intensity they would have some problems, and that’s how it worked out.”

Sir Alex Ferguson said beforehand that United were used to playing two games in a week and extra rest would not necessarily work to Chelsea’s advantage, though Carlo Ancelotti’s post-match summary appeared nearer the mark. “Of course we were fresher than United,” the Chelsea manager said. “When you play a Champions League game you lose a lot of energy.”

Ferguson accepted as much in the end and admitted his players looked leggy in the first half, yet he surely contributed to the effect by giving his ageing trio of treble veterans their third game in a week. It was one thing to select Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs against Bolton last Saturday, and another to involve them to varying degrees against Bayern Munich, 11 years after the Camp Nou event, but to start the trio again in a title-decider against Chelsea smacked of either loyalty, or United’s resources, being stretched too far.

After confessing he possibly blundered in Germany by playing Park Ji-sung instead of Antonio Valencia, Ferguson came to the mystifying conclusion that the Korean was worth a try in the centre of midfield here, with Giggs returned to his old left-wing beat and Nani left on the bench. It was scarcely a success, with both Park and Giggs anonymous and Nani having to come on to create United’s goal before the end, though at least the pair avoided being booked for failing to keep up with the pace of the game, which is effectively what happened to Scholes and Neville.

Scholes had an off-day with his distribution, repeatedly hitting overoptimistic passes no winger could hope to reach. In addition to a foul on Malouda that earned him his caution, Neville was out of position when the winger came down the right to set up Joe Cole’s early goal. Wayne Rooney may be injured, though Ferguson had younger alternatives on the bench in Rafael da Silva, Michael Carrick and Darron Gibson. While it is no secret the Scot values experience in big games, here he appeared to overdose on it. Chelsea, the side he politely suggested last season were not getting any younger, were the ones to take advantage. It would appear United are not getting any younger, either, and, though it would not be the first time they have suffered through taking on Europe as well as the rest of the Premier League, this may be the first self-inflicted setback.

It remains remarkable that United are still getting service from three players in their mid-30s who have been with the same club all their careers. It would be more remarkable still, beyond even Camp Nou improbability, for the old guard to save United’s season now. Ferguson has not only been blessed with a golden generation; he can be congratulated, as can the players, on extracting full value from it. But nothing lasts forever.

If it was a bleak day for Manchester United in the English title showdown, it was an afternoon to remember for Bayern Munich, who won at Schalke in Germany’s battle of the top two, displacing the leaders and building their confidence for Wednesday’s game at Old Trafford.

Bayern won 2-1 despite having Hamit Altintop sent off for a second bookable offence in the first half. Their manager, Louis van Gaal, said: “It was an outstanding performance. We didn’t concede many chances and scored two beautiful goals. I’m very satisfied.

“Naturally it’s very positive that we have won here. United have lost at home, we won away from home. But we need to have a rest, have a bit of treatment, and then see who will be available for Wednesday.”

The French winger Franck Ribéry gave Bayern the lead, Thomas Müller took advantage of Rafinha’s defensive lapse 70 seconds later and, although Kevin Kuranyi pulled a goal back for Schalke after 31 minutes, Bayern held on to go top. There was even more good news for Van Gaal’s team: Arjen Robben, their outstanding performer over the season, was not in the squad but the Dutch winger is expected to recover in time for the second leg.

So Bayern will arrive in Manchester not just with a deserved lead, but with a stronger team than they had for last week’s 2-1 win. It looks tough for United, but Sir Alex Ferguson was still in a relaxed mood as he looked ahead to the match – admittedly before the Chelsea defeat. When informed of a rumour that some bookmakers were willing to offer 66-1 against a Rooney-less England winning the World Cup, Ferguson bit like a perch. “You means the odds were originally less than that?” he asked. “I find that hard to believe. 66-1 sounds like a fair price to me.”

This is the sharp end of Manchester United’s season, and despite losing his star player against Chelsea and Bayern, Ferguson was still able to joke about it. Partly because he is such an experienced campaigner, but mostly because the news on Rooney could have been much worse. Ferguson has already pencilled him in for a return against Manchester City on 17 April and expects to have him available for the Champions League semi-finals at the end of the month should United qualify.

“I think Wayne will be back in three weeks at the most,” Ferguson said. “City away seems the most likely game. He’s already been on the bike and the water-treadmill. He’ll be working every day until we get to a point where we can get him on the training field. He’s an enthusiastic lad but he’s sensible about these things. He’ll not be getting carried away or rushing himself back, he’ll listen to the medical people because he knows it’s important to get back without doing any further damage. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t play in the semi-finals in Europe, as long as we get that far.”

Keenly aware that United have never beaten Bayern outside of a European Cup final, Ferguson respects the German team’s ability to impose themselves on a game without necessarily overrunning their opponents.

“The first leg wasn’t one of our better performances, because we didn’t pass the ball well,” he said. “Bayern didn’t cause us too many problems in terms of penetration, they never really opened us up, but what they did was keep us on the edge of our box for long periods, so we never got up the pitch.”

Ferguson is likely to recall Antonio Valencia for the second leg, after admitting that his decision to play Park Ji-sung had not come off in Munich.

“I’m sure we can score in the home leg. We’ve been in this situation before, we have the experience, and that away goal does mean something. Our performance level at home has been good, especially when the chips are down. There are areas we can try to exploit. I don’t think Bayern are the quickest at the back, even their midfield isn’t that quick. They deserved to win the first leg, they were highly motivated and well-prepared, and you have to congratulate their coach for that. Wednesday will be different. We’ll be the ones motivated.”

In the end it was not even close. Federico Macheda’s springtime speciality made the last 10 minutes interesting rather than tense, and it turned out he had handled the ball anyway. That made redundant all Manchester United’s legitimate claims that 10 minutes earlier Didier Drogba had thumped home the winner from an offside position, and all that remained was for Chelsea to hold on to their lead. They did so with a brisk determination that suggested they will not be easily dislodged from the top of the table now they have their noses in front.

Perhaps a rider could be added to that statement. As long as Drogba is available Chelsea should be able to see out their advantage. Nicolas Anelka does not appear to be in the sort of form to win the next five matches on his own. Sir Alex Ferguson billed this match rather ambitiously as a World Cup final, when until Drogba arrived with the knockout blow it was actually more like a shadow-boxing version of a heavyweight title fight. United and Chelsea seem to need lead in their gloves when Wayne Rooney and Drogba are reduced to spectators, though at least Joe Cole remembered to pack a surprise punch, giving his side a deserved lead they never really looked like losing before the second-half goals brought predictable controversy,

“That’s twice we’ve been beaten by refereeing decisions, it happened at Stamford Bridge as well,” Ferguson said. “The linesman is right in front of Drogba and he gets it wrong. It was a poor, poor performance from the officials in a game of this magnitude. The quality of the officials has cost us, though I must admit we looked leggy in the first half and Chelsea were by far the better team. They have got to be favourites now, Chelsea are in the driving seat. We can win all our remaining five games and we still won’t win the title if Chelsea win theirs.”

If that was a last, slightly desperate attempt to increase the pressure on the London side, Carlo Ancelotti was having none of it. “We are not favourites,” the Chelsea manager said. “We are top of the league but nothing is decided yet. There are still five matches to play and we have to stay focused.”

A first half remarkable only for the meekness of United’s approach suggested Chelsea ought to be able to hold their nerve, even if they are more thoroughly tested in away games to come at Liverpool and Spurs. Just about the only memorable moment was Cole’s well-taken goal, the one that prompted Chelsea fans to chant with some justification that Old Trafford was surprisingly quiet. United’s defence melted away alarmingly as Gary Neville and Darren Fletcher allowed Florent Malouda to reach the byline. When he pulled back a low cross there was only Patrice Evra guarding Cole in the middle, and though Cole had his back to goal, the Frenchman and Edwin van der Sar were confounded by a backheel flick that rolled gently across the line.

United could have few complaints about going behind. With Park Ji-sung oddly stationed in the centre of a three-man advanced midfield line, Dimitar Berbatov was short of support and apart from a couple of optimistic penalty shouts the home side rarely threatened. Berbatov failed to make a convincing case for himself, either as Rooney’s deputy or a presence capable of leading the attack on his own. Too much of the game passed him by and too often he was easily knocked off the ball. Neither of those charges can normally be levelled at Rooney.

There were ironic cheers from the home support when Mike Dean awarded Berbatov a free kick after being mown down by John Terry, though it would be over generous to say all the time the Bulgarian spent on the floor was through fouls the referee had not spotted.

Chelsea could have made the points safe at the start of the second half when Cole cleverly played Paulo Ferreira behind the United defence, only for the full-back to fail to supply anything like a striker’s finish. United enjoyed a strong 20 minutes chasing an equaliser after that, the crowd roaring them on as of old, yet all they had to show for the pressure were a couple of headers from Berbatov that were not close enough to the target to trouble Petr Cech.

Chelsea opened out the game again by the simple expedient of bringing Drogba and Salomon Kalou on for the last 20 minutes, and though the former was clearly offside when the latter’s reverse pass played him in, the flag stayed down and a trademark finish exploded past Van der Sar at his near post. Macheda bundled in a reply almost immediately after Cech had palmed out Nani’s cross, though if the crowd expected a grandstand finish they were disappointed. Those days appear to have gone, at least until Rooney comes back.

Berbatov did force a save from Cech late in the game but the real story was of United being outplayed in other areas of the pitch. Even Rooney’s return will not solve everything, and it will certainly not knock any years off the combined age of Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, who were unable to generate any sort of dynamism against the supposedly geriatric Chelsea.

It was Ferguson who remarked last season that Chelsea are getting on a bit, yet United are hardly an advert for youthful vigour. The average age of their starting line-up, for a game they knew might decide the title, was 31. Small wonder Chelsea were able to hold on to their lead. Suddenly that looks like being the story of the rest of the season.

THE FANS’ PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICT

SHAUN O’DONNELL, Observer reader For a team that has only won the league twice in the last 50 years Chelsea have an incredible arrogance about them. I can’t say the result flattered them though, as we didn’t really turn up. Our passing was poor and we didn’t create anything in midfield. The game during the week took the spark out of us and the fact that we were without our talisman, Rooney, contributed. We had nothing up front. Once we went back to 4-4-2 we looked more threatening. Mike Dean was poor and Drogba’s goal was clearly offside. I don’t think this has handed Chelsea the title, though, as both teams will drop points.

The fan’s player ratings Van der Sar 6; Neville 5, Ferdinand 6, Vidic 7, Evra 7; Scholes 7 (Macheda 71 7), Fletcher 7 (Gibson 86 n/a); Valencia 6, Park 6 (Nani 71 7), Giggs 6; Berbatov 6

TRIZIA FIORELLINO, Chelsea Supporters Group We were dominant in the first half, we controlled the game and were very comfortable on the ball. We got the goal we deserved and were unlucky not to get a penalty for the foul on Anelka – it looked pretty clear cut. United were more physical and we dealt with that, though Scholes was lucky to stay on the pitch. They came out like a train in the second half and we were like rabbits in the headlights but it looked like game over after Drogba’s goal. The last 10 minutes were the longest of my life. The title race is wide open; we’ve got the advantage but so many people have called it wrong, I’m keeping schtum.

The fan’s player ratings Cech 8; Ferreira 8, Alex 8, Terry 8, Zhirkov 9; Mikel 9; Cole 8 (Kalou 73 8), Lampard 8, Deco 9 (Ballack 82 n/a), Malouda 9; Anelka 8 (Drogba 69 8)

TO TAKE PART IN THE FANS’ VERDICT, SPORT@OBSERVER.CO.UK

Sir Alex Ferguson’s options for replacing Wayne Rooney appear as limited as those available to England manager Fabio Capello

So that’s it then. England can stop dreaming of another World Cup final and Manchester United can resign themselves to coming second again in the Champions League, always assuming they can get past Bayern Munich in next week’s second leg with Wayne Rooney on the sidelines.

The good news is that Rooney may not be out for long. According to some optimistic early reports he could be back in two to four weeks. The bad news, no matter how quickly Rooney recovers, is that England and to a lesser extent United have both been exposed as one-man teams. Take away the short, stocky Scouser at the front and both begin to resemble Samson with a short back and sides. The shape and appearance of power is still there but the strength and the potency is gone.

It would be fair to point out that we knew this all along, and in the very real sense that newspapers and commentators have been prepared for such an eventuality for months, Rooney’s ankle damage was an accident waiting to happen. No one can be remotely surprised by the latest turn of events, not after the last World Cup, and those tempted to look on the bright side and view a relatively minor injury to Rooney as a good way of getting him to South Africa in one piece ought to be aware that few recoveries are ever quite as straightforward as that.

It depends how long the player is out, of course, but the key point is that after any sort of lay-off Rooney is unlikely to return immediately to the form that has been so devastating since Christmas. He will need a few games to recover fitness and confidence and get back into his stride, and these could be important games in United’s calendar. During this period he will be vulnerable to further injury and extra attention from opponents, and there is always the danger of being rushed back too soon rather than taking the required amount of rest. Rooney is the sort of player who is also likely to want to do too much too soon. Knowing his importance to both club and country brings a certain pressure to perform right from the outset.

Even if all that turns out to be a worst case scenario, the same thing could easily happen again between now and the end of the season and it is worth asking how both United and England came to be so reliant on a single player. United would like to feel they have more attacking options at their disposal than are available to Fabio Capello, although that isn’t necessarily so. Not with Michael Owen out for the rest of the season, Danny Welbeck on loan, Federico Macheda still raw and only just returning from injury and Dimitar Berbatov not exactly filling his boots with goals this season. As even Louis van Gaal was able to point out in Munich, Berbatov has only scored 12 goals to Rooney’s 34 this season, and until the Bulgarian’s pair against Bolton on Saturday, United’s second top scorer was the own goals column with 11.

The enigmatic Berbatov is the sort of player who divides opinion, among United fans as well as neutrals. Some people view him as a luxury player who has not made the expected impact and has struggled to live up to his transfer fee, others think he is a superior striker to Rooney who is being scandalously under used and deserves to have the team set up around him. There is no room here to go into that highly polarised debate, suffice to say that if Rooney is sidelined for a while the Berbatov that so consistently impressed Spurs fans ought to be an ideal candidate to step into the gap.

Capello would love to have a player of Berbatov’s quality to take to South Africa as an understudy for Rooney, because England certainly do not possess one. While United have Berbatov to take over striking duties from Rooney it is perhaps harsh to describe them as a one-man team, although the two players are in no way similar. Berbatov is more of a link player than an out-and-out striker, although he did score 23 goals in each of his two seasons at Spurs. While using the two together has rarely worked as well as Sir Alex Ferguson must have hoped, at least Berbatov now has a chance to show what he can do on his own.

One of the reasons Berbatov has become somewhat becalmed at Old Trafford, both in terms of goals and appearances, is that Ferguson has been using Rooney on his own up front. Served well by Nani and Antonio Valencia in the last few months (Ferguson may now be regretting leaving Valencia out in Munich) Rooney delighted the nation by growing into the role of complete centre forward, adding heading to his already powerful armoury and showing a willingness both to get on the end of crosses and take on defences by himself. We English like nothing better, although there is a downside to the all-action, force-of-nature frontman. Take him away and you are left with just a supporting cast.

Liverpool know this problem only too well, yet as may prove significant this summer, Spain are not quite so debilitated when Fernando Torres is absent. Lionel Messi may well be the best player in the world at the moment but Barcelona have plenty other attacking options, as have Argentina, who often complain they do not see the best of Messi in any case. There isn’t another player in the world like Rooney, and it is easy to see why United and England are not just glad to have him but happy to make him the sole focus of attack, although there will always be a potential problem with that approach and the clue is in the word “sole”.

Should injury intervene, as it just has, you then need a convincing Plan B. England do not appear to have one, United may still be able to cobble one together, but the nomenclature gives the game away. This is fairly primitive stuff. You wouldn’t hear Barcelona talking of a Plan B. For the sake of argument, let us assume that a full strength United and a full strength Barcelona are appearing in a repeat of last season’s Champions League final. If Rooney is fit and on form, you would have to give United a chance of winning, just as a Messi at the peak of his powers could almost certainly swing the game Barcelona’s way. Remove both after five minutes, however, and you would want your money on Messi’s teammates rather than Rooney’s.

Three Manchester United players from the year of that Camp Nou triumph are still going strong

Bayern Munich have made five managerial changes since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s “Football, bloody hell” moment in 1999 left their players so poleaxed on the Camp Nou pitch that Pierluigi Collina had to persuade some of them to get up again to restart the game. Every member of their squad that night has since retired from playing or moved on from the club.

There is nothing particularly unusual about that. Bayern’s turnover is just about par for the course, yet what has happened over the same 11-year period at Manchester United is remarkable. Not only do they still have the same manager, Sir Alex Ferguson’s 24 years in charge being one of the wonders of the modern game, but at Bolton on Saturday they were able to call on three of the players who had featured in their historic treble success. Only Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs actually played in the Champions League final against Bayern, Paul Scholes famously missing it through suspension, but all three were influential at the Reebok Stadium. Giggs even laid on the opening goal.

While the trio are in their mid-30s now and have started only six games together in the past three years, their importance to United’s current campaign goes far beyond the sentimental. Ferguson rested Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Park Ji-sung and Michael Carrick at Bolton in order to be able to name his strongest possible side in Europe, something he was only able to do because he had complete trust in his senior players’ ability to bring their enormous experience to bear. “Between them they’ve got lots of experience and that’s the vital thing,” Ferguson said. “They also have good composure in possession and they know how important it is to keep hold of the ball.”

All three have had to change their game subtly to adapt to the passing of the years. Giggs, the player Scholes imagines will be remembered as the best of the lot when they have all retired, has probably enjoyed the most success, cutting out the lung-bursting sprints and concentrating instead on a shrewd ability to make the right run at the right time.

Scholes has been forced backwards, to a position where he cannot score as many goals and consequently feels he is not contributing as much as he should, although his manager rarely complains. Neville, as a defender, is arguably having the hardest time of all in keeping up with younger, fitter opponents, but he still managed to get forward to good effect when he faced Milan’s Ronaldinho in the last round of the Champions League.

Perhaps this longevity is simply a reflection of the depth of talent available for Ferguson to mine from the renowned 1992 youth team (although Scholes only joined that squad a year later, with Phil Neville), and perhaps it is the case that the last three of Fergie’s Fledglings to leave the nest have simply never wanted or needed to play their football anywhere else.

Yet in the modern game, three one-club players lasting two decades at the top and winning everything in sight is a wonder in itself. Apart from Neville, Scholes and Giggs, there are only five others who have represented a single club more than 100 times in the Champions League.

The three players are also in United’s top five for all-time appearances. Giggs is at the top, having sailed past Bobby Charlton’s record of 758 and off into the 800s, while after Charlton and Bill Foulkes come Scholes and Neville. Giggs may never become quite as iconic a figure in English football as Charlton, being born Welsh proving something of a handicap in that respect, yet in terms of achievement and honours he seems likely to be just as revered by generations to come.

Whether he, Neville and Scholes start or play a role from the bench tonight at the Allianz Arena, their experience will continue to be invaluable as United seek a different treble this season.

For all Sir Alex Ferguson’s talk of gauntlets being thrown down, Manchester United had no need to answer Chelsea’s goalfest with flamboyance of their own. All they were expected to do at the Reebok was tough out a gritty win and go back to the top of the Premier League. Which is exactly what they were doing until Bolton went into Aston Villa mode late in the game.

It may appear from the scoreline that even with an under-strength team United can pick up points in style, improve their goal difference and still stay in good shape for the Champions League. Yet the rather more mundane reality is that only an own goal separated the sides until Bolton clocked off early.

“The score makes it look as if it was easy, but we never dominated the game,” Ferguson said. “It was hard, as it always is here. It’s difficult to play when the ball’s in the air all the time. It took two magnificent saves from Edwin van der Sar to keep Bolton out in the first half.”

A clearly deflated Owen Coyle had no choice but to agree. “Losing 4-0 was not a fair reflection,” the Bolton manager said. “Until about 25 minutes from the end we were chasing an equaliser. But you can’t switch off against a team of United’s calibre, you get punished and that’s what happened.”

Ferguson omitted Wayne Rooney despite denying with some vehemence the previous day that his striker might be rested. Rio Ferdinand was another absentee, with Tuesday’s game against Bayern Munich clearly the immediate priority. The reverse side of that coin is that some or all of the evergreen threesome of Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs may not start in Germany, although they can hardly complain, 11 years after the treble campaign that ended with victory over Bayern in Barcelona.

Even more remarkably, in all that time, Scholes has still not mastered the art of tackling. He was soon pulled up for what might be termed a “trademark” foul on Johan Elmander, although it was a Scholes run into the Bolton penalty area that led to Jussi Jaaskelainen making the first save of the game when Dimitar Berbatov met Darren Fletcher’s cross with a sidefoot volley. Bolton made a couple of chances around the half hour; Nemanja Vidic blocking Tamir Cohen’s shot and Van der Sar making an excellent near-post save to deny Elmander, who might have done better from Jack Wilshere’s clever through ball.

United were playing with two touchline-hugging wingers in Antonio Valencia and Nani, yet the expected width rarely materialised until Giggs popped up on the left to send in a low cross that produced one of the most bizarre own goals of the season. All own goals are slightly bizarre, although you can usually see what the defender is attempting to do. Here, Jlloyd Samuel appeared to visualise himself in a red shirt, scoring the goal of his dreams for Manchester United. It was an exquisite first-time finish, certainly one that Fletcher would not have managed even had he been able to reach the ball. The danger appeared to have passed; indeed it had passed, until Samuel turned into United’s 12th man at the far post and slotted past Jaaskelainen.

Bolton had a chance to equalise before the interval but again Van der Sar produced another good save – this time diving to his right to tip away Fabrice Muamba’s rising shot from another opportunity manufactured by Wilshere. Bolton kept United penned in their own half for a 20- minute spell in the second half. Yet for all their pressure, there was only one save for Van der Sar to make; a routine one from Elmander, just before he was clobbered by an elbow from Vidic that appeared clumsy rather than malicious. Coyle was still upset about it after the match, when he ought to have been more annoyed at the way his defence melted away almost as soon as United crossed the halfway line.

Jaaskelainen could not hold Fletcher’s shot and made the mistake of pushing it out to Berbatov, who had enough composure to reach the ball and slip a low shot under the goalkeeper. Bolton looked a tired team by the time Berbatov added another 12 minutes from time, easily escaping his marker to score from Nani’s cross, before an almost identical invitation from the winger allowed Darron Gibson to score the fourth with his first touch.

“We’ll all drop points before the end of the season, we just have to make sure we don’t drop as many as everyone else,” Ferguson said of the three-way title race. “Chelsea scoring seven did not put extra pressure on us, but when you see that turnaround in goal difference in four days it represents a challenge. Put the gauntlet down, though, and United will always accept it.”

Wayne Rooney has been outstanding but great credit must also go to his colleagues

Cristiano Ronaldo was an unstoppable force the season he scored 42 goals for Manchester United, just as Wayne Rooney is proving to be this season. With Sir Alex Ferguson’s none-too-tacit encouragement, United’s leading scorer is being backed to pass Ronaldo’s mark – he currently needs 10 more goals to equal it, or nine if you count the one he scored in the Community Shield – yet in a real sense it is academic whether Rooney takes his goal tally into the forties or not.

United have already scored more league goals this season than in the whole of the last one. After 30 games they have 70 goals, and you have to go back to 2001-02 to see that total bettered. Last season’s final total was 68, and the season before that, the one where Ronaldo chipped in with 31 league goals as part of his overall contribution of 42, they ended on 80. So if Rooney or anyone else in a red shirt can add 10 or more goals from their last eight league matches, beginning with Liverpool at home today, the idea that they are still missing Ronaldo will be statistically exploded.

Liverpool won 4-1 at Old Trafford last season with Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard traumatising the home defence, yet, even if the pair are now back in harness and returning to full fitness, it is no secret that Rafa Benítez relies on his golden duo to an almost unhealthy extent. What United have proved in spades since the turn of the year is that they are no longer reliant on Ronaldo. The team have moved on.

The season United most missed Ronaldo was the last one, when they still had the player in body but hardly in spirit. A pale shadow of the previous season’s incarnation, Ronaldo still managed a highly creditable 25 goals, but United’s final league total was the lowest it had been since the meagre 58 in 2004-05, the season after he arrived when, operating very much as a winger, he contributed five goals.

The most remarkable thing about Ronaldo’s 42-goal season was that it represented a prodigious total for a winger, although by that stage Ferguson was giving him free rein to come inside, and sometimes selecting him in central positions. While nothing ought to be taken away from Rooney’s scoring record this season, it is much more natural for a centre-forward to score the majority of the goals, especially one frequently employed as the sole striker. Rooney has proved he is capable of carrying the United attack on his own, and is clearly enjoying exploiting the space and responsibility left vacant by Ronaldo’s departure. It is not all down to Rooney, though such a lion-hearted performer deserves a lion’s share of the credit.

After a necessary period of adjustment Antonio Valencia and Nani have stopped looking like over-promoted bit parts and begun to deliver. Park Ji-sung has been in excellent form and United have benefited enormously from the depth of experience they possess in midfield as well as the still under-utilised Dimitar Berbatov, though it is the quality of service from the flanks that is helping Rooney have such an outstanding season.

Nani’s part in Rooney’s second goal against Milan, the one that killed the home leg just after half-time, could hardly have been bettered by Ronaldo. There was an electric burst of pace down the left then the subtlest of passes inside to put the ball in the exact place where Rooney wanted it and the Milan defence did not. Much of Rooney’s new-found heading ability is due to the quality of the crosses Valencia has been putting in. As Ferguson said of the goals against Milan at San Siro, the crossing was so good it would have been harder for the striker to miss.

Valencia seems to have taken a while to settle, perhaps not finding it easy to step up from Wigan and certainly not relishing comparisons with Ronaldo, but, without ever being a like-for-like replacement for his singular predecessor, he is now doing precisely what Ferguson says he expected him to do. He brings strength, skill and a certain amount of style to the United wing and, while he may never threaten any goalscoring records, he knows how to make goals for others.

Statistics based on the last couple of seasons show that Valencia tackles more than Ronaldo used to, and more successfully, crosses more, and more successfully, and creates around twice as many chances. He does not shoot as often and does not score as many goals but that simply makes him a more conventional winger. He is still a very good one.

Risky as it is to make forecasts after last season’s upset, while both United and Liverpool have exceptional strikers, United’s support cast appears to offer more attacking promise.

Wayne Rooney has been outstanding but great credit must also go to his colleagues

Cristiano Ronaldo was an unstoppable force the season he scored 42 goals for Manchester United, just as Wayne Rooney is proving to be this season. With Sir Alex Ferguson’s none-too-tacit encouragement, United’s leading scorer is being backed to pass Ronaldo’s mark – he currently needs 10 more goals to equal it, or nine if you count the one he scored in the Community Shield – yet in a real sense it is academic whether Rooney takes his goal tally into the forties or not.

United have already scored more league goals this season than in the whole of the last one. After 30 games they have 70 goals, and you have to go back to 2001-02 to see that total bettered. Last season’s final total was 68, and the season before that, the one where Ronaldo chipped in with 31 league goals as part of his overall contribution of 42, they ended on 80. So if Rooney or anyone else in a red shirt can add 10 or more goals from their last eight league matches, beginning with Liverpool at home today, the idea that they are still missing Ronaldo will be statistically exploded.

Liverpool won 4-1 at Old Trafford last season with Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard traumatising the home defence, yet, even if the pair are now back in harness and returning to full fitness, it is no secret that Rafa Benítez relies on his golden duo to an almost unhealthy extent. What United have proved in spades since the turn of the year is that they are no longer reliant on Ronaldo. The team have moved on.

The season United most missed Ronaldo was the last one, when they still had the player in body but hardly in spirit. A pale shadow of the previous season’s incarnation, Ronaldo still managed a highly creditable 25 goals, but United’s final league total was the lowest it had been since the meagre 58 in 2004-05, the season after he arrived when, operating very much as a winger, he contributed five goals.

The most remarkable thing about Ronaldo’s 42-goal season was that it represented a prodigious total for a winger, although by that stage Ferguson was giving him free rein to come inside, and sometimes selecting him in central positions. While nothing ought to be taken away from Rooney’s scoring record this season, it is much more natural for a centre-forward to score the majority of the goals, especially one frequently employed as the sole striker. Rooney has proved he is capable of carrying the United attack on his own, and is clearly enjoying exploiting the space and responsibility left vacant by Ronaldo’s departure. It is not all down to Rooney, though such a lion-hearted performer deserves a lion’s share of the credit.

After a necessary period of adjustment Antonio Valencia and Nani have stopped looking like over-promoted bit parts and begun to deliver. Park Ji-sung has been in excellent form and United have benefited enormously from the depth of experience they possess in midfield as well as the still under-utilised Dimitar Berbatov, though it is the quality of service from the flanks that is helping Rooney have such an outstanding season.

Nani’s part in Rooney’s second goal against Milan, the one that killed the home leg just after half-time, could hardly have been bettered by Ronaldo. There was an electric burst of pace down the left then the subtlest of passes inside to put the ball in the exact place where Rooney wanted it and the Milan defence did not. Much of Rooney’s new-found heading ability is due to the quality of the crosses Valencia has been putting in. As Ferguson said of the goals against Milan at San Siro, the crossing was so good it would have been harder for the striker to miss.

Valencia seems to have taken a while to settle, perhaps not finding it easy to step up from Wigan and certainly not relishing comparisons with Ronaldo, but, without ever being a like-for-like replacement for his singular predecessor, he is now doing precisely what Ferguson says he expected him to do. He brings strength, skill and a certain amount of style to the United wing and, while he may never threaten any goalscoring records, he knows how to make goals for others.

Statistics based on the last couple of seasons show that Valencia tackles more than Ronaldo used to, and more successfully, crosses more, and more successfully, and creates around twice as many chances. He does not shoot as often and does not score as many goals but that simply makes him a more conventional winger. He is still a very good one.

Risky as it is to make forecasts after last season’s upset, while both United and Liverpool have exceptional strikers, United’s support cast appears to offer more attacking promise.

David Beckham flickered for Milan at Old Trafford but Wayne Rooney was in utterly superb form once again

Rumours of Wayne Rooney struggling for fitness have clearly been greatly exaggerated. Either that or a rest at Molineux last Saturday did him a power of good. He was certainly fit enough to carry the United attack on his own tonight, after his alleged over-exertion on the Wembley turf for England, and anyone keeping even half an eye on events these past couple of months will appreciate that that rendered Manchester United’s progress into the Champions League quarter-finals something of a formality.

Rooney was not able to manage the full Nicklas Bendtner and neither could United emulate Arsenal’s five goals, yet Milan are not Porto and Rooney’s double was thoroughly impressive. The Italians defended with surprising naivety, and missed good chances, but the encouraging news for United, England and anyone else with an interest in goalscorers at the top of their profession was that no one could match Rooney for quality of movement or decisiveness of finish. He settled the tie as early as the 13th minute.

Everything that followed was mere decoration, even if it must be allowed that the way United opened up Milan for Rooney’s second, before he went off just after the hour, will have given them every encouragement for the rest of the tournament, as will a notable aggregate scoreline.

Having put themselves in a strong position in Milan, it was disappointing for United to concede a late goal that allowed the Italians hope, but Sir Alex Ferguson’s assessment was that if his side scored at home it ought to be enough to guarantee progress. There was some debate among United fans about whether Ferguson would select an attacking line-up or pack the midfield, yet the fact that Dimitar Berbatov was on the bench was misleading. While the Bulgarian has been in decent form, his pairing with Rooney is not necessarily United’s best option. Most of the unstoppable performances Rooney has put in this year came up front on his own, and here was another one. The 3-2 win at San Siro – where United had never scored, let alone won – was achieved with a similar formation.

Predictably, Rooney had the first shot of the game, the first couple of shots actually, though Ronaldinho also came close to opening the scoring with a header before United found inspiration from an entirely unexpected source. Gary Neville was in the side for his experience, Ferguson putting a high value on the commodity for big European nights, though having seen him struggle against Matt Jarvis in the 45 minutes he played at Wolves the United support was fearful of what might happen when he was asked to contain Ronaldinho. They need not have worried. Neville got forward and caused Milan problems of his own. He had sent a dipping shot narrowly over the bar and won a commanding header on halfway by the time he sauntered down the right and sent over the cross from which Rooney opened the scoring.

Milan have no excuse for not knowing about Rooney’s heading ability after San Siro, so perhaps they assumed he would not be able to leap past Daniele Bonera or to beat Christian Abbiati from 12 yards. Rooney turned a good cross into a great goal with a header from the days when centre-fowards had centre partings. Even more remarkably, for a player with much more to his all-round game who has only recently begun to display the positional sense and timing to make heading an effective part of his repertoire, it was Rooney’s seventh consecutive headed goal. Any old-fashioned centre-forward would have been proud of that, particularly as few of them were routine.

While United held only a one-goal lead the tie was theoretically open, but the second half was barely a minute old before Rooney’s 30th goal of the season put it to bed. Taking advantage of a sprint down the left by Nani and a perfectly judged pass inside, Rooney reached the ball ahead of Abbiati and pushed it into the net. Game over, with due respect to Park Ji-sung’s strike, Darren Fletcher’s first European goal and David Beckham’s introduction. The sequence of headed goals was over too, though that is hardly important when a scorer is in such imperious form.

While Beckham crossed as well as ever, rolled back the years with a spectacular volley that almost caught Edwin van der Sar off guard and generally looked as if he should have started the game, he no longer has the ability to influence outcomes single-handed.

United and England now have someone else who can do that, although if Beckham seizing a green and gold scarf for a photo-opportunity at the end means his next fight will be against the Glazers, at least his money will come in handy. He may not be Goldenballs any longer, but he can still be a Red Knight.

Michael Owen could start in the Carling Cup final but is learning valuable skills as a substitute, Sir Alex Ferguson believes

Sir Alex Ferguson is considering starting Michael Owen in this afternoon’s Carling Cup final and believes it is not too late for the striker to force his way into Fabio Capello’s World Cup plans.

Owen came on as a substitute for Manchester United in midweek to score a trademark goal against West Ham and Ferguson insists that, despite restricted appearances, he is happy at Old Trafford and still improving as a player. “He has done well here, he has been a success,” Ferguson says. “He’s a great professional, he’s never missed a training session, his performances in training have been very good, and I think he has improved as a footballer in his time here.

“His general knowledge of the game is better, so is his linking play, and for the first time in his career he is getting used to coming on as a sub. I think he’s enjoying being a part of it here and he’ll definitely be here next season because I have absolutely no intention of letting him go. The only problem Owen has got at the moment is Wayne Rooney. We’re getting incredible performances from Rooney at the moment, and Michael has come here at a time when another striker, and sometimes the only one we use, is on the rise.”

Rooney may nevertheless miss out at Wembley or play only part of the game, as Ferguson juggles his resources to keep his strongest team fresh for the Champions League return against Milan and the title run-in. “I know my team for the AC Milan game already,” Ferguson says. “The Carling Cup final selection will be a little bit trickier because I’m going to have to make two or three changes. Wembley is a tiring pitch – it’s a tiring occasion, actually. And you have to think there’s a possibility of extra time. I’m looking at Owen as a possible change. He took his goal against West Ham well, timing his run between defenders. If you watch it again you’ll notice that he stops and goes again to make sure he stays onside. It was a typical Owen goal, and the more he shows he can still do that the more chance he has got of joining up with England again. I know that’s at the back of his mind.”

That may be an understatement, as Owen has indicated on several occasions that regaining his England place is at the forefront of his mind. Rooney is an obstacle to progress in that direction as well, however, and with goal-sniffers now a luxury that most modern teams find they can do without, Owen may have to accept that a role as an impact substitute represents his best hope of reaching South Africa. “It’s going to be difficult for Fabio to pick him when he’s not been playing regularly, I understand that completely,” Ferguson says. “I was hoping he would get more regular games so that he could put his England credentials right in front of Fabio, though it hasn’t worked out that way. But there’s still three months of the season left and you would still think that a player of his ability has it in him to grasp a chance.

“Getting used to playing as sub may be an advantage in the long term. Even though he’s not figuring a lot for us, he’s still the one player you would want on your bench if you need to make a change with 15 minutes to go in a World Cup quarter-final. That has to be in your thinking. It’s going to be difficult for him to get to South Africa I know, it’s a big ask to pick a player who is not playing, but I don’t need to tell Fabio how to do his job. He’s an experienced manager who knows what he wants and he knows what striking options are available.”

While Owen still needs games and goals to impress Capello, he may not need that many to stake a claim to a squad striking place, since Peter Crouch, Darren Bent and Emile Heskey have been relatively quiet and only Jermain Defoe’s form demands inclusion. Apart from Rooney, of course, whose form has been demanding attention regardless of how many minutes he plays at Wembley today.

“Wayne has turned into the player we all hoped he would,” Ferguson says. “He’s improving in front of our eyes, scoring the kind of goals he has never scored before. Goals inside the box, reacting to things, headers, getting the right angles. He never used to score that many goals with his head, but he has added anticipation to his game. If you look at all the headed goals he’s scored in the last few weeks he’s been free every time, and that tells you something.”

Trust Everton to bring the Wayne Rooney roadshow crashing to a halt. It has been the England striker, more than the team around him, who has been in unstoppable form of late, yet he seldom sparkles on visits to his old club and was nullified here to such an extent that glimpses of the famous temper were occasionally visible.

Perhaps it was also significant that Sir Alex Ferguson brought back ­Dimitar Berbatov to join him in the attack, ­resurrecting a partnership that has rarely looked natural and ignoring the fact Rooney’s rampaging form has been largely due to the freedom of leading the line on his own Yet, when United withdrew the Bulgarian for Paul Scholes, for the last half-hour, they were still second best and ended up letting Everton’s substitutes steal all the glory. “Everton were the better team in the second half,” Ferguson said, quite fairly. “We started well, but their equaliser galvanised them.”

Rooney was unrecognisable as the player who has terrorised defences at home and abroad since the turn of the year, and hopefully his habit of under-performing at Goodison will put a stop to the ridiculous notion, gaining ­support on Merseyside, that he still owes ­Everton something and should promise to become a Blue again at the end of his career, presumably when he grows tired of winning prizes. Why should Rooney do any such thing? He might fancy ­playing out his days at Tranmere or Manchester City. It would be easier for Everton fans to simply grow up and there are signs of that happening. While Rooney was jeered here, it was not with the vigour of old and, by the end, Everton fans were too busy singing the praises of their present crop of young players, which is exactly how it should be.

“I really wanted to have a go at United,” David Moyes said. “We keep saying we can beat anyone when everyone is fit – and we’ve not got everyone fit at the moment – but it just shows the sort of spirit we’ve got at the club.”

Everton have now beaten Chelsea and Manchester United in successive Premier League matches. Both victories were well deserved and this one was even emphatic. The home side were not favourites after losing Marouane Fellaini and Tim Cahill – two physical presences and hugely influential ­players – to ­injuries, yet they did almost all of the attacking in the second half and even Ferguson did not try to pretend the goals from Dan Gosling and Jack Rodwell that sealed a famous win were anything other than a fair reward. “It’s a bad result for us and this is not the time of year to be dropping points,” the United manager said after his sixth defeat of the season. “We were well beaten, simple as that.”

Everton, too, had a striker facing his former club, though Louis Saha was up front on his own and, when his effort from 30 yards out produced a decent save from Edwin van der Sar, it also seemed to sum up the home side’s lack of attacking options. United went in front a minute after that, Sylvain Distin failing to cut out Antonio Valencia’s cross from the right and making rather a present of it to Berbatov, who scored off the underside of the bar.

An ominous hush descended on Goodison, yet it took Everton three more minutes to equalise in spectacular fashion. When Johnny Heitinga’s hoofed clearance from the back was disputed by Saha and Jonny Evans, the ball ran clear to Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, who controlled it, looked up and struck a left-foot shot so cleanly that Van der Sar never even moved in its direction, despite being beaten from well outside the area.

Patrice Evra made a brave block to deny the Russian again when Leighton Baines crossed from the left, before Rooney wasted a good chance by taking the ball too wide around Tim Howard after being played in by Berbatov.

Everton could have had another goal by half-time had Landon Donovan been quicker to react to another Baines cross, but the American seemed surprised when the ball landed at his feet and, from an excellent position in front of goal, managed only a pass to Van der Sar.

The second half settled into a midfield contest and, for a while, it appeared both teams might be happy with a draw. Yet by the time Gosling put his side in front, 14 minutes from the end, there was no doubt Everton were applying the most pressure. The goal came after Donovan slipped Steven Pienaar down the left to pull the ball back from the byline for Gosling to stab home. As if to prove it was no fluke, Everton repeated the move two minutes later, only for Mikel Arteta to supply an air shot.

It hardly mattered. United never really looked like coming back and Rodwell’s coup de grâce in the last minute was the sort of goal only tired and beaten teams concede. Taking a short pass from Arteta near the centre circle, the 18-year-old advanced through a retreating defence, instinctively finding space for himself until only Van der Sar stood in his way. By the time United woke up to the ­danger, it was too late.

“We grew into the game, getting stronger as it went on,” Moyes said. “I keep being told we don’t beat the big boys often enough, and we don’t, so the last couple of results have been ­terrific. When we have our whole squad together, we can be a match for anyone, but it’s nice to know we can do it even with key players missing.”

THE FANS’ PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICT

Hannah Bargery, Observer reader We were phenomenal. We worked hard all across the pitch and I think it says something that Ferguson brought on Scholes – it seemed like a negative move, like he feared getting overrun in midfield. Gosling and Rodwell were fantastic . It was nice to get a third goal to finish them off because, with United, you always feel like they could score. We came back from a goal down against Chelsea as well and, if we hadn’t had so many injuries at the start of the season, where might we be now? Osman gets unfairly criticised by the fans sometimes, but he was all over the field today, breaking up the play and getting forward – he was excellent.

The fan’s player ratings Howard 9; P Neville 9, Heitinga 9, Distin 9, Baines 9; Bilyaletdinov 9 (Gosling 70 9), Osman 10, Arteta 9, Pienaar 9 (Rodwell 88 9), Donovan 9; Saha 9

Shaun O’Donnell, Observer reader After we went ahead, I never thought we were going to get beaten. But Everton fight for every ball and we offered nothing and got nothing – we got what we deserved. There was a lack of creativity, the players looked tired and those who didn’t play in midweek didn’t offer much. The defence also looked shaky: we’re missing a leader in that area. And Rafael should have played: he’d have got up and down the pitch. A performance like this shows we are papering over the cracks. We don’t seem to have the squad depth that we’ve had in previous seasons. We need to replace players, but the money isn’t there.

The fan’s player ratings Van der Sar 6; G Neville 5, Brown 5, Evans 6, Evra 6; Valencia 6 (Owen 81 5), Carrick 6, Fletcher 6, Park 6 (Obertan 66 5); Berbatov 6 (Scholes 66 6), Rooney 6

TO TAKE PART IN THE FANS’ VERDICT, EMAIL SPORT@OBSERVER.CO.UK

It was a pleasure to discover the BBC still know how to cover a live game, despite dealing mostly in highlights in recent years

Let’s hear it for the Carling Cup, the surprise new hit of the season. Who would have thought the least regarded of television’s football offerings would end up resurrecting the live game as unmissable entertainment?

The League Cup in its various guises has been subjected to all sorts of indignities over the years – ignored, unappreciated, treated experimentally or downright insultingly – yet last week’s two semi-finals were about as good as televised football gets. Undoubtedly it helped that one was a Manchester derby and the other featured 10 goals and a crazy script, but the BBC must have been delighted with all the commitment, comebacks and controversy on show.

It is always a risk for the corporation to present any sort of live football on a main primetime channel in the evening: even FA Cup finals tend to send people to sleep these days and they still take place on Saturday afternoons. Forcing the nation to watch dull, repetitive fare when the viewers could be sitting down in front of Holby City or Traffic Cops would clearly have had licence payers up in arms, yet though the BBC did not seem to have picked a winner with the Carling Cup it ended up with back-to-back games that everyone was still talking about days afterwards, a throwback to the era when live football was a rarity and most people would be watching because there were only two or three other channels with nothing much on.

It was also a pleasure to discover the BBC still know how to cover a live game, despite having to work mostly with highlights in recent years. Sky are the live experts now, but they tend to frisk a game while presenting it, teasing out all the nuggets of controversy and drama so as to bash viewers repeatedly over the head with them before their attention wanders. The Beeb did that old-fashioned thing of letting the pictures speak for themselves and the drama unfold at its own pace, without too many replays, over-excitable co-commentators or unnecessary carping at referees.

It is possible that in Mark Lawrenson the BBC possess the world’s least excitable co-commentator, a man who might struggle to inject urgency into his voice in the event of the commentary box catching fire, yet anyone who has listened to Andy Gray for longer than about 10 minutes would find that soothing. Take a bow son, take a bow. Just about the only fault with the BBC’s handling of both games was the false note sounded by Guy Mowbray referring to his sidekick as Lawro at almost every opportunity. The BBC doesn’t do modern very well, and shouldn’t try. It should concentrate on being a welcome relief from Sky, not offering more of the same.

Sky has the next leg of the Manchester derby and whichever team makes it to the final to face Aston Villa should give Wembley an occasion to remember. The Carling Cup seems to have found its feet in recent seasons. Managers take it seriously and good teams want to win it. Sir Alex Ferguson puts this down to finally stumbling on a successful format. “The competition has had a resurgence because teams that are in Europe can now come in later,” the Manchester United manager has said. “We used to have two-legged games at the start of the season that were an absolute waste of time; you found yourself playing Rotherham or whatever. If you win one game now, you are in a quarter-final.”

That may explain United’s renewed enthusiasm, though none of the other semi-finalists have European commitments this season. All wanted to win the trophy, and Sam Allardyce, in charge of a side one might have thought would be preoccupied with avoiding relegation, even went so far as to say the league could take a back seat while Blackburn concentrated on trying to reach Wembley.

This is refreshing, just like the FA Cup in days of yore, and that could be part of the reason for the turnaround. The FA Cup is no longer what it used to be. Small to middling teams find it difficult to break the top-four stranglehold most seasons, while the top four are usually more interested in the Champions League come April and May. Priorities lie elsewhere. It could be that the newly compact Carling Cup occupies a more convenient part of the season, a mid-winter slot when there are no major distractions. This column expressed the view several months ago that if the FA Cup wished to reclaim its old popularity it ought to give up the unequal struggle with the Champions League and relocate itself to the portion of the season currently occupied by the Carling Cup. On reflection, that might be unfair. The Carling Cup has done nothing to deserve it.

Neville’s lack of class shows limits of speaking your mind

Given that footballers earn vastly more than everyone outside the banking industry these days, would it not have made more sense for supporters to take a banner to the Emirates imploring the players not to forget the Haitian emergency?

One supposes the well-meaning, non-political yet still faintly patronising gesture by Arsenal’s Bacary Sagna and William Gallas after the Bolton game will be viewed as a welcome sign of footballers living in the real world and helping a good cause, yet when Robbie Fowler showed support for Liverpool dockers in a similar way he was fined.

And when Kaká revealed he belonged to Jesus after winning a Champions League final, in contravention of the ban on T-shirt messages (not to mention third-party ownership), the authorities did nothing except breathe a sigh of relief that he had not pledged allegiance to anyone else with a beard. We do not want a game played by automatons and footballers should be encouraged to behave like human beings, yet the sport constantly finds itself having to clamp down on what might be termed extra-professional activities, mainly because players never know when to stop.

Take the hilarious escalation of the argument that has had Manchester tittering all week. There was nothing wrong with Gary Neville saying United had to let Carlos Tevez go because his price was too high – it is exactly the sort of forthright opinion supporters like to hear and most footballers shrink from uttering. Equally, Tevez was perfectly within his rights to respond in the way he did after his derby goal. But when Neville found he could not handle that and had to resort to adolescent crudity he invited censure for not acting his age, as well as making himself a target for all the ripe insults Tevez has lobbed enthusiastically back.

Funny, too, that Neville saw fit to comment so eloquently on City’s spending and Tevez’s value, matters that strictly speaking are none of his business, yet he refuses to engage with United supporters’ concerns about his own club. “It’s nothing to do with us at all,” he said when asked about the way United was being run. “We players never get involved in the financial side of things.” Really?

Who can say how far Manchester City’s fortunes will rise compared to United’s across the next 10 years?

The question of the week, now that the financial tables at least are thoroughly turned, seems to be whether Manchester City can ever be bigger than Manchester United.

Roberto Mancini doesn’t see why not, although he would say that, wouldn’t he? David Beckham says definitely not, never ever, though the loyal and slightly mischievous lifelong United supporter was not exactly speaking as the voice of impartiality.

What Beckham said was interesting, however, because he said it can never be about just money, it is all about tradition and history, and in those areas United can never be caught. He certainly knows how to put the parvenu rivals in their place, yet, just as with Liverpool’s taunts to Chelsea whenever the pair meet in the Champions League, mentioning history always sounds a little desperate, a tacit admission that while the present may be unpredictable and unsatisfactory, at least the past is unchanging and inviolate. It is safe for United to assume, in other words, that oil will run out in the Middle East and Craig Bellamy will grow tired of arguing with people before City overhaul Old Trafford’s rich accumulation of trophies, legends and memories, no matter how successful they intend to be.

He is probably right, as it happens, though maybe not completely right, for this is a highly subjective area. Beckham was speaking for himself and his generation when he said United would always be top dogs in Manchester. The situation may not appear so clear cut in 10 years’ time if United have spent that period in slow decline and City have been to a few Champions League finals. Yes, the history books and statistics will still show United in the ascendancy, but history books are not necessarily what spark the imagination of football-mad schoolboys. Beckham may have idolised United from afar in his formative years, but who is to say future generations will not grow up venerating the deeds of Carlos Tevez and Shay Given instead? Right now there must be hundreds of 13- and 14-year-olds who think that Chelsea are a far better side and a much more dynamic club than Liverpool, whatever the Kop might have to say on the subject.

Chelsea have never won a European Cup, which puts them miles behind Liverpool and United in the English pecking order, yet they are Champions League regulars with a habit of reaching the later stages. This puts them miles ahead of, say, Spurs, in the London pecking order, despite the fact that Spurs are supposed to have all the history. Spurs have never even played in the Champions League, let alone lost a final on penalties and been robbed of a second by some iffy refereeing. Whatever you think about where their money comes from (and bear in mind Chelsea were playing Champions League football before Roman Abramovich’s takeover) or how they have gone about their business, it has to be admitted that Carlo Ancelotti’s team are the capital’s big cheeses at the moment and it has all come about in a relatively short space of time. The season that Liverpool last won a league title, 1989-90, was Chelsea’s first up from a short spell in the Second Division. No one at Anfield or Stamford Bridge 20 years ago would have imagined the next couple of decades would pan out in quite the way they have.

Say what you like about them lacking class or manners, Chelsea have also given themselves a history. In addition to their ancient history (1955 title and 1970 FA Cup), the Blues can now boast four more FA Cup triumphs, back-to-back league titles in 2005 and 2006, and (almost) back-to-back Champions League finals in 2008 and 2009. So the house is hardly empty, and the decorators are still at work. Manchester City’s house, it must be said, is achingly, groaningly empty, as a banner updated at Old Trafford every season joyously points out. But things can change, and even a Carling Cup final would be a start. Win the thing and that banner will have to come down as well – every journey starts with a single step and all that. City do have a sort of history in any case, apart from the couple of titles and handful of FA Cups they accrued before United got their act together. Matt Busby used to play for City, how’s that for starters? Before he moved to Liverpool, of course. Maine Road was not only the largest club ground in England when it opened, it was temporarily home to United after the second world war while bomb damage to Old Trafford was repaired.

City are not complete arrivistes, in other words; they have not come from nowhere. One can easily understand resentment in less well-connected circles about the way they suddenly came into money, and certainly the way they have been trying to throw it about, but there is no morality in football at the moment, only cash or the lack of it. Look at the mess Liverpool find themselves in at present, after all those years of careful husbandry, doing the right thing by their fans and building up a base for outstanding achievement through solid footballing principles. All United’s current woes can be traced directly to the club’s own decision to raise money by floating itself on the Stock Exchange, becoming a publicly owned company and therefore a saleable commodity. City have simply been taken over by someone with more money, though it is possible United fans are also piqued by the fact that City’s owners follow football a tad more closely than the Glazers.

Precisely because football success is now more likely to stem from the bank vault rather than the boot room, it is unsafe to say history cannot be challenged or quickly rewritten. Ask Arsène Wenger or Rafa Benítez about how hard it is to compete with opponents who can keep buying rather than building, constantly topping up their quality level by an expensive process of trial and error. Or ask Wolves about history. With Manchester United, Stan Cullis’s side could claim to have been the team of the 1950s, with three titles, the captain of England and some pioneering European exploits, but since then they have been to the bottom division and back, and are now owned by a businessman who really wanted to buy Liverpool. When David Jones went to Molineux in 2001 he took down the pictures of the Billy Wright era from the walls, because he felt the club should not be living in the past. Sam Allardyce, in contrast, has just had photographs of Blackburn winning trophies under Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness restored to Ewood corridors, because he wants his players to be proud of the club and does not imagine the past will be returning any time soon. “Everyone knows what Jack Walker did for this club, but anyone wanting to do the same now would have to pump in £150m or £200m, not £30m or £40m,” he said. “It would be very unusual for anyone to want to do that, don’t you think?”

Blackburn always were an anomaly in the Premier League. But if there are two major clubs in the same major city, and one is filthy rich while the other is so mired in debt it is considering selling the family silver, it is at least possible, let’s not put it any stronger than that, that the next 10 years will be nothing like the last. History, like everything else in football, can be bought.

Ferguson was underwhelmed, City’s fans are overjoyed – but who will be smiling after the Carling Cup semi-final?

If Roberto Mancini’s honeymoon period ended at Everton, so too did the Carlos Tevez bandwagon. With 11 goals in his previous nine games since the beginning of December, Manchester City’s summer capture from their local rivals had been building towards an explosive contribution to tonight’s Manchester derby in the first leg of the Carling Cup semi-final. At Goodison, though, he was becalmed with the rest of a non-existent City attack.

There were no ironic chants of “Fergie, Fergie, sign him up”, and the worry for City was that Tevez was not on his own in failing to make any impact. Little was expected of Robinho, and little was certainly received, though it must have been a disappointment for City supporters to see hitherto impressive performers such as Craig Bellamy and Martin Petrov so easily sidelined.

The defeat on Merseyside and the magnitude of tonight’s game means that Mancini must now make a stab at naming his strongest attacking line-up. His options are compromised by the absence of Emmanuel Adebayor, further injury to Roque Santa Cruz and the abysmal form of Robinho, so it is not difficult to imagine Tevez being the first attacking name on the teamsheet.

Not only has the former Manchester United striker been among the goals, he badly wants to play in the derby and has a habit of doing well against his former clubs. He scored twice against West Ham United this season, and though he did not get on the scoresheet in the epic 4-3 defeat at Old Trafford in September, he rushed back from injury to take part in the game and his persistence caused problems for the United defence.

“He wasn’t properly fit for that game but nothing would stop him playing,” said Pablo Zabaleta, another Argentinian in the City camp. “That’s the kind of player he is. He makes people happy. When we lose the ball he always tries to win it back. He never stops, and people like that.”

City supporters certainly do. According to Mike Summerbee, a former favourite whose own workrate was more eye-catching than his finishing or technical ability, Tevez has already made himself popular at Eastlands and not just by preferring City to United. “City fans will always take to players like him who give 100%,” Summerbee said. “He is a hard-working player but he has top-flight ability as well.”

That is the nub of the issue, for were it merely a question of workrate and application Tevez might still be in favour at Old Trafford. The player never let anyone down at United and Sir Alex Ferguson repeatedly praised his energetic contributions, yet the manager found it difficult to offer him a regular starting berth and eventually decided, or at least did not come to sufficiently decisive a conclusion to convince Tevez that he meant it, that £25m was a lot to ask for a striker whose misses were as notable as his goals.

Particularly when United already had Wayne Rooney, who covers much of the same ground as Tevez, and, like the Argentinian, prefers to play just behind a more advanced striker. Ferguson decided to stake everything on a partnership developing between Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov and let City work out how best to utilize Tevez. Tonight’s game could be regarded as something of a showdown to prove which side showed the better judgment, even though Tevez has had more attacking partners than City have had free flights to Abu Dhabi.

The player himself regards it as a showdown, and that is the most important thing. “I want to play in this match for many reasons,” Tevez said. “The squad is confident, morale is high and if we get a victory over United it will be sensational.”

The money was not an issue for City, indeed it is likely they paid significantly more than £25m, and they have been rewarded by 15 goals this season for keeping their promise and playing him regularly. That total looks even more impressive next to Robinho’s miserable record of none. All City fans have seen from their £32.5m signing this season is a succession of anguished gestures and eye-rolling histrionics after alleged near-misses. Even allowing for the Brazilian’s time out through injury, Tevez looks conspicuously better value for money, though anyone is going to be flattered by having his attitude measured against Robinho.

The bigger question is where Tevez fits into Mancini’s first-choice attack. The Italian has said he would like to play with a big man up front but will have to put those plans on hold until Adebayor returns from Africa and Santa Cruz recovers from injury. When that happens City may have to make an overdue decision about which player starts alongside him, and whether Robinho is to be accommodated or sidelined, but until then Tevez can carry on carrying the attack. Which should suit everyone, with the possible exception of nervous United defenders.

“For me, Carlos is one of the top 10 players in the world,” said Mancini, who also put Shay Given in the top five goalkeepers and seems to occupy his spare moments by drawing up such imaginary lists. “He played well for United but now he plays for us and it is important that he concentrates on the game and doesn’t think about the past. He is a world-class striker who is in top form, but he is not just putting the ball in the net, his team ethic is fantastic. His movement and pace worries defenders, he is clever and is now playing with confidence. I do not like to pick out individuals but Carlos has been outstanding.”

The focus will be on the troubled Red Empire in the Carling Cup instalment of the Manchester derby, not the arrivistes

It has only ever happened once on Sir Alex Ferguson’s watch, so long ago that the Premier League had yet to come into existence and Crystal Palace finished third in the top tier of English football. In 1991, Manchester City finished fifth in the league, with Manchester United three points below them in sixth. In seventh and eighth places that year, just to emphasise that we are practically talking pre-history, were Wimbledon and Nottingham Forest.

City’s inability to finish within touching distance of their neighbours in the Premier League era, never mind above them, may have led a few bookmakers to take their eye off the ball at the start of the season. A City-supporting friend of mine, looking for a playful punt, managed to get odds of 33-1 on Blue Moon rising above Red Empire. If you look at the records, perhaps that does not seem unduly generous. If you looked at City’s long sequence of draws under Mark Hughes, you might even feel it a tad stingy. City’s colossal bank balance has not so far been brought to bear in the current transfer window, and the three straight wins under Roberto Mancini that took them into the top four last weekend are not necessarily cause for premature celebration either, because the Italian was lucky to be presented with a sequence of winnable games and greater challenges will undoubtedly come later. But that’s enough about City. Anyone scrutinising the Eastlands operation for pointers to local ascendancy might be looking in the wrong place. The key almost certainly lies with United.

That’s the United who have lost five games already, gone out of the FA Cup to League One opponents, have enormous financial problems away from the pitch and a team destabilised by injuries on it. The United that play City in a Carling Cup semi-final this week that Ferguson has admitted he now has “mixed views” about. His original intention, before the FA Cup exit to Leeds, was to keep faith with his younger, less experienced, Carling Cup side. That way, even if you go out to local rivals, you don’t admit complete defeat. Now the United manager is talking of bringing back some of his more experienced players for the cup tie, not necessarily picking a full‑strength side but mixing in a bit more nous and know‑how to try to avoid another shock on the scale of Leeds.

Not that it would be much of a shock were City to win at least the home leg, no matter what strength of team Ferguson puts out. They came close to drawing at Old Trafford in the league encounter earlier in the season and since that day in September the Blues have unquestionably improved while United have been besieged by problems from all directions. That is the factor bookmakers and pundits failed to consider at the start of the season. There seemed no reason, even allowing for the loss of Cristiano Ronaldo, for United to go into sudden and sharp decline. The league table still argues powerfully that they have done no such thing, yet by their own high standards United have been a disappointment this season, and it is only through good fortune that no one else in a generally unimpressive top four has managed to open up a commanding lead.

Why have United been such a disappointment? Three main reasons. First Ronaldo’s wow factor has been missed. Not just his extremely useful goals, assists, free-kicks, and ability to change a game on his own, a certain amount of fearlessness has gone and not been replaced. Second, injuries to Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and others have robbed Ferguson of his first-choice back line for long periods. Third, despite both scoring yesterday, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov have just not gelled as an attacking partnership. The former is having to do too much on his own, which is never in his best interests no matter how willing to work he might be, and the latter, even if he is carrying a knee injury that will require surgery at the end of the season, has not lived up to his £24m transfer fee and failed to reproduce the form that so captivated his admirers at Spurs.

In terms of living up to an exorbitant fee, Carlos Tevez is doing a far better job at City. Not only is he in the goals and growing in confidence week by week, his roaming runs and non-stop workrate are a perfect fit with the ability of players such as Craig Bellamy and Martin Petrov to launch quick counters. At Old Trafford, he tended to replicate Rooney’s contribution, which is why Ferguson found it difficult to accommodate him and can be believed when he says he has no regrets about selling him. While the United manager must have been delighted to bank that money and pick up Michael Owen on a free, City are now the ones with all the attacking options, even with Emmanuel Adebayor still to come back.

Ferguson is not about to admit that, of course, though he does concede that City’s money could make them a force in the future. “They could offer a billion for Lionel Messi and it probably wouldn’t affect them too much,” he speculated. “Given their money anything is possible.” True, but anything is still possible this season, even if the only incomer is Patrick Vieira. And the pressure is not on the arrivistes, it’s all on the team struggling to stay at the top.

Burnley appointing the recently sacked Sheffield Wednesday manager Brian Laws is one of the more bizarre twists of fate

The one thing Burnley supporters did not expect, when their club posted that sensational result against Manchester United at Turf Moor in the first week of the season, was that they would be spending the week of the return fixture searching for a new manager.

That is why people have turned against Owen Coyle. Not because he has sought security at a slightly larger club, but because he has left Burnley in the lurch, put the book down with the fairytale half finished. Just when United were looking at their most vulnerable too. Another thing Burnley could not have imagined on that heady night last August was that United would lose four more league matches by the turn of the year, and go out of the FA Cup at home to a team from League One.

The perception now is that while Coyle’s Burnley might have given United another fright, managerless Burnley, or Brian Laws’ Burnley, will arrive at Old Trafford like Cinderella after the stroke of midnight, riding a pumpkin rather than a carriage and bound for a quick return to the Championship. That may be grossly unfair on the Burnley players and whoever fills the managerial vacancy, but it is what most instinctively believe will happen.

The challenge for the new Burnley manager is therefore tougher than it was for Coyle when he first walked into Turf Moor. It is true to say Coyle exceeded all expectations, but valid also to point out that there weren’t any real expectations. He certainly was not expected to give Burnley their first taste of Premier League football within 18 months and commence beating Manchester United and Everton shortly afterwards. The task for the new manager is to confound everyone’s expectations, and that is hard when even Coyle’s Burnley could well have gone straight back down.

Blackburn Rovers, for instance, are said to be running out of patience with Sam Allardyce, and no wonder if Monday’s spineless collapse at Manchester City is the best he can supervise. Yet even “crisis club” Rovers are a point better off and a place higher in the table than Burnley, who were delighted with the job Coyle was doing. Similarly Bolton Wanderers, widely derided for being lower in the table than Coyle’s former club, are only two points behind Burnley with two games in hand. It is not difficult to see the logic in Coyle’s actions, in fact set against some of the other managerial changes of the last couple of weeks the new Bolton manager seems to be the only one capable of thinking straight.

Those who claim Coyle should have stayed where he was and seen the job through should consider the fate of Alan Irvine at Preston North End, still popular with fans and players but sacked by a board unhappy with an unproductive run of results and a dropping back into mid-table. Perhaps it was Burnley joining Wigan Athletic and Blackburn in the top flight that was bugging Preston and making them more impatient for success, we shall never know. But Irvine was a decent manager doing a decent job, a fact at least recognised by Sheffield Wednesday, who snapped him up quickly after removing Laws.

Wednesday really are in trouble, just one place off the foot of the Championship table, so Laws getting the Burnley job is one of the more bizarre twists of fate in recent years. One minute he is heading for League One, the next he is in the Premier League. The only discernible logic behind Burnley appointing Laws, or interviewing Doncaster Rovers’ Sean O’Driscoll, is that it shows they still see themselves as a Championship club, and are looking for a Championship manager.

If that sounds too much like the dreaded lack of ambition, then it is probably only a matter of budget. After Coyle worked his wonders on the cheap, Burnley famously stated they would not be going into debt or indulging in any ruinous chasing of the Premier League dream. Fair play to them, and goodness knows, in a week when Liverpool’s American owners have been bragging that their debt mountain is smaller than that of Manchester United’s American owners, Burnley are a welcome reminder of what football should be all about. But the club cannot expect to keep ambitious managers happy that way. Coyle only has the one career. He too would doubtless prefer a more level playing field rather than an unequal struggle against clubs with many times more resources, but he had to deal with the situation as he found it. Everybody does. Laws is said to be happy to work within the Burnley budget, so good luck to him. Maybe Coyle simply wasn’t, or at least was beginning to become frustrated by the law of diminishing returns.

There have been calls for managers to stay put for the duration of a season, and only change clubs or listen to approaches during the summer break, but this will never happen for the simple reason that clubs will never stop sacking people midway through a season. Maybe if they knew they could not get a replacement until the end of the season it would help in that respect, but some managerial appointments simply do not work out as planned and there has to be some opportunity for running repairs. Would Bolton have liked Sammy Lee for a whole season, for instance? Would Paul Ince have finally found his feet at Blackburn? Alan Shearer for a full season at Newcastle United? Lawrie Sanchez at Fulham?

While it may be true that all managers need time, some managers need more time than others. Whoever sits in the visiting dugout at Old Trafford on Saturday faces a daunting prospect. Not only is he taking charge of his first game, away to Manchester United, with a team perilously close to the relegation positions. In the opposite dugout will be a manger who, even at the age of 68 and with money worries of his own, will probably be around for longer.

This article was published before the official confirmation of Brian Laws as Burnley’s new manager

Leeds are two divisions lower than Manchester United, but the intense rivalry born in the Seventies lingers on

There’s a big game taking place at Old Trafford this afternoon. The television cameras will be there, the biggest crowd of the weekend will turn up even if the occasion is not quite sold out, and at the end everyone will want to know the score. Which is remarkable, really, given that Manchester United are playing at home in the third round of the FA Cup against a team two divisions below them.

Manchester United versus Leeds United just has to be a big game, even if the reasons are mostly historical and the two sides have not met for five years. In what may be a calculated snub towards Manchester City Sir Alex Ferguson now prefers to build up his team’s rivalry with Liverpool as the keenest in the north, leading to the two biggest grudge matches of the season, yet it has not always been that way. Before Liverpool rose to prominence in the 70s and 80s, setting a target of league titles that it has been Ferguson’s proud achievement to reel in, the two Uniteds were the cocks of the north, the Lancashire-Yorkshire boundary the most conspicuous frontline in football outside derbies between teams from the same city.

For a while, as Leeds emerged as a force under Don Revie, the Yorkshire team even held the upper hand. Manchester United had the glamour, the Best-Law-Charlton trinity and the tragic romance that held everyone’s attention in the 10 years that spanned the Munich disaster and Matt Busby’s European Cup triumph in 1968, but as the 60s turned into the 70s it was Leeds who were winning matches. Damned United or not, Revie built an immensely strong side and, between winning the league in 1969 and 1974, Leeds were runners-up three years on the trot, a notable level of consistency in an era when honours tended not to be monopolised by the same two or three clubs. Liverpool had six seasons without a trophy until Bill Shankly’s second great side won the league and the Uefa Cup in 1973. Manchester United fared even worse after 1968, famously enduring a season in the Second Division as Leeds lost Revie, then Brian Clough, and went all the way to a notorious European Cup final in 1975.

Joe Jordan, one of a number of leading players to have appeared for both clubs, remembers being captivated while still a young player in Scotland by the grim but compelling drama the two Uniteds produced in the twice replayed 1970 FA Cup semi-final. Goalless draws at Hillsborough and Villa Park were followed by another tense game at Burnden Park, Bolton, where Billy Bremner scored the only goal to take Leeds to the final, itself replayed, against Chelsea. “They were just epic encounters,” Jordan says. “Meetings between the two clubs were always the big clashes, but the 1970 games were enthralling.” Everyone of a certain age remembers the equally gripping final that year, in no small part due to its undiluted savagery, yet it is important to remember also that in 1970 Chelsea and Leeds were still arriving on football’s main stage – neither had ever won the FA Cup.

There were other ways to measure success, however, and Gordon McQueen remembers being impressed – how could he not be? – when walking into the Leeds dressing room as a teenager down from St Mirren in 1973. “There was Jack Charlton, a World Cup winner with England, Johnny Giles, the captain of Ireland, and Billy Bremner, the Scottish captain,” he recalls. “Leeds were a huge team at the time, some of their players were like legends.”

For all that, the magic formula was lost when Revie left to manage England in 1974, despite Clough being shown the door in 44 days and Jimmy Armfield’s initial success in steering Leeds to a European Cup final. “Everything started to fall apart when Revie left,” McQueen says. “I enjoyed playing under Clough but I’m not sure he was the right man for the job, and nothing was quite the same after that.” McQueen joined Manchester United in 1978, managing to inflame an awkward situation even more by declaring there was no one bigger. “Ninety nine per cent of footballers want to play for Manchester United,” he said, quite memorably. “The rest are liars.”

To no one’s great surprise the switches of allegiance by Jordan and McQueen did not go down well in Yorkshire, even though it says much about the relative innocence of the age that both continued to live in the Leeds area for six months while playing on the other side of the Pennines. “What we had to put up with was a lot worse than anything that happened to Eric Cantona, Rio Ferdinand or Alan Smith,” McQueen says. “We couldn’t go outside without ^­ getting abuse.” That was because Manchester United were beginning to grow strong again by 1978, while Leeds fans had the uneasy but accurate suspicion that selling two of their best players to rivals meant they were entering a period of decline. So it proved, and Leeds spent most of the 80s in the Second Division, before winning the last of the old-style league titles under Howard Wilkinson in 1992.

They were slightly lucky to do so, given that Ferguson’s Manchester United blew up in the final furlong, yet one wonders what might have happened had Wilkinson not made such a gift of Cantona to the Old Trafford cause the following season. The Frenchman had played his part in securing the title for Leeds, though Wilkinson’s failure to see his true worth or potential was just about the end of him as a manager and the beginning of Ferguson’s pomp.

The present Manchester United manager has no hesitation in describing Cantona as one of his best signings and the catalyst for all his side’s subsequent achievements, and it remains odd that Old Trafford’s 26 barren years were brought to a close by a player deemed surplus to requirements not only by historic rivals but by the previous season’s champions. Yet trans-Pennine business has always gone on. Gordon Strachan was part of Leeds’s’ title success, after all, and among players in recent decades to have appeared for both sides are Andy Ritchie, Denis Irwin, Lee Sharpe and the aforementioned Smith and Ferdinand.

“It’s a funny sort of rivalry,” says Lou Macari, who never played for Leeds but joined Manchester United from Celtic when Revie’s side were at their peak in 1973. “These aren’t teams from the same city, not even the same county, yet geographically they are quite close and the rivalry used to be fierce. When I first came to Manchester the derby game was against City, and that was the first fixture everyone would look out for. The toughest game of the season was always against Leeds, and that would be the second.

“Matches against Leeds were always battles, really big games, but that wasn’t through Lancashire-Yorkshire rivalry. It was because Leeds were so good. They had a great side, some really big name players. I can still list them all. They always gave you a game and to be honest they often got the better of us. I can remember playing them in the semi-final the year we won the FA Cup against Liverpool, and what a tough match it was. I looked at the present Leeds teamsheet the other day and it hit me that I hardly knew any of the names. I’m not saying they aren’t any good, just that things have changed a lot since my playing days. I imagine that if Manchester United put out a full strength side in the Cup tie it will be a mismatch. I’m still going to be there, though. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

• Manager’s position is sacrosanct at Old Trafford, says Scot
• Manchester United battle through injury crisis for visit to Hull

Alex Ferguson believes Manchester United would never behave in the way Manchester City did in sacking Mark Hughes halfway through his second season – and has also revealed that he advised his son, Darren, to quit Peterborough in the summer “before things turned nasty”.

“If I was just coming in today I think United would give me enough time to prove myself,” he says. “The manager is always in a strong position at Manchester United; his position is always sacrosanct as far as the directors are concerned. I was given time back in the 80s and I think the same thing would happen now. When I go whoever replaces me will get plenty of time, I’m sure of that. We are just that kind of club.”

Ferguson is critical of City’s short-term view on their rebuilding project, and says of Hughes: “I know he was still suffering when I phoned him the following day.” Darren Ferguson was another to suffer. After leading Peterborough to promotion last season he was sacked by the Championship club in November.

“He had more faith in the players than I had, but these things only come with experience,” Ferguson Sr says. “Management at that level hasn’t really changed over the years, but the job at United is completely different now to what it was when I arrived. I had to have my hands on everything when I started out but I couldn’t possibly manage the club the way I did in 1986. When I came there was just me and my assistant and about five people to help us, and that was it. Now we have five physios, three fitness coaches, two video analysts, a doctor, an optometrist, a podiatrician, a weight trainer, two reserve coaches and all the academy staff. We must have 40 people at least. Delegation is all important now. I rely on good people who have been with me a long time, 20 years in some cases.”

Having been a graduate of the Ferguson/Old Trafford school, Hughes tried to lay similar foundations at Manchester City though he did not get the time to see the project to fruition. While sympathising with his former player, Ferguson is hopeful that the League Managers Association’s outstanding record in winning contractual battles on behalf of dismissed managers will make clubs think twice before using the exit door as an easy option in the future.

“Managers don’t get as much protection as players. If I have a player I don’t like I can’t just get rid of him, whereas clubs can just pull the plug on managers and not even honour their contracts. You would hope clubs would start realising they are dealing with a different animal now in the LMA. They are a substantial outfit with tremendous legal backing. If we can get to a position where clubs have to pay up contracts immediately on sacking a manager they might start to think a bit longer before doing it.”

Besides worrying about other managers, Ferguson has his own injury crisis to think about as well as a trip to Hull City made more daunting by United’s recent form. Ferguson admits he has never known a time when so many defenders were unavailable. “To have to go into games with just one recognised defender [Patrice Evra] is an unusual situation, to say the least. We have players coming back though, and once we get the regular backline back I’ll be pretty confident.

“I am surprised that we have lost five games already, but once I can pick my regular back four we’ll have a better chance. I don’t know if we can win the title after losing so many games, but I certainly hope we can. Getting a few defenders back will make a hell of a difference.”

• Belgian likely to line up beside Michael Carrick at Fulham
• Patrice Evra urges prayers to end injury crisis

Sir Alex Ferguson looks set to turn to the Belgian youngster Ritchie de Laet for Saturday’s visit to Fulham as Manchester United’s defensive problems continue to mount up. Having ruled out John O’Shea and Jonny Evans until January, and with Gary Neville joining Rio Ferdinand on the injured list with an unspecified date for his return, the United manager was hoping Nemanja Vidic and Wes Brown would stay fit to see them through the festive period.

Instead, Brown is out for a fortnight with a hamstring injury, while the stand-in captain, Vidic, strained his calf in Tuesday’s 3-0 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers. Although the injury might not be as serious as first feared, Vidic still looks doubtful, meaning De Laet could be paired with Michael Carrick at centre-back.

The 21-year-old Belgian ended up in that position against Wolves and is believed to be happiest at centre-half, though he has played all along the back line for United. “Ritchie showed some promise at centre-back and he will probably be there on Saturday now,” Ferguson said. “We just have to get on with it.”

However, Patrice Evra, United’s only fit first-team defender, is less confident about the club’s ability to deal with the injury crisis. “The injuries are getting worse,” he said. “I have told everyone they need to go to church every day and pray. It is a difficult time that’s for sure. But the squad is strong enough and, thankfully, we have some players like Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher who can play at the back.”

Time will tell if Mick McCarthy’s decision at Old Trafford to rest 10 of the players who beat Tottenham was right

Any Wolves fans reading this who were at Old Trafford on Tuesday night may like to post a comment or two to clear up a mystery.

When defending his radical decision to rest all 10 outfield players from the victory against Spurs four days earlier, Mick McCarthy said he had some sympathy if fans were disappointed but hoped they would understand his reasoning. So the question is: do they? Do Wolves fans really not mind trooping up to Manchester on a cold, rainy night and paying £40 or so to watch the reserves get trounced? And would they, as McCarthy trusts will be the case, forgive everything if the club manages to stay up at the end of the season?

Part of the reason for asking is that midway through the second half the away fans struck up a chant of “We want our money back”. In the press room afterwards, opinion was divided about how this should be presented to news desks. Clearly, a team sending out the stiffs to lose 3-0 to Manchester United and being attacked by their own supporters for offering poor value for money makes a good story, one that virtually writes its own headline. Yet it was not at all clear the Wolves fans were attacking their own team.

They remained good humoured all night and seemed to enjoy themselves despite the disappointment, mocking the United support, predicting the locals would soon be following Chelsea or Manchester City, and proudly proclaiming they supported their local team. Even at the end they were singing both the team’s name and McCarthy’s, so it was hard to say they were angry or even discontented.

I actually thought the “We want our money back” chants were ironically aimed at United, because neither the Old Trafford atmosphere nor the home performance were anything to write home about and the away supporters had just been chanting “What a waste of money” at the mostly unimpressive Dimitar Berbatov. While it was worth mentioning, it was not necessarily a case of Angry Wolves Fans Turn On McCarthy, even though that story was clearly there to be written.

One imagines angry Wolves fans will soon be turning on McCarthy if anything goes wrong on Sunday against Burnley, the “winnable” fixture for which the manager is saving his senior players, though if I am wrong and supporters were genuinely annoyed at Old Trafford please write in and let me know. All I can say is it didn’t sound like it.

A crowd of more than 73,000, paying the sort of prices Premier League grounds charge these days, certainly has a right to be annoyed when what looks like an intriguing fixture – bearing in mind Wolves’ sensational result at the weekend – turns into a meaningless reserve match devoid of any excitement or interest. In the old days there used to be firm rules about this sort of thing, both to protect the interests of paying spectators and to keep the competition honest so that Chelsea or Arsenal, say, could not complain United were given the points too easily.

McCarthy said he didn’t hear any objections from United when he gamely but unwisely gave Chelsea an easy victory by attempting to play 3-5-2 against them, though that is not really the point. Wolves are at Arsenal in April next year, at a stage of the season when they are likely to be fighting for every point and unlikely to be picking their matches. Should McCarthy’s players battle for a draw at the Emirates, for example, and those two dropped points make the difference between Arsenal finishing inside or outside the top four, what Wolves did at Old Trafford will not be easily forgiven in London.

A team’s levels of energy and application vary throughout the season in response to the exact challenge at hand, everyone understands that. But it still ought to be recognisable as the same team, even if listless one week and motivated the next. Ten changes is just too many, especially after such a splendid win on Saturday.

The trouble is that the old rules were formulated in the days when squads were considerably smaller and everyone knew to within a position or two what comprised each club’s best team. Younger readers may find this hard to imagine, but in the dim and distant past football supporters could not only rhyme off the names of their own club’s first team, they could do so for most of the rest of the division as well. So you knew when you were being short changed.

You might be disappointed on occasion if United turned up without George Best or Liverpool without John Barnes, but you would be familiar with the deputies. If teams turned up with half a dozen or more players you had never heard of they would be in trouble, because they would literally be playing their reserves, and reserves in the old day were not potential substitutes but a lower level of competition altogether.

Reserves in that sense hardly exist any more. Champions League squads, Carling Cup teams, seven substitutes and the dreaded rotation have blurred all the old boundaries, and McCarthy was within his rights to describe his Old Trafford side as drawn from his first-team squad. It may even have been his strongest side, there is no way of knowing. It wasn’t his first team, though, not by a long chalk. McCarthy says he will be justified if Wolves stay up at the end of the season, though for the 73,000 who paid to watch a non-event at Old Trafford, that’s too long a wait. Longer even than the match itself.

If Wolves can no longer be punished by the league for making 10 changes and fielding a toothless team at Old Trafford, they must surely have fallen foul of the Trades Description Act by continuing to wear a logo depicting a wild animal. Certainly Manchester United will never find a tamer way of catching Chelsea at the top of the Premier League table.

The stylish way would have been by beating Aston Villa on Saturday, so that this victory would have taken them three points clear, but after the startling events of four days ago – when United were beaten 1-0 by Martin O’Neill’s men on their own turf – this was a soporific stroll. While Sir Alex Ferguson will have no grumbles about three easy points, complaints about the Wolves line-up and attitude to the game may be remembered for quite a while longer.

Mick McCarthy sprang a big surprise with his team selection: 10 of them, in fact, as every outfield player from Saturday’s notable win at Spurs was rested. In the old days, before anyone had heard of Champions League squads or rotation, teams used to get into trouble for doing that.

Now Wolves can offer the defence that sides at the top of the table regularly make wholesale changes and, presumably argue, that Burnley at home this weekend is a more winnable fixture.

Even so, at least some of the travelling supporters must have thought they were coming to watch the league’s most in-form away side and harbouring hopes of an unlikely double, while any neutrals permitting themselves to dream that United might be hit by a Midlands double whammy will have been similarly disappointed.

The home side themselves were not at full strength, with Michael Carrick again deployed as a centre half beside Nemanja Vidic and Ritchie de Laet preferred to Darren Fletcher at right-back. United still did most of the early attacking, with Wayne Rooney bringing two saves from the Wolves goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann in the first 15 minutes, although Wolves’ biggest scare came between them when Stefan Maierhofer almost turned Darron Gibson’s cross over his own line.

United kept pressing for an opening goal to settle the game down, with Rooney shooting narrowly wide and Vidic blazing over the bar from a corner, and when even Wolves reserves began causing them problems in defence, it was easy to see why. First a long throw from Greg Halford found United defenders looking at each other and left George Friend with a close-range opportunity he really should have accepted, then the United goalkeeper Tomasz Kuszczak came for Andrew Surman’s floated free kick and dropped it under pressure from Maierhofer.

Just as McCarthy must have been feeling his inexperienced players were managing to hold their own, Wolves lack of maturity found them out and allowed United the easiest of escapes. Ronald Zubar was under no particular pressure when Gibson sent over a corner from the right, yet he inexplicably raised an arm and handled. The referee spotted the offence and Rooney scored his 13th goal of the season with an emphatically struck penalty.

Wolves were always going to find it hard to come back after that and the prospect became even more unlikely when United scored a second from a corner just before the interval. Again Gibson took it, and this time Vidic met the ball with his usual power from close to the penalty spot. Hahnemann reacted quickly enough to get his hands to the ball but the header was so forceful it squirmed out of his grasp and over the line.

The second half was predictably low key, enlivened only by ironic chants of “we want our money back” from the visiting fans, and what was shaping up to be an entertaining feud between Maierhofer and Vidic until McCarthy brought it to a close by withdrawing his striker. Vidic himself lasted only a few minutes longer before heading for the dressing room, leaving United with a back-line featuring Carrick and Fletcher. The later went to right-back with De Laet then moving inside to centre half.

United made it comfortable after 66 minutes, when Antonio Valencia finished neatly from Dimitar Berbatov’s overhead flick, though in truth, against a weakened team, the home attack looked only slightly sharper that they had against Villa.

Here was an opportunity for Rooney to fill his boots, or for Berbatov to play himself back into form and confidence, yet when the former made way for Michael Owen near the end he had barely added anything to his penalty, and Berbatov’s assist proved to be his only telling contribution.

The Wolves fans were still singing at the end and seem to have taken this apparent slap in the face in good heart – their chants seemed to suggest it was United who were not worth the admission money – though smiles may quickly turn to snarls at Molineux should things go awry against Burnley on Sunday.

Just when they needed three points to close the gap on misfiring Chelsea, Manchester United went and lost at home to Aston Villa for the first time in living memory. Well, since 1983, to be exact, three years before Sir Alex Ferguson arrived and before Martin O’Neill even tried his hand at management

Not only have Villa never beaten United in the Premier League era, they have hardly ever drawn either. It has pretty much been one-way traffic in United’s favour, which is why their inability to break down Villa, even with three attacking substitutes, was so surprising.

This was not one of those games, either, where heroics from Brad Friedel kept Villa in the hunt. There have been a few of those already this season, yet though he saved from Dimitar Berbatov at the end and was indebted to Stewart Downing for clearing a Nemanja Vidic header off the line, it was one of the Villa goalkeeper’s less hectic afternoons.

United did not create that many clear-cut chances. Villa made at least as many and with Richard Dunne and Carlos Cuéllar coping with everything United could throw at them – not that much, to be honest – Villa were good value for their win.

“We had two or three good opportunities, but so did Villa,” Ferguson said, fairly. “We pummelled them in the second half, but didn’t take our chances.”

Villa took one of theirs to make it three wins out of three against top four teams this season. O’Neill tried his best to downplay the achievement, without coming close to succeeding. “I’m delighted,” the Villa manager said. “Our record this season is pretty exceptional. There were times when United penned us in, but when we broke out we still made chances. Not only have we tightened up defensively, I thought we played pretty cleverly, standing off their forwards rather than diving in.”

Ferguson paid lip service beforehand to the idea that the top four may have a different make-up by the end of the season, though with Spurs losing at home to Wolves and Manchester City having to come back three times to draw at Bolton it did not seem the ideal day on which to make the argument. Nor did it look as if Villa were about to do anything other than prolong their abysmal record during an opening 20 minutes when they stood back and allowed their opponents to give a passing exhibition. Ryan Giggs, Antonio Valencia, Wayne Rooney and even Ji-Sung Park skipped round Villa defenders with nonchalant ease, without ever managing a convincing end product. With Villa barely able to cross the half- way line, it appeared only a matter of time before United managed to find a combination to work, yet expectations were instantly overturned when the visitors finally put an attack together and showed their hosts how to be more direct.

Gabriel Agbonlahor played a ball out to Ashley Young on the left wing and sped into the area to await the return, and when Tomasz Kuszczak obligingly stayed on his line instead of attempting to collect a cross that cleared Vidic, it was a simple task for Agbonlahor to nod the ball past him.

If Kuszczak was to blame on that occasion, he partly redeemed himself a few minutes later by preventing Agbonlahor finding Emile Heskey in the area after a mistake by Darren Fletcher.

United spent the rest of the half in search of an equaliser, some of their early poise gone and a touch of desperation creeping into their play. Rooney was booked for ludicrously diving in search of a penalty when Luke Young had already pulled out of the tackle, though in fairness the England striker was United’s liveliest attacker and was unlucky when he crashed a shot against the bar from Patrice Evra’s cross on the half-hour. Apart from that, and a 20-yard drive from Michael Carrick that he dealt with comfortably, Friedel did not have a lot to do before half-time.

Perhaps for that reason Ferguson withdrew Giggs at the interval and sent on Michael Owen. Giggs may be in the frame for Sports Personality of the Year tonight but on the basis of his efforts against Wolfsburg in midweek Owen is more likely to worry a goalkeeper. The substitute linked with Valencia on the right in the 55th minute to send over a tantalising low cross that rolled across goal with Rooney and Park unable to respond quickly enough. Had it been Owen in the middle United might have been in business, but with Rooney energetic rather than effective, this game proved once again that the United attack lacks focus and to some extent discipline. While weaker teams will be worn down or worn out, at the top level you have to be more incisive.

Ferguson added more potency to his attack by bringing first Berbatov off the bench then Darron Gibson, succeeding only in emphasising the fact that his original selection had lacked firepower. “It was one of those days when it just wouldn’t go in,” Ferguson reckoned, shortly after late misses by Gibson and Berbatov had proved it. It was not United’s day, nor Owen’s. Agbonlahor and Ashley Young, on the other hand, look as if their time has come.

Expect Rafa Benítez to prevail on Saturday – but Mark Hughes’s men to finish higher in the table

The eagerly anticipated meeting of Liverpool and Manchester City at Anfield on Saturday is already being talked up as the battle for fourth place, which would have infuriated at least one of the participants at the start of the season.

Meaning Liverpool, of course. City, one would guess, would still be happy with fourth place, now that their electric start to the campaign and not so secret desire to beat the big boys has been tempered by a run of mundane draws against lesser sides. That was exactly what blunted Liverpool’s impact last time round, and Jamie Carragher was being more than a little economical with the truth when he claimed in his autobiography that the Premier League was getting harder each season because last time Liverpool only lost two games and still came up short.

That logic is undermined by the fact that Manchester United managed to lose a whopping four games and still win the thing. Carragher also neglected to mention that Liverpool drew 11 games to United’s six, including seven games at home. The Premier League may or may not be getting harder, but you can hardly expect to win it if you lose 14 points through drawing at home when your main rivals only dropped seven through two draws and a single (spectacular) defeat.

The story of last season was actually quite simple. Liverpool got up for the big games but let themselves down in the bread-and-butter fixtures. United, on the other hand, mopped up most of the points on offer from the league’s lesser lights and won the title despite an unimpressive record against top four opponents. City still cannot quite be regarded as a top-four side, not when they can only draw with the likes of Burnley and Birmingham, but Saturday’s game should help establish if anything has changed.

Having lost five times already in the league and run into all sorts of trouble in Europe, Liverpool are looking more likely to unravel under Rafael Benítez than produce the modest improvement on last season’s results that many people in August thought would be enough to end the long wait for a title. They still rely too much on Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, two players who have had injury problems this season and last, and unless something nearly as miraculous as the recovery in Istanbul is going to come along to rescue Rafa’s reputation, the manager could spend a long time regretting the botched piece of transfer business that failed to land Gareth Barry and at the same time left Xabi Alonso with the feeling he was no longer wanted.

Yet for all their faults, and even with Barry appearing in City’s colours, Liverpool can usually be relied upon to win their must-win games, especially the ones at Anfield. This is City’s biggest test to date, given that Liverpool appear to be vulnerable and teams with top-four ambitions must expect to be measured against close rivals. They gave a good account of themselves in the Manchester derby, a week after raising the bar with that thrilling win against Arsenal, but no one really expected Mark Hughes’s team to turn over United at Old Trafford.

This is different. City can put themselves back on the map by winning at Anfield, and to judge by recent results it ought to be possible. But Liverpool cannot afford to lose and Benítez has just described the game as the key to the rest of the season. “I am 100% sure everything will be totally different if we can win the game against City,” the Liverpool manager said. “Maybe we can start the season right now. Winning against City will boost everyone and if that happens I am sure we will see the best of the team.”

Refreshing as it is to see a manager nailing his colours to the mast and remaining positive when the vultures are circling, the very fact that Liverpool are billing City at home as a make-or-break game tells you how much has changed in a relatively short space of time. And should Liverpool lose, which is always a possibility, what would that do to the rest of their season? Benítez clearly believes it is best not to contemplate such a prospect.

Time to come off the fence. I think Liverpool will win on Saturday, because they have the knack of playing under pressure, the desire and the experience. Plus I think Anfield is going to be up for the occasion and City may find the atmosphere daunting. But… I reckon City will win the overall campaign and finish higher in the table than Liverpool. Maybe even, yes, let’s say it, snatch fourth place.

Sir Alex Ferguson has just been speaking on this subject. He reckons fourth place is a toss-up between City, Spurs, Villa and Everton. That’s right, as Ken Dodd used to say about returning from 50 years lost in space to find the Cup final was taking place between Knotty Ash and Everton. Everton! Funny how Fergie doesn’t mention Liverpool or Arsenal. He obviously expects one of them to finish third behind the United-Chelsea two-horse race this season and another to possibly miss out, but though he is probably winding up City fans by rating their chances no higher than Spurs’ or Everton’s, he might have done permanent damage to north-west relations had he tossed Liverpool’s name into the same group.

Talking of Chelsea, which Ferguson was because he finds himself five points behind them, a number of people took issue with my assertion on these pages last week that in last season’s Champions League semi-final, Guus Hiddink’s team made Barcelona look an inferior side. On reflection, it might have been fairer to state that Chelsea made Barcelona look a beatable side over the two legs, although it is only a question of semantics.

I was not trying to suggest that Chelsea are a superior side to Barcelona, though I am of the opinion that Barcelona saved their best until last in the competition, and as well as they played in Rome they would not have found themselves in the final but for the extremely eccentric refereeing at Stamford Bridge.

I am aware that Chelsea made enemies when they “parked the bus” at the Camp Nou, yet negative as that tactic might be it is still an achievement to come back from Barcelona with the intended result. With almost any other referee in the second leg Chelsea would have gone through, and no one would have seen Barcelona’s wonderful performance against United. But don’t take my word for it, talk to someone from Spain. Here is Roberto Martínez, Wigan manager, Catalan and close friend of Jordi Cruyff, on the matter a few weeks ago: “Nobody rings when you lose 5-0 to United, but beat Chelsea and you make the news. There was a huge reaction [to Wigan’s win] in Spain because people remember that Chelsea were the better side against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final last season, even though Barcelona went on to win the trophy.”

Thank you, Roberto. No further questions.

David Ngog’s act of premeditated cheating was not payback for the beachball incident

Try this for a theory. If Liverpool got lucky with their penalty equaliser against Birmingham, and they certainly seemed to benefit from one of the season’s more naive refereeing decisions, then that slice of good fortune cancels out last month’s miscarriage of justice when Rafa Benítez and his players were on the wrong side of a beach ball and a refereeing error at Sunderland.

The Liverpool manager suggested as much after the 2-2 draw at Anfield. “It was a pity to score with a penalty that maybe wasn’t a penalty,” Benítez conceded. “It is not fair sometimes but we have had a lot of things go against us this season and we deserved more from this game. We attacked and attacked, and it turned out to be positive for us.”

Nice try, Rafa, but two wrongs don’t make a right, luck doesn’t really even itself out over the course of the season, an act of premeditated cheating is not at all the same as a genuinely freakish refereeing conundrum at the Stadium of Light, and there is no such thing as a victimless crime in a professional league competition.

While Benítez may be right in saying Liverpool deserved more from the game, as the rules stand the way to achieve that objective is to score more goals than your opponent. Legitimate ones, obviously.

That is what Birmingham had succeeded in doing before David Ngog’s questionable intervention, and though the feeling at the moment may be that lowly visitors ought to be happy with a point from Anfield and Liverpool deserved something after doing most of the attacking, the perspective at the end of the season could be wholly different should a point or two make the difference between relegation and survival at St Andrew’s.

This is not to have another go at referees, because most of the season so far seems to have been spent doing that and, despite what Michael Platini and his extra- pairs-of-eyes experiment would have you believe, spotting an accomplished dive in real time is never going to be easy for officials.

Neither is it an attempt to bash Benítez, who has put up with a lot of late and is entitled to express his gratitude when something happens to suggest the entire world might not be against him after all.

And nor, most categorically of all, is it an attack on a foreign player for bringing disreputable habits into the hitherto pristine world of Premier League football. Ngog is a young player who just did what most of his fellow professionals would have done in the circumstances and got away with it.

His nationality is unimportant. I mention this only because every time the subject of diving and foreign players are mentioned in the same sentence – Cristiano Ronaldo and Didier Drogba have cropped up several times in this context in the past, while Eduardo has occupied most of the column inches this season – dozens of angry bloggers always demand to know why it is only foreign players who are ever accused of diving. Are we not aware, their argument usually runs, that English heroes such as Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney do their share of diving too?

Yes, is the short answer. Professional footballers dive, English ones among them, and while the problem may seem to have increased over the past few years along with the greater numbers of foreign players in the Premier League, the reason probably has just as much to do with the increased speed of the game and the greatly improved television coverage than with nationality.

This column is old enough to remember Francis Lee in his pomp, back in the days when the game was played on mud rather than grass and Manchester City’s most famous overseas signing was still Bert Trautmann. Suffice to say that had television camera work been as impressive then as it is now, the City and Derby striker would have been in trouble with Equity as well as the Football Association.

Leaving that minefield aside, the only question to be asked is whether, with the score standing at 2-1 to Birmingham in the 70th minute of a game at Anfield, many referees would have awarded a similar penalty to the visitors. We will never know the answer, though people may have their suspicions, and that is why it is a little dangerous for Benítez to claim Liverpool deserved something from the game. Beach balls apart, the general trend is for bigger teams, especially when playing at home, to get more of the benefit of the doubt than smaller, less glamorous outfits.

That is another reason why no one is getting too worked up over Manchester United losing at Chelsea to a goal that was possibly illegal. Big teams don’t deserve any additional sympathy, especially when their manager usually complains about the referee as a matter or course.

If that strikes any United fans as harsh, it should be remembered that Carlo Ancelotti has been a model of polite diplomacy all season and that last season Chelsea were the victims of the biggest miscarriage of justice of all. They should have been in the Champions League final.

It is idle to speculate now about whether Guus Hiddink’s team would have beaten United – the Dutch coach lists never getting the chance as one of his greatest regrets – though looking forward it appears Ancelotti is not going to struggle as Luiz Felipe Scolari did and has the ability to bring the best from a talented group of experienced players. Those who thought Ancelotti would need time to adjust to the Premier League (guilty as charged), or had been brought in primarily as a Champions League expert (ditto), are having to think again.

Scolari stuck around until February last season so there is still time for things to go wrong, but it seems unlikely. Chelsea have opened up a five-point lead at the top of the Premier League after 12 games, will not be managed by Avram Grant should they reach a second Champions League final and will not be kept out again by an incompetent Norwegian referee. If the question of the season is why has Sir Alex Ferguson been grumpier than ever, perhaps the answer is under all our noses.

The crowd trouble at Barnsley and West Ham shows that, for all the talk of inclusivity, some fans feel they have been priced out of the game

Typical, isn’t it? Just when you are bidding to bring the 2018 World Cup to your green and pleasant shores, outbreaks of 70s‑style hooliganism keep getting in the way, cropping up noxiously to remind the world that football in England is nowhere near as safe and sanitised as the image the Premier League portrays.

It was tempting to dismiss the West Ham-Millwall ugliness in August as a one-off, an unfortunate blot on an otherwise presentable copybook caused by over-lagered louts with a history of hating each other. What happened at Barnsley the other night was less easy to overlook, particularly as the trashing of Oakwell’s north stand concourse and intimidation of staff and police were caused by Manchester United supporters. That is to say, followers of the most prominent club in the country, the one with the biggest ground and facilities that are bound to form part of any English World Cup.

If United supporters cannot behave themselves then English football is in trouble, never mind the 2018 bid. Yet before rushing to conclusions, such as the fashionable one that the recent wave of film and book nostalgia for the hooligan era is actually breathing new life into the old ultra-violence, let’s try to keep a sense of perspective. What do United fans have against Barnsley, for a start? Why didn’t they vandalise Anfield on Sunday when they had the chance? How come Old Trafford has a reputation for being a quiet place to watch a game – “It’s just like being in church” – and why are United fans not wreaking havoc on their Premier League travels?

A clue may lie in the competition. West Ham and Barnsley were staging Carling Cup games, not regular league matches. The suspicion is that different sets of supporters become involved when tickets are both cheaper and more easily available than for regular fixtures. In all probability West Ham v Millwall on a late summer evening was always a recipe for a ruck and, while some have called for future cup pairings to be redrawn or played behind closed doors, it is likely a greater awareness and massively increased police presence will serve just as well. Barnsley, too, will think twice before giving a whole end to visiting fans in future, especially if the tickets are going to be snapped up by fans disenfranchised by the Old Trafford pricing policy from watching their team on a regular basis.

While it cannot be said with total certainty that was the situation at Oakwell, it seems quite a likely scenario. The away fans at Barnsley sang with a gusto not normally heard at Old Trafford and went through their whole repertoire, not just including the Eric Cantona songs but even the one about Diego Forlán making the Scousers cry, which was hardly relevant or pertinent. It was as if they had not had a chance to sing for a while. That does not entitle them to vent their additional frustration on the burger bar, but before Old Trafford seats were snapped up by corporate clients and Japanese tourists some of them belonged to people who tended to show their allegiance to United by working over the opposition.

This sort of aggression has not disappeared, it has simply been moved along by modern stadiums. Moved outside, mostly. A Manchester City fan recently explained how pointless it was to be kept inside Old Trafford for up to half an hour after the end of a game. “The police do it for our safety, so the United fans can get off home and there is no danger from the two sets of supporters mixing,” he said. “What they don’t seem to understand is that United fans who have watched the game are not the problem. The people waiting for us outside, lurking in the shadows with bottles and stones, didn’t go to the match in the first place.”

As Lord Triesman is planning “a World Cup that embraces and celebrates our diverse communities and considers their various needs”, perhaps he should co-opt a representative of the lost tribe of working-class football supporters and juvenile delinquents to his “inclusivity advisory group”. You think I am joking? The 2018 bid has just set up such a body to make sure absolutely no constituency is overlooked in England’s efforts to host a World Cup, and it includes experts on racial equality, disabled supporters, women’s football, social legacy and gay awareness. Sadly, it does not appear to have anyone speaking up for people who can no longer afford to watch football. If you find you can get to see your favourite team only once or twice a year in Carling Cup matches, you might have to smash up a few more Championship grounds before you get noticed.

There’s something I don’t understand about the 2018 bid. Something big. The word bid appears to have changed its meaning to grovel. England is famous for football. The Premier League is supposedly the best in the world. You may sneer, but it is certainly in the top three and our stadiums and infrastructure are not lacking. And it’s England’s turn. By 2018 England will not have had a World Cup for more than half a century. So why do we have to bend over backwards, spending untold millions on box‑ticking exercises and pointlessly inviting English football journalists to watch U2 live at Wembley? (It’s not that U2 are pointless, although opinion is divided on the subject, it’s that English journalists have no sway with Fifa and are predisposed toward the bid anyway.)

Instead of pandering to bid vulture Jack Warner and boring everyone to death about inclusivity, we ought simply to ask Sepp Blatter what good reasons exist for not giving England the next European tournament. We deserve a World Cup in this country because the world seems to like the way we do football. If inclusivity counts for more than that, include me out.

BLACK AND WHITE AND READY TO SELL OUT?

“Why don’t they go the whole hog and change the name of the club itself?” saintly and wholly blameless former Newcastle United chairman Freddy Shepherd has just asked, apropos of the new lot’s plan to sell the naming rights to St James’ Park.

Be careful what you wish for, Fred. If advertisers are willing to spend millions on shirt sponsorship, partnership deals and stadium titles, just think how much money they would give to have the actual team named in their honour. Mike Ashley is probably thinking it already.

The only snag, if teams are to sell their souls as well as their shirts and stadiums, is that the highest bidder may not always be the most desirable one. The Toon Army, for instance, possibly quite fancy a subtle re-branding, say dropping the United in favour of the suffix Brown Ale, but how might an unsubtle one go down? Think of what the Magpies are really most famous for. Stand by for Kleenex United.

Blackburn’s manager takes his side to Old Trafford and has enormous admiration for his Manchester United counterpart

Roberto Martínez may be squirming with embarrassment over what he is reported to have said about Sir Alex Ferguson and his friends within the Premier League, though in implying Sam Allardyce will be having a convivial drink with his old pal whatever the result of Blackburn Rovers’s visit to Old Trafford this evening the Wigan Athletic manager was not exactly revealing a state secret.

“Yes, I’m a Fergie lover,” Allardyce can exclusively confirm. “A loyalist, an admirer, call it what you like. Why wouldn’t any manager in the English league look up to the best in the business, probably the most successful manager this country has ever seen? He’s built six or seven great sides, won two European cups and 11 titles, so why shouldn’t a manager like me admire that?

“What Roberto said is not really a problem for me, but I think he has just learned a harsh lesson about life in this league. If you start departing from your own club’s business, for whatever reason, to talk about other matters, it can easily rebound on you. I don’t know quite what happened and what exactly was said but I don’t need to. Roberto has apologised to me and I have accepted his apology.”

The fact that Ferguson and Allardyce have long been buddies was demonstrated last season, when following Rafael Benítez’s attack on the United manager, Ferguson did not fire back directly but later accused his Liverpool counterpart of being disrespectful to Allardyce with seemingly little cause. Martínez’s somewhat clumsy attempt to lend support to his increasingly isolated compatriot on Merseyside only ended up reinforcing an older north-west allegiance.

Ferguson is in regular contact with Allardyce by phone and the pair meet often at charity lunches and functions and regard each other as allies, perhaps because, in his capacity as Bolton and now Blackburn manager, Allardyce has long been in Ferguson’s neighbourhood without being parked on his lawn. The Manchester United manager is never going to be bosom pals with the City manager, for instance, or find it particularly easy to call up whoever is in charge at Liverpool for a chat. Allardyce is more likely to socialise with younger managers such as Steve Bruce and Peter Reid, though in a professional context he and Ferguson are close.

Martínez possibly feels most sheepish about appearing to suggest Allardyce is lining himself up for Ferguson’s job, though he has only given today’s opponents something else to chuckle about in their post-match get together. And Bruce too, who will be there in spirit. As if to confirm Martinez’s suspicions that the three are in cahoots Allardyce revealed he had spoken to Bruce following Sunderland’s impressive performance at Old Trafford earlier this month, when they had to settle for a 2-2 draw but were close to claiming all the points.

“Brucey said they caught them on an off day, Sir Alex was having to pick a team with one eye on the league game and another on the European match in midweek, and that’s going to be the situation again today,” he said. “Sunderland nearly took full advantage and that’s what we’ll be hoping to do. Possibly this is a good time to be playing United, but if you look at our league record you will also see it is a good time to be playing Blackburn. We haven’t picked up a single point [away from home] yet, so unless we can improve on that fairly quickly it doesn’t really matter what form Manchester United are in. I didn’t get any specific tips from Brucey, we all know what we have to do when we go to Old Trafford. Most of the time will be spent trying to stop them playing.”

Allardyce was an Old Trafford winner in his time at Bolton, describing the feeling of beating United on their own turf as one of the best days of his life, though he goes into today’s game on the back of heavy defeats away to Arsenal and Chelsea, as well as an outbreak of swine flu. “When we get the United match over we will have three of the big boys out of the way for the rest of the season, at least away from home,” he said. “October was a pretty heavy month for us but we have some winnable games coming up in November. At the moment, if I am honest, I think Chelsea is the most daunting ground to visit, even more daunting than Old Trafford. Everywhere is daunting for a team with an away record like ours, of course, but Chelsea made mincemeat of us last week. They are in great form at the moment and United are not quite at their best If you were making an assessment now you would possibly say Chelsea look more like title contenders, but it is much too early to be writing off United. They know how to pace a season, and unlike Chelsea, they will not be losing key players to the African Cup of Nations in January.

“All you can safely say at the moment is that United have lost a little of their old ability to kill a game with the departures of Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez. Some players are capable of winning a game on their own, sometimes with a single act. That is exactly what Fernando Torres did at Liverpool last week. Very few other players would have scored that goal, maybe Steve Gerrard could have done it, but I don’t know. The point is that when you lose players of that calibre, they are hard to replace. Ronaldo and Tevez were both like that, they could just come up with something to stun you, and United presently lack something they had last season. Antonio Valencia is a good player, no doubt about that, but he is not going to pop up with those sort of goals. Dimitar Berbatov might, but United are still waiting for him to turn into that kind of player.”

Ronaldo scored just such a goal in the 2-1 win over Rovers in the corresponding fixture last season, though Allardyce thought the referee was at fault in not awarding his side a penalty. He has not been studying Ferguson all these years for nothing. “A 2-2 draw was taken away from us,” Allardyce said. “Mr Webb failed to be brave enough to give us a penalty at Old Trafford. It is not unusual.”

Officials may know the rules but they are as useless as anyone else when it comes to judgment and interpretation

Does anyone else think Jeff Winter was totally wrong to say Sir Alex Ferguson was totally wrong at the weekend?

It is bad enough that barely a Premier League game can go by these days without Manchester United’s tetchy manager hijacking the news agenda because the referee wasn’t fit, strong or experienced enough to handle the fact that the defending champions sometimes need a little help when they are playing badly, but if retired referees are going to join in the slanging match too, the actual football will soon struggle to get a look-in.

Somebody ought to stand up against Ferguson, that’s for sure, but one would rather hear the views of the referee in question rather than the comments of a less than impartial observer who just wants to stick up for the men in black. Perhaps I do Winter a disservice there, for he was one of a clutch of experts and former officials who quickly and correctly pronounced the referee wrong over the Sunderland beach ball fiasco, though that was a relatively straightforward, if arcane, point of law.

Referees are good at knowing the laws, and on the whole it is handy that these days they can be whistled up, so to speak, to give instant assessments . Yet no matter how well-versed in the game’s small print, they are as useless as anyone else when it comes to judgment and interpretation, as Winter has just proved. The simple fact is that Jamie Carragher could easily have been sent off for his “last man” foul on Michael Owen on Sunday, many referees would have produced a red card then indicated by gesture that under the present rules they really had no option, and had that happened neither the Liverpool captain nor his club would have earned much sympathy by complaining.

This is not necessarily to agree with Ferguson and conclude Andre Marriner made the wrong decision – it was, in short, a tricky decision that could have gone either way. The only two people who do not seem to recognise this are Ferguson and Winter, but at least you could see why the former was so upset. Carragher appeared, let’s just say that, to get away with a professional foul, and the mitigating circumstances were not all that different to the incident at Old Trafford last season when Nemanja Vidic saw red for bringing down Steven Gerrard.

So it is hard to understand where Winter is coming from when he describes Ferguson’s understanding of the laws as “completely inaccurate” and says it would have been “totally wrong” for Marriner to send Carragher off. Especially when he backs up this black and white view of the matter by suggesting that Owen was neither in full control of the ball nor moving towards the goal.

In both cases, one feels, that would be because Carragher was climbing all over him. While Ferguson has undoubtedly given more or less blameless referees some undeserved gyp this season, at least at Anfield you could understand his train of thought. It is just a pity the refereeing fraternity, or part of it, now see him as a serial moaner who deserves to be banned from stadiums.

That would be a shame, because his touchline fury over Marriner’s perceived leniency was the undoubted highlight of Sunday’s viewing, even allowing for the subtle strength with which Fernando Torres showed Rio Ferdinand who was boss.

Winter had something to say about that too, worrying that Ferguson could be getting a little old for shouting and swearing and getting so annoyed that the veins stand out on his neck. Indeed he is, but what can he do now Roy Keane and Jaap Stam are long departed and Gary Neville can only attempt to communicate his fury from the bench?

Could it be that Ferguson has been extra grumpy this season because he no longer has a team full of snarlers? Even last season he had Cristiano Ronaldo to leave no one in any doubt that just about every decision that went against United was the wrong one. From quiet man Edwin van der Sar in goal to the now saintly Ryan Giggs on the wing, United’s team at the moment is a collection of choirboys compared to some of the sides Ferguson has put out. Ferdinand and Vidic have lost most of the authority they used to exude and are far too accommodating to opposing forwards, Paul Scholes has calmed down as much as he has slowed down and Dimitar Berbatov has never been known to say boo to a goose.

Wayne Rooney is the only one with the old spark and fight, and even he is constantly being told to keep his temper and watch his language. They do say that teams play in their manager’s image, but this one doesn’t. The Red Devils need a bit more devil. It shouldn’t just be the manager’s job to make Manchester United unpopular. Maybe that’s what’s been bothering Ferguson all season. He’s probably wishing he had signed Craig Bellamy when he had the chance.

• Police called in to investigate vandalism and theft
• Carling Cup tie interrupted by two-man pitch invasion

Eight fans were arrested after trouble flared at the Barnsley v Manchester United tie last night, according to South Yorkshire Police. Catering staff were trapped inside a kiosk and had to barricade themselves in a store room for 25 minutes as fans broke in and stole cash from the till and food from the shelves.

Stewards on the pitch had food thrown at them and two fans ran on the pitch towards the end of the game. The police said: “No one was injured during this time but one officer suffered a minor facial injury. Eight fans were arrested, four Manchester United fans and four Barnsley fans.”

• Paul Wilson’s report: Barnsley 0-2 Manchester United
• Paul Doyle’s minute-by-minute report
• FA is intimidated by Ferguson, claims Martínez
• The referees who have got on Ferguson’s bad side

Police were pelted with bottles as they attempted to restore order in the north stand and police dogs were used to drive fans back from the pitch.

Around 11pm two more people were arrested after fans jumped on to railway tracks to stop the Barnsley to Sheffield train before it had started moving. Barnsley said last night they would launch an investigation, accusing United fans of causing “substantial damage” at the stadium. The club has complained to police, who are to carry out an inquiry.

A Barnsley spokesman said: “A complaint has been made to the police and we will be taking a look at CCTV footage of the incident before we can comment further.”

Manchester United finished with 10 men for the second time in three days but this time on the winning side, as goals from Danny Welbeck and Michael Owen ensured Carling Cup progress against Barnsley before Gary Neville was shown a straight red by Chris Foy for a reckless tackle on Adam Hammill.

“I think he followed through and caught the boy,” an unusually contrite Sir Alex Ferguson said after his captain had zeroed in on Barnsley’s only Scouser. “It wasn’t high, just above the ankle, but in the present climate I think the referee was correct.”

Ferguson is not normally one for half measures, unless he happens to owe a referee an apology, and his response to the defeat at Anfield on Sunday was no fewer than 11 changes to the starting line-up. It is impossible to swing the axe any more savagely than that, though there is always the possibility that had United won at Liverpool he would have given the whole team a rest. This is the Carling Cup, after all, and while Owen must have been delighted to start he found himself partnering Federico Macheda up front with Gabriel Obertan and Welbeck providing width on the flanks.

• United fans accused of causing chaos
• Paul Doyle’s minute-by-minute report
• FA is intimidated by Ferguson, claims Martínez
• Referees who have felt Ferguson’s wrath

The bad news for Barnsley was that a combination of three of those players that was good enough to put the visitors in front after a mere six minutes. On United’s first real attack of any note Obertan’s cross for Owen was diverted behind for a corner. Anderson clipped in a cross and Welbeck rose virtually unchallenged to score with a simple header at the near post.

Not that the home side allowed United all their own way. A promising Hammill run past Welbeck and through the heart of the United defence ended with a slightly disappointing shot too high, and when the same player sent over a corner shortly after a miss by Obertan, Stephen Foster thumped a header against his namesake Ben’s crossbar. By the time Daniel Bogdanovic rolled a cross invitingly along United’s undefended goalline on the stroke of half-time, Mark Robins’s side must have been regretting their early lapse of concentration.

All the same Barnsley took their eye off the ball again at the start of the second half and were lucky not to go two goals down straight away. You would have put money on Owen scoring once he fastened onto Welbeck’s neat through ball and stayed onside to find himself one-on-one with Luke Steele, yet by his standards the finish was a poor one, not even requiring the goalkeeper to make a save. Welbeck was withdrawn after that and his replacement, Zoran Tosic, nearly scored with his first significant touch when curling a shot inches wide from Anderson’s pass.

Barnsley’s Anderson de Silva skewed a shot wide at the other end before Owen made the game safe on the hour, taking the ball direct from Fabio da Silva’s throw-in and spinning away from one defender to give himself space then nutmegging Darren Moore and poking a low shot past Steele. “It was a fantastic goal,” Ferguson said, of the third Owen strike this season that Fabio Capello has managed to miss. “He showed good feet and it was a marvellous quick finish.”

That should have been the end of the matter but Neville made the last half hour more interesting by getting himself dismissed on 63 minutes, lunging into a tackle and catching Hammill on the shin. United are used to playing with 10 men though, and even their second-string side was not going to let a two-goal lead slip against Championship opposition, although Bogdanovic and Anderson both went close to scoring before the end and Jacob Butterfield brought a fine save from Foster.

The Tykes were not disgraced, but Robins could do with a bit more bite. “We had 17 efforts on goal, which is a lot against United, but there’s no point boasting about that when we didn’t score,” the Barnsley manager said. “We’ve got to stick the ball in the back of the net. I feel we have more in us, we were just lacking a bit of belief.”

Fabio Capello needs fresh proof of Michael Owen’s ability if the striker is to join England in South Africa

Did you know that Michael Owen is paid to promote a certain brand of watch? Don’t all shout at once, it was something of a rhetorical question. If you haven’t seen the Owen timepiece photographed or mentioned in various media outlets over the past few weeks then you simply haven’t been keeping abreast of the news. In that case you probably don’t know that Owen wants to go to the World Cup either, and is sure he would score for England if they would only deign to select him.

You cannot say the boy lacks confidence and neither can Owen ever be accused of being indifferent about playing for his country. There are some who would argue Owen is so keen to play for his country he occasionally alienates the supporters of the clubs who pay his wages by appearing to have his priorities in the wrong order, though that might be a tad harsh.

Such criticisms first surfaced while he was in the wilderness at Newcastle, and anyone caught up in that madness could be excused for pining for the relative sanity of playing for England. Secondly it cannot be easy bursting on to the international scene as Owen did in 1998, wowing the world and being confidently tipped to break the England goalscoring record, only to find yourself frustratingly under-used 11 years later with the target in sight.

With just five more England goals, Owen could move past Jimmy Greaves into third place behind Bobby Charlton and Gary Lineker. Ten more goals would see him hit the half century mark and establish a new record in his own right. Owen is unlikely to score 10 goals should he get to South Africa this summer – no one is quite that prolific – but these are not unattainable totals for goalscorers who are also regular internationals.

Owen has just missed a whole qualifying cycle and is now in danger of missing the finals as well. It is a moot point whether he would score an average of a goal every other game if restored to the side, as he has suggested, just as it is debatable whether the successful attacking shape Fabio Capello has constructed for England would work as smoothly with Owen alongside Wayne Rooney instead of Emile Heskey.

Yet while those two are the preferred England spearheads, two things are certain. One is that Heskey will never get anywhere near Owen’s tally of 40 England goals. The other is that Rooney, if he keeps playing, will surpass it. Rooney turns 24 this month, plays in every game possible, and already has 25 goals despite a couple of injury lay-offs. Being almost six years younger than Owen not only means that Rooney has time on his side, it is currently allowing him to take injuries in his stride and come back just as strong.

Owen is finding that increasingly difficult to manage. The strain that put paid to his latest audition for Capello, just after he had won the Manchester derby in thrilling fashion, was a stroke of bad luck – though not an entirely isolated occurrence. One can fully understand his frustration, and even sympathise with his desire to use his contacts and sponsors to talk up his chances and keep his name in the papers, though Capello is likely to remain impervious to the constant drip of a media campaign. Steve McClaren might have been more easily swayed, though McClaren was unlikely to have overlooked Owen for any length of time in the first place. Capello simply wants to see Owen do on the pitch what he is currently only talking about in interviews. Given what happened at the last World Cup, and England’s still less than plentiful assortment of attacking options, Capello can hardly go out on a limb for someone who has yet to make an unanswerable case for himself in a Manchester United shirt.

Owen’s club form and fitness should be his first priority this season. When he scored his first competitive goal for United, at Wigan in August, he had no time for reporters waiting with microphones and open notebooks. “You cane me, then you want an interview?” Owen said as he brushed past, meaning that he was not about to accommodate people who had variously described him as finished, old or injury prone.

Unprofessional as it may seem, I have to admit I thoroughly admired that attitude. For a start it was an attitude, and open hostility is preferable to half-hearted cooperation any day of the week. That’s why Diego Maradona’s widely reported rudery last week would have struck most reporters as a breath of fresh air.*

For another thing it is always refreshing to find a footballer willing to be judged on his deeds rather than his words. Owen seemed to be admitting that he found the criticism hurtful as well as acknowledging that he had only just started to prove his doubters wrong. A single goal in a 5-0 win was nothing to get excited about, he appeared to be suggesting, not when he was so obviously confident that more would follow.

What actually followed was a well-taken winner in the 96th minute of United’s victory over City, then some self-promoting interviews, then the latest injury disappointment. Owen does not need to worry about attracting Capello’s attention. The Italian knows all about his goalscoring ability and has been asked his opinion of Owen at just about every press conference he has held in this country. Always the answer is the same. He has to play. Not score, play.

It was hard not to feel sorry for Owen at Wembley last week when he was forced to watch from the stands as England’s attack laboured against Belarus, and in this particular case Capello’s general goodwill gesture may not have been the best thought-through piece of man-management. Owen quite possibly feels the world is against him at the moment, and Capello in particular. This is not the case yet, though it could soon be if he continues to state his case in the press rather than on the pitch. There is still plenty of time; what Owen needs to do between now and the end of the season is demonstrate he still has the gift of immaculate timing. Over and above what he wears on his wrist.

* Variation on an ancient joke. A London toilet cleaner tells a businessman with an urgent need to use the loo he is pleased to see him. “We mostly get drug-dealing, cottaging, coke-snorting and prostitution down here. When someone comes in with diarrhoea it’s like a breath of fresh air!”

Don’t believe the hype. While Manchester United may be back on top of the Premier League as a result of their fifth successive win coupled with Wigan’s unlikely toppling of Chelsea, the extent to which the champions are relying on Ryan Giggs is in danger of becoming embarrassing.

For the second weekend in a row United were indebted to their veteran winger for securing the points, this time by coming on as a second-half substitute and showing his team-mates the way to goal. Before the 35-year-old’s introduction United seemed to have no idea how to break down Stoke’s massed defence. The visitors looked as if they could play all day without scoring – as indeed did Stoke, though that is nothing new – until Giggs arrived and quickly helped set up goals for Dimitar Berbatov and John O’Shea to make winning look easy again.

“Ryan made the goals, I felt his intelligence would bother them on that side of the pitch,” said Sir Alex Ferguson, in what may or may not have been a veiled criticism of 56 empty-headed minutes from Nani. “We showed fantastic composure in possession, because this isn’t an easy place to come, but we didn’t create enough before the goal came. Ryan is important, his movement was marvellous for the first goal.”

United must have known what to expect when they saw the Stoke teamsheet, with Tuncay and James Beattie on the bench and only Dave Kitson as a notional front man. Sure enough, the home side spent the first half getting nine or 10 men behind the ball, even when that meant backing off Paul Scholes and allowing the United schemer all the space he could have wished for in midfield.

It ought to have been a recipe for trouble, yet United failed to use their wealth of possession creatively or even advantageously. With Nani and Antonio Valencia neither speedy nor incisive on the flanks, and Wayne Rooney and Berbatov struggling to reach any sort of understanding through the middle, nothing ever came of the long balls and short passes Scholes sprayed around. It was perhaps significant that United’s best chance of the first half came from a Stoke error, when Ryan Shawcross let Valencia clean through. Finishing has never been the former Wigan player’s strong point and though he drew the goalkeeper he managed to miss the target.

Nani brought a good save from Thomas Sorensen on the stroke of the interval, though the same player had earlier incurred Rooney’s wrath by shooting wastefully into the Boothen End when a return pass to the unmarked striker looked a better option. Rooney himself was having an off day, and was guilty of similar selfishness later on.

If it sounds as if the first half was all United, that was exactly the case. Stoke stayed mostly behind the half way line. The supposedly nervous Ben Foster never had a shot to save before the break, and was far from busy afterwards. “We were flat,” Tony Pulis admitted. “We didn’t give it a right good go. I don’t blame the players, they are only human, but you need to be at your absolute maximum to compete with top-four teams and we were never able to wrestle control from them.”

The United support had been chanting Giggs’s name long before Ferguson sent him on in the 56th minute. The visitors were ahead six minutes later, after Dean Whitehead allowed Darren Fletcher to run through and pick up Giggs cutting in from the left, for a short, squared pass for Berbatov a tap-in from a couple of yards out. Simple but effective, and apparently beyond Nani or Valencia.

Stoke sent on Beattie and Tuncay once they had to chase the game, only to be undone by Giggs’s accurate delivery from a 77th-minute free-kick, finding O’Shea’s head for the goal that sealed the points.

Presented with an opportunity to score from a Scholes pass just before the end, Giggs lifted a shot over the bar in a manner that had the travelling support inquiring what on earth he was playing at. The United fans were in relaxed mood by, demanding to know what had happened to Stoke’s famous atmosphere and wittily suggesting it was just like watching Port Vale. They weren’t singing those songs in the first hour, though. Before Giggs brought a touch of calmness and class to the proceedings, with due respect to the Valiants, it was a little too much like Port Vale for comfort.

Manchester United’s newly monied neighbours want to make a point about their top-four intent

One way or the other, Carlos Tevez could be as much the centre of attention in today’s Manchester derby as Emmanuel Adebayor proved to be in playing for Manchester City against his former club last week.

The Argentina striker believes the Old Trafford fans will give him a warm reception, meaning a favourable one. Sir Alex Ferguson agrees the reception might be warm, though is not sure how favourable. Mark Hughes thinks Tevez left Manchester United on much friendlier terms than Adebayor left Arsenal and feels there is still mutual affection between the player and his old club.

Tevez is struggling to overcome a knee injury sustained on international duty, though if there is any chance of him playing, or being fit enough to sit on the bench, Hughes intends to use him. “He’s very keen to play and we’d like to use him,” Hughes said. “It is purely a medical matter. If he is fit he’ll play. If he is not ready to come back, then we won’t be stupid enough to rush him.”

Direct transfers between the Manchester rivals are rare and will become rarer still should City achieve their aim of becoming one of United’s top-four rivals. Throw in the £25m transfer fee that now seems to have almost doubled due to hidden costs, and the fact that City’s use of Tevez’s image on a provocative poster campaign prompted Ferguson to accuse them of “arrogance” again yesterday, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, far from shying away from signing their rivals’ players, the Eastlands hierarchy is seeking head-on confrontation.

“It just tells you how much money they have to spend,” Ferguson said, regarding City’s apparent determination to have Tevez whatever the cost. Hughes vehemently denies the suggestion that City paid over the odds just to spite United.

“We didn’t sign Carlos just to make a statement. We went for him because he is a world-class striker and he was available,” he said. “We are convinced we have made a fantastic signing. We didn’t do it just because we could.”

The deal shows nevertheless that City are immune from the financial constraints affecting most clubs – even United. “Tevez was a good player for us, he did his job here well and I’ve no complaints about that,” Ferguson said. “He felt he didn’t play enough football in his last season and maybe he had a point. You can’t keep all the players all the time. Cristiano Ronaldo proved that. We had six good seasons out of him then it was time to move on.

“You can’t keep everyone happy, especially these days when some players appear to be dominated by their agents. Gabriel Heinze was only here a year and then he wanted away. That surprised me but the next day he picked up a cruciate injury, so he had to stay. Then as soon as he was fit again he wanted away again. I’m certainly not envious of City picking up Tevez, I’ve got my squad and I’m happy with it but, as I say, they are playing to different financial rules to everyone else. I could have bought a player for £52m in summer had I wanted to [Atlético Madrid’s Sergio Aguero has a buy-out clause for roughly that amount, though Ferguson could have been referring to Franck Ribéry or even Karim Benzema] but I didn’t think it was worth it. I didn’t think the summer just past was a particularly good time to buy any players. Prices were too high all round.”

City think otherwise. Hughes’s task, not helped by Adebayor’s ban and injuries to Roque Santa Cruz and Tevez, is to show their money was well spent.

“Our first objective was to make a good start, and we’ve done that,” Hughes said. “Now we’ve got the huge challenge of matching Manchester United – not just over one or two games but over the course of a season. We’ve got to do what they did to Liverpool and knock them off their perch. I was a United player when Liverpool were at their peak and I know how hard that is going to be. They had a certain mind-set, a winning mentality. When you win things together it helps bond you as a group and we’ve got to try and start that process. It just happens that United are the benchmark at the moment and they are in the same city as us, but success often goes in cycles. That’s what we’ve got to hope.”

Hughes must also hope Ferguson gets on his bike sooner rather than later, for as long as he remains in charge and in good health, City seem destined to be regarded as upstarts.

“They don’t bother me,” Ferguson said, protesting only a little too much. “This game is no bigger than the ones we play against Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea every season. City are out to be a top-four team, fine. We’re out to be the top team. The challenge at this club is always to be number one. That’s my job.”

Arsène Wenger was unrepentant after being sent off in the closing stages of his team’s 2-1 defeat in an incident-packed match at Old Trafford – and had another dig at Uefa over their stance against diving.

The Arsenal manager, sent off just before the end of the game for kicking a plastic water bottle in frustration at seeing a goal disallowed, described the penalty that brought Manchester United back into the game as “Old Traffordish”. Wayne Rooney converted the kick and an own goal by Abou Diaby sealed United’s comeback after Andrey Arshavin had put Arsenal ahead.

Wenger also claimed that, while there was similarity between Rooney going down in the area and Eduardo doing the same in a similar situation against Celtic last week, the two incidents would be reported very differently by the media. Wenger did not go so far as to suggest Rooney dived, though he is sticking to his belief that Eduardo did not dive either, and claimed Uefa would now have to take action against Barcelona’s Lionel Messi to retain credibility.

“Uefa have opened something up [by charging Eduardo],” Wenger claimed. “We all watched the match last night [Barcelona v Shakhtar in the European Super Cup]. They will have to do something about the Messi headbutting and there was another possible dive as well. There are many such incidents in every game, so we will see what happens. I don’t think the case against Eduardo has any logic, because he was touched by the goalkeeper. The replays show that.”

There were dozens of dramatic moments and flashpoints at Old Trafford, not least the farcical scenes at the end when Wenger was first sent from the technical area, then banished from the stand with no more than a few seconds of stoppage-time left to play.

“I didn’t know where to go,” he explained. “And there were less than 30 seconds to go. I was sent off for kicking a water bottle when our goal was cancelled at the end. I don’t know whether William Gallas was offside or not, I haven’t seen the replays, but I kicked the bottle because I was disappointed, I thought we had equalised. I did not know that was not allowed.

“I don’t know what to say. We were the better team and we lost the game. It’s very frustrating when you play so well and have to go home with nothing.”

After calming down slightly, Wenger was able to accept that Arsenal had missed chances to finish off United and that in gifting their opponents a penalty and then an own goal, his side had thrown away a strong position. “Football is unpredictable,” he said. “We couldn’t finish the game off and there were crucial moments in the match when we made mistakes when there was no need to panic at all.”

Yet still Wenger felt unable to put the various penalty disputes of the past few days behind him, believing Arsenal were denied a legitimate first-half penalty when Darren Fletcher clattered into Andrey Arshavin. “I do not want to go into the performance of the referee, but you know what you will get at Old Trafford,” he said.

Sir Alex Ferguson, for his part, not only defended Fletcher’s challenge – “It was never a penalty, it was a great tackle” – but made the Scottish midfielder his man of the match. Rooney was the official recipient, but Ferguson insisted that Fletcher was the best United player on the field. Wenger was not even sure he should have been on the field.

“It was beyond belief,” Wenger said. “The referee was booking everybody but one player makes 20 fouls and no one sees it. It is quite amazing. Their player got away without even a yellow.”

Wenger did not name names, even when asked to be specific, but Fletcher was conspicuously lucky to go unpunished at least once in a match in which nine players were booked.

“We still have a future and can be a great force,” Wenger claimed, looking on the bright side after an eventful week and a performamce that belied worries about how Arsenal would fare without Cesc Fábregas. “I just don’t like to go home with nothing when we deserved something.”

Ferguson admitted his side had been fortunate. “We had to dig deep at 1-0 down, it’s always an uphill task,” he said. “But we won and won well in the end. We might have got lucky with the own goal but we played very well in the second half. We needed to improve our results against other top-four sides and we have made a start.”

Arsène Wenger was sent off in the closing seconds of a frantic five minutes of added time and appeared to hint Darren Fletcher got away with murder, but there was no Scottish conspiracy here. Just a relieved Scottish manager after Manchester United took advantage of a penalty gift then an own goal to win a game Arsenal looked to have sewn up.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s latest attempt to adjust to life without Cristiano Ronaldo was looking about as convincing as Eduardo falling to the floor against Celtic until United got lucky with a penalty of their own. Arsenal were in front and in control until Manuel Almunia left his line too enthusiastically and bundled Wayne Rooney over while trying to reach the ball. Wenger seems to like players who are “shrewd in the box”. Maybe he needs to have a word with his own goalkeeper.

United had barely threatened from open play by that point in the second half and were not all that creative afterwards. They did not have to be. An unnecessary own goal by Abou Diaby gave them all three points and doubtless contributed to Wenger’s touchline apoplexy, though to be strictly correct that was more likely to have been a disallowed equaliser from Robin van Persie in the last minute of stoppage-time. Replays suggested the referee’s assistant was correct in ruling William Gallas offside and active in the build-up, though Wenger was plainly unconvinced.

“I didn’t kick the bottle because I thought Gallas had been onside, I kicked it because I was disappointed,” Wenger explained drily. “I did not know that was not allowed.” As United-Arsenal encounters go, this had been a slow burner, though Wenger’s martyred expression as he was made to vacate the dug-out with no more than seconds remaining preserved the fixture’s reputation for incident and drama. It also confirmed Mike Dean’s reputation as the fussiest and most pedantic of referees.

Ferguson had not been joking when he said he regarded Arsenal as a threat. The United team showed four changes from the 5-0 romp at Wigan, and Rooney found himself on his own up front as the home side packed midfield. That might not have been the intention, but that is how it turned out. With 4-4-2 abandoned, Ryan Giggs found himself in central midfield and Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Owen formed a new partnership on the bench. “One of our targets this season is to do better against the big boys,” Ferguson explained beforehand. “We need to improve against our immediate rivals – it’s an area we have identified as a weakness. The title race went to the wire last time, mainly due to the six points we lost to Liverpool, and I don’t want to be in that situation again. The fact that we lost at Burnley has already reduced our margin for error.”

Arsenal deployed a similar formation to United’s 4-2-3-1, though in the opening stages at least Van Persie found himself less isolated, with more effective support from Andrey Arshavin and Abou Diaby. The visitors consequently enjoyed slightly the better of the early attacks, with Patrice Evra deflecting a shot from Van Persie behind for a corner and Arshavin only narrowly wide when Ben Foster punched out the cross. If United were hoping to play through Giggs, a couple of promising situations that opened up around the half-hour came to nought through misplaced passes.

Rooney put a free-kick wide in what amounted to United’s most dangerous moment of the first half, before Antonio Valencia gave a vivid demonstration of how much has changed at Old Trafford. Dispossessing Denilson and galloping into space down the right the winger looked up and saw no one ahead of him hurtling into the box, so had to pull a ball backwards to find Giggs and the momentum of the move was lost. Two minutes later Arsenal took the lead. They should have had a penalty when Darren Fletcher knocked Arshavin over like a skittle without reaching the ball, only for Dean to wave play on. Arsenal and Arshavin did just that, and when the ball came to the Russian on the visitors’ next attack he lost no time in shooting before Nemanja Vidic could close him down and beat Foster’s dive from 25 yards out. Arsenal deserved to be in front – the only thing that slightly spoiled their mood was a ridiculous booking for Van Persie on the stroke of the interval for a tackle on Giggs no worse than the offence Fletcher had just got away with in his own penalty area.

United almost went two down at the start of the second half and had Foster’s outstretched leg to thank for preventing Van Persie scoring from close range. Arshavin was involved once again, reaching the byline on the left and cutting the ball perfectly across the face of goal for Van Persie, who should have put the chance away but was denied by the goalkeeper’s instinctive reaction to a point-blank shot. “Ben kept us in the game there,” Wes Brown admitted. “He held his hands up at half time he thought he could have done better with the goal, but he went out and made up for it.”

The miss looked significant when United equalised on the hour from the penalty spot. There was no suggestion of a dive from Rooney, though what he would have been able to do with Giggs’s pass had Almunia left him alone is debatable. Instead, the goalkeeper dived in, thinking he could reach the ball but catching only the player when Rooney touched it beyond him. This time the referee did agree a player had been illegally brought down and Rooney duly scored with an emphatic shot. “It was definitely a penalty and I wanted to take it,” Rooney said, after taking over responsibility from Michael Carrick. “We knew we had to do better against Arsenal than we did last season.” Wenger’s view that the penalty had been “Old Traffordish” was unnecessarily waspish.

Van Persie hit the United crossbar with a cross-cum-shot from a free-kick within minutes of the equaliser, before Arsenal completely surrendered their strong position by going behind in bizarre circumstances. Ferguson removed the disappointing Antonio Valencia for Park Ji-sung shortly after Van Persie’s effort and within seconds of the switch United were ahead. Not that it had anything to do with Park, or indeed any other United player except Giggs. The captain sent in a free-kick from the right that was well-flighted without looking particularly likely to find anyone in a red shirt, only for Diaby to rise near the penalty spot and nod it past his own goalkeeper for one of the season’s more inexplicable own goals. Not quite the full Sandy Brown, perhaps, but it was harder to work out what Diaby was intending than, say, Liverpool’s Lucas when he scored for Aston Villa last Monday. Arsenal’s best player by a distance, Diaby tried to make amends with a decent run into the United penalty area a few minutes later, only to pull his eventual shot just wide of the target.

United had chances before Van Persie’s disallowed goal to make certain of the result, yet comedy finishing from Berbatov – of all people – and then Nani kept both managers on tenterhooks right until the end. The feud between Ferguson and Wenger might be over, the intensity of their rivalry is undiminished.

Just as it was beginning to look as though Manchester United might be a really bad bet to retain their title the partnership between Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov finally sprang to life and answered Sir Alex Ferguson’s prayer for goals.

The pair did not actually combine for any of the goals - not unless you count the third one which should really go down as a joint effort between Rooney and Mario Melchiot – though after an arid first half that reflected United’s stodgy start to the season Ferguson will just have been pleased to see his strikers on target.

Rooney struck first in the 56th minute with a free header from an Antonio Valencia cross, then after Hugo Rodellega had almost answered straight back, Berbatov juggled Darren Fletcher’s pass and added a second just two minutes later. Berbatov gave Rooney the ball for United’s third, though only in a standing position and his shot would not have beaten Kirkland but for a deflection off the Wigan captain.

This was not quite the Wigan that won so impressively at Aston Villa on opening day, though mercifully for the home fans it was not the Wigan that could have been three goals down in the first 10 minutes against Wolves either. Their midfield reinforced by an immediate debut from Mohamed Diame, a capture from Rayo Vallecano completed only an hour before kick off, the Latics held their own well in the first half and with a little more pace to their somewhat pedestrian attacks they might have caused United problems.

Initially United’s own attacking efforts were surprisingly sparse. Managers will usually put up with strikers missing chances but the concern for Ferguson was that his side hardly created any. Chris Kirkland made a couple of saves from Darren Fletcher and Rooney and Titus Bramble made a great saving tackle to stop Berbatov in the area, but that was not a lot to show for 45 minutes of football. The neatest move United put together involved Berbatov laying off a Fletcher pass to tee up Paul Scholes for a shot, only for the midfielder to miss the target by a distance.

After being booked early on for a typically crude challenge on Jordi Gomez, Scholes was lucky to stay on the field when he appeared to strike the same player in the face.

To complete a bruising afternoon for Wigan, Rodallega took a smack in the mouth from Nemanja Vidic late in the game before Michael Owen scored with a typically cool finish from Nani’s diagonal ball, then Nani himself completeed the rout with a stoppage time free-kick.

• Scot masterminded defeat of champions at first time of asking
• No one thought we had a prayer except him, says Robbie Blake

To put a new twist on an old slogan Nike dreamed up for Eric Cantona and Manchester United, 1966 was a great year for English football. Owen Coyle was born, right in the middle of the World Cup.

The Scot did not make an immediate impression on the nation’s consciousness in his two and a half years south of the border as a player with Bolton in the mid-90s, though he did strike up a friendship with fellow Glaswegian David Moyes, then at Preston. “He was studious about the game even then,” Coyle says of the manager who on Sunday follows Sir Alex Ferguson into the Turf Moor cauldron, after the midweek result that made the football world sit up and take notice of events in east Lancashire. “You could tell he would go on to make his mark in management.”

And would Coyle in turn have struck Moyes as future management material? “Possibly not as much,” the Burnley manager admits. “I was always vocal, I wouldn’t say studious. I enjoyed playing the game so much I never wanted to stop. Nothing beats playing, that’s why I took a few jobs as player-manager. I wanted to stay involved on the pitch for as long as I could.”

If management is a second-best option, however, Coyle did the supposedly predictable Premier League a favour and scaled heights few others will reach in beating United at the first time of asking. Moyes has managed that once in the league in his seven years at Everton, while Wigan Athletic, United’s opponents tomorrow afternoon, are in their fifth season in the top flight and have still to beat any top-four side. Coyle takes an obvious pride in his players’ achievement on Wednesday, though he is careful to describe the three points as “the same ones we could have won at Stoke” and even more dismissive of suggestions that he out-thought Ferguson.

“We’re under no illusions here,” he explains. “At their maximum Manchester United would have won. They have quality running right through their team, their movement is terrific and when both teams are at their best we are not as good as they are. United are still my tip to win the league.

“All I said to the lads before the game was that they will not be brilliant every week, and that if we played well we would have a chance. That was how it worked out. United changed their team a bit, we showed the quality we have and I don’t think anyone can deny we deserved the three points. Sir Alex was very gracious afterwards.”

Robbie Blake, scorer of the goal that knocked the champions out of their stride, can back this up. “No one thought we had a prayer against United, but the gaffer did,” he explains. “He was very upbeat before the game, telling us United couldn’t possibly play well all the time. He was the same after the defeat at Stoke. He told us we could take a lot of positives from the game, that we hadn’t been nearly as bad as people were suggesting, and that we would get results if we carried on playing like that.

“He’s very good at building up belief and team spirit, but what he’s even better at is keeping your feet on the ground. There’s no chance of anyone getting carried away here, we all know we are in for a long hard season and that there’s plenty of work to do. Celebrate too much in football and the next minute you fall flat on your face. The gaffer won’t let anyone get above their station.”

It is hardly surprising Burnley players should show such loyalty to Coyle when he demonstrated his own loyalty over the summer. He could have been Celtic manager by now, and still cannot quite believe he turned down his dream job, but the vacancy came at the wrong time and he felt he owed something to the people who had placed such faith in him.

Plus, having taken Burnley up through the play-offs, he was thoroughly enjoying himself at what the former Celtic captain and manager Billy McNeill rather patronisingly described as a village. “Billy is a pal of mine and the first British player ever to lift the European Cup, so I’m not going to start an argument with him,” Coyle says. “You have to put that remark in a context. He didn’t mean to insult Burnley, he’s just Celtic through and through and always will be. I’m Celtic through and through come to that, I’ll be a Celtic fan until I die.

“It was a difficult decision to make but it was made for the right reasons and I’m happy with it. I like what’s going on here, what’s been achieved. We may be underdogs in most of our Premier League matches, but what difference does that make? It’s what happens when you cross the line that counts. And Billy is right in a way, you could fit the entire population of Burnley into Old Trafford. But what that means, per head of population, is that we’re the world’s best supported football team.”

On Wednesday evening, with the famous old ground creaking under the strain of people enjoying themselves, it must have felt like it. “The stadium is a bit ramshackle, but that’s the way I like it,” Coyle says. “That’s the sort of ground I have been brought up on. I’ll tell you something else, too. I’ve played football all over Scotland – Dumbarton, Dundee, Falkirk, St Johnstone and a few others – but wherever I’ve been on a Saturday there were always buses leaving for the Celtic or Rangers game. All you ever see in Burnley is Burnley tops and scarves. I love that.”

The Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson knows past glories will count for nothing this season

Sir Alex Ferguson insists he is still motivated by a fear of failure after 23 years in the same job, equalling Liverpool’s record number of titles and the possibility of setting a new mark this season by winning the Premier League for an unprecedented fourth time in succession.

Manchester United begin their defence of the title this afternoon, when Birmingham are the visitors to Old Trafford, and, despite having an old friend and ally in the opposing dugout in Alex McLeish, United’s 67-year-old manager says he cannot afford to take anything for granted.

“I never regard myself as bullet-proof,” Ferguson says. “I might be bullet-proof at this very moment, before a ball has been kicked, but I have always worked under a fear of failure. I think every manager would say the same. Failure for Manchester United might be a poor performance against Birmingham in the first game. What you have won before counts for nothing, in that respect, because the most important thing is keeping a winning mentality going from day to day. I’ve just got something in me that doesn’t think about anything else but winning. You try to transmit that mentality to the players – that winning is what matters and losing matters even more.”

Though

Alex McLeish, the Birmingham manager, has managed in the Premier League before, this is the first time he has brought a team up to the top flight and Ferguson feels managers of promoted clubs, in particular, have a hard time adjusting from the success of the previous season to the harsh realities of the big league. “Managers generally know how difficult it is going to be, but some directors don’t think the same way,” he says. “They think, because they have won the Championship, they are bound to do well in the Premier League and set too much store by early results. I don’t think you can do too much to change that mentality, though, because even established clubs, who should know better, have sacked managers in August and September.

“Every manager is under pressure from bad results. It’s a results-based industry, a must-win industry, and I don’t see any way of getting away from that. This is the most competitive league in the world: some of the top players might have gone to Spain, but I don’t agree that their league is any harder than ours. The Premier League is hard work every week and, if the results don’t happen, the manager carries the can.”

Referees have been known to find Premier League players hard work, too, but – though still incensed at the perceived miscarriage of justice in last week’s Community Shield – Ferguson has softened towards Chris Foy, who refused to stop the game when Michael Ballack flattened Patrice Evra in the build-up to a Chelsea goal, and officials in general. “There are several grey areas to be looked at,” he says. “Referees do not have to stop the game when players are on the ground, but they come under enormous pressure from crowds and players to do so, and, once they do, they create a rod for their own back. Every similar incident from then on will have to be treated the same and the players know and expect that.

“Players have been told to play to the whistle and not kick the ball out, and referees have been asked not to stop the game except in emergencies, which are relatively few. Nothing seems to work, but something will have to be done about it because the players are killing the game. It’s not the referees’ fault because they don’t know what to do for the best. The vast majority of players who stay on the ground are not really injured, they just want the game stopped. Players and professionalism are killing the game, not the referees.”

McLeish concedes that his team have a very difficult task this afternoon. “They are the champions and we are going into the lions’ den. Our players will need to punch above their weight.”

His striker Cameron Jerome, though, is looking on the bright side: “It could be the best time to play them, first game of the season. We have not got to be scared of the opposition. The fans will be expecting them to push us over, but we are not going to go there and lie down.” We are going there with confidence we can hold our own and, maybe, cause an upset.”

United will stand and fall by how well their two main threats, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov, combine this season

Guardian writers’ (ie not Paul Wilson’s) prediction: 3rd Odds to win league: 15/8

There was widespread relief when Manchester United finally bowed to the inevitable and sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid, because by the end of his final season in England all the preening and posturing had even begun to annoy people inside Old Trafford. In addition to his undoubted talents as a flying winger and prodigious goalscorer - he did not just score a prodigious number of goals for a winger, he scored a number of prodigious goals - Ronaldo seemed to relish the role of pantomime villain and his departure was never going to go unnoticed or unremarked.

It is still a jump, however, to conclude that United will miss their most conspicuous asset to the extent that other teams are now favourites for the title. A somewhat self-centred Ronaldo did not always manage to galvanise the team in some of the big games last season, and at no time during the league campaign that brought Sir Alex Ferguson a record-equalling 18th title was anyone remarking that United were a one-man team.

While that criticism might have been valid the season before, when Ronaldo’s unexpected tally of 42 goals took United to the major prizes despite a lack of penetration from the rest of the forward line, the winger was not as outstanding last time out and Ferguson’s desire to use either him or Ryan Giggs through the middle was one factor in Wayne Rooney being forced out to the left wing.

Ferguson actually claimed Rooney enjoyed being out on the left last season and was adapting successfully to the position, though it now appears that blueprint has been torn up. United seem likely to return to something based on a more conventional 4-4-2 with Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov first choice strikers and Michael Owen and Federico Macheda in reserve. On paper, at least, that suggests a considerable goal threat, and before writing off United’s chances of a fourth title it would be wise to wait and see whether Berbatov and Rooney can come into their own given extended runs in their favoured positions.

Owen’s impact depends very much on whether the new system works, since he will not prosper in anything that requires him to play in midfield or alone up front. If Berbatov and Rooney form a successful partnership his appearances could be limited anyway, though even as an impact or emergency sub he seems certain to score more goals than the five Carlos Tevez managed in the league last season.

Though Antonio Valencia is hardly a like for like replacement for Ronaldo he is an exciting winger, with all the pace and control necessary to exploit the space he will find on United’s right. His acquisition makes sense and it is probably astute of Ferguson not to go in search of anything more galactic for the moment, yet given the extent to which United were taken apart in Rome it is perhaps surprising central midfield has not been strengthened.

United are well off for defensive midfielders, even allowing for the continued absence of Owen Hargreaves, but with Giggs and Paul Scholes winding down, the cleverness and creativity is going to have to come from Nani or Anderson. About time, some might say. Others might not be so optimistic, although the two front players are both adept at starting from deep positions and instigating attacks rather than just waiting to finish them. Apart from the injuries that are increasingly disrupting the Rio Ferdinand-Nemaja Vidic partnership in central defence, and the slight uncertainty over the goalkeeping succession, United are sound at the back and can offer an attacking threat from both full-back positions.

There is a danger, especially if they switch from 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-2, that United will resemble England and stand or fall by how well Rooney plays. But England do not have a Berbatov, or anyone like him, and ultimately United will stand or fall by how well their two main attacking threats combine. They hardly combined at all last season but Ferguson seems willing to change the system to give them every chance. The question now is how well they take it, with Berbatov in particular under pressure to deliver and needing already to improve on his less than decisive contribution to the new era in the Community Shield game. At least penalty shoot-outs do not feature in the Premier League, so given the massive amount of title-winning experience within the club it seems reasonable to suppose a fourth consecutive domestic crown is possible, maybe even probable. But unless the Berbatov-Rooney axis can be very clever indeed it is equally likely United will be rumbled again in Europe.

In: Antonio Valencia (Wigan, £16m), Michael Owen (Newcastle, free), Gabriel Obertan (Bordeaux, undisclosed).

Out: Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid, £80m), Fraizer Campbell (Sunderland, £3.5m), Carlos Tevez (contract expired), Manucho (Real Valladolid, undisclosed), Lee Martin (Ipswich, undisclosed), Richard Eckersley (Burnley, undisclosed), Rodrigo Possebon (Braga, loan).

Manchester City fans are convinced they have trumped Manchester United although Carlos Tevez will need more goals

Even before Noel Gallagher undermined the Mark Hughes summer of sweet talk by observing that John Terry is a Cockney cry baby, it was being unkindly suggested that with Newcastle in the Championship Manchester City would assume the mantle of the Premier League’s chief suppliers of comedy.

That is perhaps a little harsh, though Emmanuel Adebayor did suggest City’s reputation as a joke club has travelled as far as Togo when he wondered whether the people of his homeland would understand his reasons for making such a move. What that means, of course, is that Adebayor was worried his countrymen would perfectly understand his reasons for favouring City over Arsenal. Presumably Terry himself felt similarly constrained when sheepishly allowing Michael Ballack to allude to the elephant in the room at last week’s Chelsea kit launch.

What seems beyond dispute, however, is that with Newcastle out of the way City supporters will have no serious competition for the title of the Premier League’s greatest optimists. Perhaps they deserved that accolade even before the Toon’s demise – it has been pointed out many times that even when relegated to the third tier of English football their attendances and spirits remained high – and perhaps Newcastle have it easier in any case. When your main rivals are Sunderland, the bar is not set especially high most seasons, whereas having to live with Manchester United’s success is the factor that tends to define the City mentality. Take Gallagher’s reply a few years ago to the straightforward programme questionnaire prompt: what is your favourite goal? “Any goal scored by any player at any time against Manchester United.”

All of which brings us to Carlos Tevez, who has taken the unusual step of moving straight from one Manchester club to the other – a move that has resulted in the man himself becoming a battleground. As City stumped up a hefty £25.5m for the Argentinian, the very sum that United clearly did not feel happy about handing over to Tevez’s owners for a player who could not find a place in most of Sir Alex Ferguson’s starting line-ups, he has become so much of a battleground that he may like to consider adding the Ordnance Survey’s crossed-swords symbol to his tattoo portfolio.

For while it may appear to the casual observer that spendthrift City have just paid top whack for a United reject, City fans do not see it like that at all. Merely suggesting United did not want Tevez sends them into a fury. The City take on the transfer is that Hughes pinched Tevez from under Fergie’s nose, taking advantage of the fact that United treated him shabbily and waited too long to make an offer. Armed with the knowledge that United did finally offer the full amount, and ignoring the fact that it came far too late in the day to be meaningful, City fans are congratulating themselves on beating their rivals to a top player’s signature.

And who is to say they are wrong? While Ferguson’s team selections and body language increasingly suggested he was unconvinced by Tevez, who scored only five league goals in 29 appearances last season, United would never have chosen to sell him to City had they owned his registration in the conventional way. And the very United fans who are now scoffing at City for paying over the odds for a bit-part player are the same ones who would chant “Argentina” to prompt Ferguson to bring Tevez off the bench last season, and stay late after games to urge the manager to “sign him up”.

According to Kia Joorabchian, who would say that wouldn’t he, City fans are crazy about Carlitos and convinced they have made the best signing in the world. Tevez’s proxy owner turned adviser went on to over-egg the pudding considerably by saying City’s support would rather have Tevez than Cristiano Ronaldo – as City were never going to get Ronaldo the comparison is spurious – yet in the brief period last year when it appeared Abu Dhabi money really could buy anyone in the world and there was talk of a £135m bid for United’s prize asset, it was surprising how many City fans went straight from hating hair‑gel boy with a passion to blissful contemplation of how much it would hurt United to be thus gazumped. That is how rivalries work.

United kept hold of Ronaldo for as long as they possibly could, and when they did bow to the inevitable there was a certain amount of relief that he went to a different country for a colossal fee. None of that applies to Tevez, whose “sale” yielded United no profit, but what makes this high-profile shift of allegiance so intriguing is the possibility that Ferguson has made a mistake. Certainly Tevez will have to up his scoring rate if, as he has promised, his goals are going to carry City to the title, yet maybe he will score goals on a regular basis, as he did for West Ham, if Hughes gives him an extended run in the team. Throw in the consideration that Ferguson has effectively decided Dimitar Berbatov is a better bet for goals than Tevez, while even among United fans there is debate about whether the Bulgarian did enough last season to justify that faith, and the local stakes are higher than ever in what is bound to be one of Ferguson’s last seasons at Old Trafford.

Berbatov looks languid, but can be deadly, and while Tevez works his socks off he is often wasteful. Tevez scored 15 goals in all competitions last season to Berbatov’s 14. They will be playing in different competitions from now on, though it may be worth a punt on Tevez at least to double, if not treble, his puny league tally. He will get games and he has a point to prove.

If Manchester City fans are football’s greatest optimists, then Sunderland supporters also deserve an honourable mention. Even the ones who took me to task a few weeks ago for suggesting that Steve “I’ll be shopping at Harrods now” Bruce might find it difficult attracting top players to the north-east.

Roy Keane had said as much, even berating modern players for letting their girlfriends have the final say and allowing a dim view of Wearside’s shopping opportunities to cloud their judgment, yet rather charmingly the fact that footballers and their partners usually want somewhere glamorous to dispose of their hefty disposable incomes seems to have passed some Sunderland fans by. “Of course we have shops up here,” one said. “Have you never heard of the Gateshead Centre?”

Sunderland has always been a place where football matters, often to the exclusion of anything else, and it could provide a useful service by promoting old-fashioned values and staying in touch with reality. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be enough old-fashioned footballers to go around. After showing Peter Crouch around Sunderland (no jokes about how long that might have taken, please), Bruce struck a decidedly resigned note. “Other clubs are interested so all we can do is keep our fingers crossed,” he said. “We have made him a good offer but location is the thing.”

Mountains of cash may buy good players, but not the loyalty and desire needed to turn a team into world beaters

If Manchester City are trying to be the new Manchester United, they appear to be going a funny way about it. All right, before City fans point out that the world hardly needs another Manchester United, never mind the North-west of England, the Eastlands club are no longer making bullish statements about trying to become bigger than the neighbours. The last time Mark Hughes was quoted on the subject he said he would be happy to win the Carling Cup, a disarmingly modest ambition though not necessarily one to send John Terry’s pulse racing.

Yet City do want to be playing at United’s level, entering the Champions League every year and putting silverware on the sideboard more seasons than not. So do several other clubs, of course, notably Everton, Aston Villa and Spurs, but City have the money to make it happen. Which makes it all the more mystifying why they keep trying to throw squillions of pounds at marquee signings who plainly prefer staying where they are, rather than concentrating on putting an effective team together.

This time last year, when Hughes had just joined City, he said he would be pursuing the same transfer policy he had at Blackburn and looking for value in signings. If the player is getting on a bit the price must be right, though ideally he thought he would be looking for younger players who could give City some of their best years and still have a trade-on value. That is the very blueprint United are now following, while City seem to have abandoned the notion.

There was nothing wrong with pinching Gareth Barry from under Liverpool’s noses, and although United might have deemed the player too old at 28, the £12m price was at least a relative bargain. The £17m for Roque Santa Cruz, who turns 28 next month, was not quite as stunning a bit of business, as City were kept waiting for a whole season and ended up paying top whack for a player Hughes had brought to Blackburn for a song.

The Terry business, however, is just plain silly, with echoes of the Kaka fiasco last Christmas. The Chelsea captain will be 30 next year, does not have too many Champions League seasons left, and has never given any public indication that he wants to leave Stamford Bridge. All City seemed to be interested in was making a statement – we can sign the England captain, we can sign anybody, we have enough money to turn any player’s head – and all they actually managed to achieve was the not inconsiderable feat of making Chelsea look shrewd and financially astute.

Terry is a good player but by no means the only decent centre-half knocking around. He does not have enough years left to be value for the kind of stupid money City were talking, and even if he had made such an extreme move purely to maximise his already massive earning power his career might never have survived the attendant ridicule. Clearly most people, in most walks of life, would jump at the chance to earn £250,000 a week. But Terry is not most people. He is captain of Chelsea and England, a one-club man who already earns around half that amount per week. City may have fancied the England captain as their signature signing, though what they would have ended up with is weekly chants of “there’s only one greedy bastard”.

Consider instead Manchester United’s transfer policy this summer. With plenty of money in the bank after the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo – up to £100m, allegedly, depending on how far one trusts the Glazer family’s pledges to Sir Alex Ferguson – the club did not make the mistake of seeking a like-for-like replacement and throwing suitcases full of bank notes at a new trickster on the wing. Such a player does not really exist anyway, but it would not be United’s style to, say, pitch their tent on Barcelona’s lawn and refuse to go away until an offer had been accepted for Lionel Messi.

United are in a better position than City in that most players already want to join them, but when that is not the case, think Alan Shearer in the past or Karim Benzema this summer, they accept defeat with dignity and look elsewhere. It is interesting that United have just signed Michael Owen on a free. They might have liked him in his pomp, but it is simply not United’s style to lay siege to rival clubs or try to wear down their star players with repeated offers. Everton fans might protest about Wayne Rooney, but the club needed to sell and in the end the player wanted to go. Dimitar Berbatov was desperate to leave Spurs once he discovered United were interested. Ferguson knew he was pushing on an open door and at least Spurs did what selling clubs have to do and extracted top price. Forest were looking to sell Roy Keane, Leeds did not know what to do with Eric Cantona, then could not afford to keep Rio Ferdinand, and so on.

At risk of provoking an argument within the city, United seem to know what City have yet to realise. That the more money you spend on a player the more important it is that he wants to join your club. He must be excited by the prospect, and keen to make the step up. If not, don’t bother. Money alone is insufficient motivation. The players United have signed or agreed deals for this summer may be low key, from Wigan, Newcastle and, in Gabriel Obertan, Bordeaux reserves, but what links Owen to Antonio Valencia and Obertan is that they are all thrilled to get the chance to play at Old Trafford. Not one of them thinks they are about to become the new Cristiano Ronaldo, but all are flattered to be part of Ferguson’s team-building for the new season.

City have been flashing the cash this summer, or attempting to, though most of the curiosity still surrounds what sort of team United will be deploying. Perhaps United have earned that position over the years, and perhaps City only have their new found wealth with which to compete. All the same, City could learn a lesson or two in humility from their illustrious neighbours.

£80m for Cristiano Ronaldo is good business all round, although he might have been better packing his bags and medals last year

In time the 2008-09 season will come to be viewed as an added extra to Cristiano Ronaldo’s Manchester United career, a hastily agreed option that did not really work out to the entire satisfaction of any of the parties concerned and a contractual obligation that merely delayed the inevitable.

Knowing what we know now, Ronaldo might have been better packing his bags and his Champions League winner’s medal at the end of last season and leaving United wanting more. He might even have commanded a higher sum 12 months ago, before the credit crunch kicked in, and he would have found himself the centre of attention as the only galáctico at the Bernabéu instead of having to share top billing with Kaka.

From United’s point of view a record-breaking £80m represents good business for a player who clearly wanted to leave. It does not matter what Ronaldo might have gone on to achieve with United, how difficult it will be to replace him or what it actually says on his contract. Once a player has indicated he would rather be somewhere else it is time to stop talking legalese and start talking money.

United did well to resist Ronaldo’s attempts to leave last summer, but apart from the two stunning long-range strikes that propelled the team into a second successive Champions League final, they did not enjoy the same sort of enthusiasm and input from a player who finished the previous season with 42 goals. Ronaldo still managed to weigh in with a far from insignificant 26 goals in the season just ended, but it was obvious a parting of the ways would come sooner rather than later and noticeable that Sir Alex Ferguson stopped bristling with defiance whenever the subject of Real Madrid was raised and instead simply claimed he was tired of discussing the matter.

At 24, Ronaldo arguably has his best years ahead of him, although it remains to be seen whether Real Madrid get as much out of him as Manchester United. They will not be getting the same value for money, for a start. The £12m United paid in 2003 looks trifling when set against the trophies, goals and moments of individual brilliance that lit up his six years at Old Trafford, and though a certain petulance and willingness to fall over in search of free-kicks could be entered in the debit side of the ledger, there is no doubt United fans greatly enjoyed watching a precocious teenager grow up to be a world-beater.

One hopes, quite literally, that Ronaldo can keep his feet on the ground in Madrid. He has the talent and the temperament for the Bernabéu, although one suspects if things ever start to go wrong they could go wrong quite badly. One thing Ronaldo is going to have to get used to straight away is more meetings, and more relentless comparisons, with Barcelona’s Lionel Messi. The pair have been rivals in the World Player of the Year and Ballon D’Or stakes for the past few seasons with Ronaldo pipping Messi to the awards this season, although there was no doubt the Barcelona player won hands down in the head-to-head contest that was the Champions League final. If that trend continues in La Liga next season, Ronaldo is going to have to prove he can live up to his reputation and his transfer tag.

As for United, they have £80m in the kitty after losing a player they always knew they were going to lose. It is a bit like the George Best scenario but with a world-record transfer fee as compensation. Although Best spent 11 seasons with United, only nine of them could be described as full seasons. Ronaldo gave United six full seasons, took them to three league titles and two European Cup finals and left for £80m. It’s good business all round, assuming United can source another tricky winger with the whole of the world to choose from.

The only nagging doubt is that unlike Best, Ronaldo has plenty of time left to come back and haunt them. He is not going to turn up at Dunstable Town, Stockport County or Fulham, after all. If Real Madrid get their act together quickly, with Ronaldo and Kaka linking up, there could soon be two Spanish teams blocking United’s path to another European Cup.

As 2008-09 draws to a close it is time to reflect upon the good, the bad, the tame and the lame

Six things from the 2008-09 season that will still be remembered 10 years from now.

1) Chelsea’s antics as they went out of the Champions League at home to Barcelona. Never mind the rights and wrongs for a moment, although some of the refereeing decisions were very wrong. Football has never made such electric television since Gazza’s tears in Turin. Didier Drogba probably should not have sworn into a live TV microphone, though everything else about the episode – the Ballack ballet, the portly official, the flip-flops, the still pictures in next morning’s newspapers – was by turns harrowing and hilarious.

2) Phil Brown’s al fresco half-time team talk at Manchester City on Boxing Day. This is not an idea likely to catch on, in that it did not seem to bring about any discernible improvement, made the manager and the players look a bit foolish and was a bit silly anyway on one of the coldest days of the year, but it will be remembered. Even if only as proof that some managers are nowhere near as smart as they think they are.

3) Talking of which, Rafa Benítez’s rant against Sir Alex Ferguson falls into the same category. It was not, in the end, a turning point in the season, neither a high water mark nor a low one, but it was a peculiar thing to do for little reward. Benítez is being watched for erratic behaviour now and, while he just about got away with failing to explain properly why Liverpool’s second half performance at Wigan was “crazy – but I don’t want to say why”, he should surely have found a more emollient phrase when asked if Ferguson deserved congratulations on winning the title. Almost any vague platitude would have done, whereas ducking the issue made him look churlish.

4) Federico Macheda’s goal against Aston Villa. Not just a thrilling late winner and a great story, but almost certainly the moment the title was won. It came the day after Liverpool had taken three points at Fulham with a late strike of their own, and was the perfect champion riposte. In terms of sensational goals in important matches, Cristiano Ronaldo’s long-range pair against Porto and Arsenal take some beating. Manchester United have already incorporated Clive Tyldesley’s mistaken view that Ronaldo was too far out for a shot into one of their pre‑match entertainment routines.

5) Chelsea 4 Liverpool 4. The surprise of the season, in terms of what had gone before between the same two Champions League rivals. Not the best defending and goalkeeping, perhaps, but you couldn’t fault the entertainment. The surprise performance of the season without clownish errors was Croatia 1 England 4. No one was expecting that. Manchester United 1 Liverpool 4 was not far behind.

6) ITV supplying a TicTac advert instead of Dan Gosling’s winning goal for Everton in their FA Cup fourth‑round replay against Liverpool. The FA Cup third‑round performance was pretty ropey as well, with ITV somehow missing the point, despite years of watching the Beeb do it almost effortlessly, that you are supposed to focus on the games that provide the drama rather than the games where you have sent most of your outside‑broadcast equipment.

And six things that might not be recalled in another 10 weeks…

1) Alan Shearer’s punditry.

2) The amount of fighting spirit all three north-east teams showed when attempting to climb away from the relegation zone.

3) Ricky Sbragia the manager. Niall Quinn only just got away with that one.

4) Amr Zaki.

5) Luiz Felipe Scolari’s time at Chelsea. Ditto Deco, even more surprisingly. Maybe even Guus Hiddink will not be remembered all that long.

6) Scottish football. We wish. Joking apart, though, it must say something when Gordon Strachan quits at Celtic and is immediately linked with the Sunderland job, while Owen Coyle in turn dismisses speculation about taking over at Parkhead in favour of staying with Burnley. What it says is that the Old Firm is the latest football institution to bow to the Premier League’s wealth. Strachan put it best, with what could well be one of the quotes of the season. “Time was when the budget at Celtic was the fourth or fifth biggest in British football,” he said. “Nowadays we are finding we cannot compete for wages with the likes of Hull City.”

It is likely that no English team can match Barcelona for skill on their top form, and what’s more they probably shouldn’t try

“Barça played lovely football and maybe people wanted to see us win” – Yaya Touré

It was billed as the final everyone wanted and, as even Manchester United and their supporters were willing to agree with Touré on what football should be all about, the result did not disappoint. Small wonder Michel Platini wore a grin as wide as the Tiber when he was handing out the prizes. His faith in football had been vindicated by Barcelona’s stylish superiority, and the great bogeyman of Premier League ­domination exposed as a myth.

Clearly, strength in numbers is not the same as sheer class. No other league in Europe has a top four as strong and as permanent as the English one, and the same quartet of clubs can again be expected to be well represented from the Champions League quarter-finals onwards next season, stepping over themselves if necessary to ensure someone from this country gets a shot at the final. That is the sort of domination Uefa themselves invited when they allowed four teams from the stronger leagues to take part, and they will have to live with it for the foreseeable future.

They can do so in the knowledge that the best in England is some ­distance below the best in the world. Some would argue Manchester United are not necessarily even the best team in England, and that is exactly the point. They were in Rome by virtue of being the strongest team in the Premier League, with sufficient resources to survive in Europe in addition to picking up a third successive domestic title. That is what English teams do: grind down their rivals with their enormous budgets and extensive scouting networks. While United, formidable as they are, do it better than most they do not have a monopoly on skill, and they left Rome with the uneasy feeling that some things might be forever beyond them.

United rode their luck to a greater or lesser extent in their three successful European Cup finals: this time it ran out completely. They met a side with all the skill in the world, and it showed. Even though the Champions League final is a monument to the riches and razzle-dazzle of modern football, there were some eternal truths on show in the Eternal City. Damningly one-sided though the game was, one could not help but feel privileged to see something wonderful gain its reward. Barcelona are moving the game on, as Cruyff turns did in their time and deep-lying centre-forwards before that. The supposed power that is England is once again in the position of spectator, standing still and having little option but to applaud.

United were meant to have been on the brink of making history, yet only one team look equipped to become the first to win back-to-back Champions League finals. Add the spicy fact that next year’s final is to be played in Spain, at Real Madrid’s Bernabéu no less, and you can almost feel modern football history taking shape. Certainly Pep Guardiola’s team are as accomplished and elegant a set of ­players as ever wrote their names into the record books; lest anyone has forgotten they won the Spanish version of the treble this season and several of their key players helped Spain to their Euro 2008 success.

“It has been a spectacular year,” the peerless Andrés Iniesta said. “To win all these titles at once is amazing. I wouldn’t say it was easier than we thought against Manchester United – playing the reigning champions is never easy – but Chelsea in the game before was the most difficult, maybe the toughest of the campaign.”

That puts not only United but English football in its place. Yes, Barcelona were lucky to get through against Chelsea, and with anything like a normal referee they might have gone out. But Chelsea had unashamedly attempted to stifle Barcelona’s passing and movement, playing an ultra-defensive away leg and aiming to hang on for a narrow victory at home. There is nothing wrong with those tactics, and Guus Hiddink’s pragmatism at least meant Chelsea were never as exposed as United were in the final. They just do not amount to much of a boast for Premier League standards.

Hiddink recognised Barcelona’s prowess and did what he thought he had to do to counter it. Sir Alex Ferguson thought he could match Barcelona for attacking dynamism, and ended up learning the same harsh European lesson that countless managers from English clubs have learned over the years, he among them. What works in this country and this league will not necessarily work against opponents who can keep the ball and attack with subtlety and intelligence.

Take Wayne Rooney, for example, a player of more subtlety and intelligence than is often imagined and one who made a point of searching out every Barcelona player, and their coach, to shake his hand at the final whistle. Like Ferguson, who was equally magnanimous in defeat, Rooney knew he had come up against superior opponents, and was soon to be heard offering the view that Iniesta might be the best player in the world.

True as that may be, he had competition from Xavi Hernández and Lionel Messi as best player in Rome on Wednesday night. The story of the game in a nutshell was that Barcelona had three players who played immaculately, and a supporting cast who were all pretty good, while United supporters struggled to name anyone who had had a decent game.

Sympathy for Rooney encouraged some to accuse Ferguson of playing him out of position, or switching him between too many positions, possibly unaware how antediluvian that would sound to continental ears. Had not Samuel Eto’o switched of his own volition out to the right wing and back again, to allow Messi to keep popping up in the middle? Apart from Nemanja Vidic, who was left confused about which player to mark as well as well as how far up the pitch to come for challenges, it is impossible to imagine anyone complaining that Messi is not really a centre-forward.

That is the sort of flair and imagination rarely seen in the Premier League, where the vast majority of clubs would actively discourage it, and it is refreshing to see it flourishing elsewhere. One begins to see what Arsène Wenger meant when he said Barcelona might struggle in the English league, particularly at places like Stoke, because the style of play is “very physical and committed”.

While in this country we are fond of imagining that to be a cliche made redundant by foreign players and managers (though there are plenty of football supporters ready to argue the opposite case, that the game has gone soft), Barcelona’s poise and control lent weight to Wenger’s argument and made you wonder what agonies he must have been through on the coach home after seeing his footballing philosophy and his most creative players booted into row Z at Blackburn or Bolton. English football has little to be ashamed about – skill, speed, technical and tactical ability have all soared in the past decade or two – yet next to Barcelona at their best almost anyone is going to look slightly clodhopping.

“This is a bitter pill to swallow because we have been very successful in our own league and it is a funny way to finish the season,” Rio Ferdinand said, neatly emphasising that the gap between best in England and best in Europe appears to be widening again. “We have dominated our own country yet finished on a really bad note, but we’ve got plenty of ­character. We’ll be back.”

Ryan Giggs echoed the same theme. “Great teams bounce back and that is what we will look to do. The disappointment is raw at the moment but we must remember we’ve still had a fantastic season.”

Just not quite as fantastic as Barcelona’s. In addition to winning the treble, Barcelona pulverised Real Madrid while United were losing twice to Liverpool. The Spanish champions are unquestionably the real deal, while United won their domestic league thanks to a series of gritty performances against lesser clubs. The surprise when Liverpool thumped them 4-1 on their own ground was palpable, and though Ferguson still maintains that was some sort of undeserved freak result, there was no doubting that erstwhile superman Vidic reacted to Fernando Torres and Steve Gerrard as if their boots were full of green kryptonite.

United had already lost to Liverpool at Anfield, thanks in part to a mistake by Edwin van der Sar, and though they did manage to beat Chelsea at home it was not the Chelsea so well organised by Hiddink towards the end of the season – that really would have been an intriguing contest. What seems to have happened this season is that top teams have not allowed United to use their attack as the first line of defence. That is to say, the better organised sides have not been so busy dealing with Rooney, Ronaldo et al that they could not find time to ask questions of the United back line. That is exactly the way the Rome final worked out. If United were under the impression Barcelona were weak in defence they never managed to put the matter to the test after the first few minutes. A combination of an unimpressive United midfield and the confusion Messi caused by not only swapping places with Eto’o but operating in the space between the back line and the middle so that midfielders constantly had to drop back to help Vidic look after him, meant Xavi and Iniesta had all the time and space they needed to work their magic.

If United are to win the Champions League again in the near future they must hope Barcelona either have an off day in the earlier stages or meet a competent referee at Chelsea. No English team are currently set up to match them for skill, and it may even be inadvisable for any to try to do so if they also want to win the Premier League. Ask Wenger.

Only Liverpool, who famously cannot win the Premier League and are half‑Spanish anyway, could possibly attempt to play Barcelona at their own game. Whether they would have fared any better than United in Rome is an argument for another day.

No, if Barcelona are going to play football of that quality, English football needs a cunning plan. And the Arsenal manager may have just hit on one. What we must do is fast-track Stoke City.

Barcelona’s dismantling of United highlighted the gulf between the Premier League’s best and the special abilities of Messi and his team-mates

Conventional wisdom suggests that Manchester United’s defence is the rock on which their serial title successes have been built, the reliable platform that allows all the pyrotechnics up front to take place.

That might be the case in the Premier League, though the theory was made to look as shaky as some of the United defending by the superbly mobile and bewitchingly ingenious Barcelona attack. Put simply, United do not have to defend against players as good as Lionel Messi and Andrés Iniesta back at home, and the former in particular was so hard to pin down here that he left Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic feeling like Billy Wright after meeting the Magyars.

Messi refused to stay on the right wing, refused to stay in any one place for long, and left United unsure whether it was the responsibility of the midfield or the defence to pick him up. The defence generally had to pick up the pieces, United’s midfield having such negligible impact on the first half that Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo were isolated and shaking their heads in exasperation long before half-time. That not only showed why Messi might be a more valuable asset than Ronaldo, in that he can dictate a game rather than wait for opportunities to come his way, it exposed United to another unfamiliar problem. Completely untroubled by United’s puny attacking efforts after the opening 15 minutes, ­Barcelona kept swarming forward. The two questions that will haunt United after their aspirations of world domination were put in firm perspective, were whether they went with the right attack in the first place and how much of a difference the suspended Darren Fletcher might have made.

What surprises Sir Alex Ferguson had to spring, he sprang in attack and midfield, though arguably the only real shock at seeing Dimitar Berbatov join Paul Scholes on the bench was the former’s £30m price tag and relative novelty. The defence remained unchanged. To say Ferguson put out his best back four ahead of Edwin van der Sar would be to risk the ire of those United fans who do not consider John O’Shea the equal of the others, but it was always going to be this back four as soon as Rio Ferdinand was passed fit, and the his manager made a point of insisting his right back’s form over the last few weeks merited a place in the starting line-up.

For the first few minutes, as Rooney and Ronaldo kept Barcelona pinned back in their own half, it appeared the greatest danger to United’s defence might be straying too far up the pitch. Samuel Eto’o kept taking up positions miles offside then running back on at the last moment, though this may not have been a deliberate strategy.

Barcelona did succeed in lulling United into a false sense of security, however, for when they put together their first meaningful attack after 10 minutes the defensive line in front of Van der Sar crumbled alarmingly to allow the goalkeeper to be beaten at his near post. First Michael Carrick was guilty of not closing down Iniesta quickly enough, then Vidic and Carrick failed to prevent Eto’o bearing down on goal, though in fairness once Eto’o received Iniesta’s pass in a good position he was in no mood to be stopped.

United had a brief rocky patch after that, surviving despite losing the whereabouts of Messi and Thierry Henry on a couple of occasions. Order was restored within a few minutes, though just after Ronaldo was brought down on the edge of the Barcelona area by Gerard Piqué there was a reminder for United that Messi can also strike from distance when he wrongfooted Vidic and shot narrowly over. Vidic was entitled to wonder how he ended up with the responsibility of looking after Messi when all the pre-match publicity had suggested that would be Patrice Evra’s job. The answer was that

Eto’o stationed himself out on the right and took up most of Patrice Evra’s time, while Messi enjoyed a more or less free role in the centre. The pair switched back again before the interval but with Messi still commanding most of the attention United found things simpler on their right flank, where O’Shea just about managed to keep track of a restrained Henry’s movements. It was in the centre when Messi and Iniesta were allowed to link up that United had most difficulty in guessing what would happen next, and just before the interval Rio Ferdinand had to make an acrobatic intervention to prevent a scooped pass forward reaching Henry in the area.

Messi closed the first half with a searing run past Ferdinand and Henry could have scored at the beginning of the second period when he turned the same defender and forced a save from Van der Sar. Messi had a penalty appeal turned down, Iniesta was fouled on the edge of the area and Xavi Hernandez struck a post with the free-kick. Incredibly there were still only 53 minutes on the clock and the only way United could gain respite was to take the ball down the field.

To their enormous credit United managed to do that, and for some minutes, though the cost in energy was severe. It was a tired Evra that surrendered possession to a galloping Carles Puyol to set up Barcelona’s second goal, and a tired defence that only pushed the ball out as far as Xavi then watched powerless as the smallest player on the pitch climbed to tuck away his cross at the far post.

The last act of the game saw Vidic earn a booking for cynically piling into Messi from behind, needlessly flattening the man of the match when it was too late to make any difference. It seemed to sum up United’s night, and their frustration.

The match winner against Barcelona last year, Paul Scholes is still eager to play at 34

As the Luzhniki Stadium was finally plunged into darkness after last year’s Champions League final and the last groups of Manchester United and Chelsea fans made their way off into the Moscow night, a solitary figure emerged from the winners’ dressing room and climbed aboard the empty team coach.

It was Paul Scholes, and he seemed to want to be alone with his thoughts. Perhaps the emotion of the occasion had been too much for the player who had had to wait nine years for a second chance after missing the 1999 final through suspension. Maybe he wanted to replay the game to himself, savouring every moment so as not to forget anything. Or possibly he just wanted some time and space to look at his medal, the one that completed a full set.

What was that all about, Scholes is asked as he prepares for this week’s appointment with Barcelona in Rome. What makes a footballer celebrate the achievement of a lifelong ambition by sitting on his own in a car park? Scholes seems slightly taken aback by the question, as if he has just been asked why he wakes up in the morning or what makes him go to work every day. “Because I wanted to get home,” he says, sounding surprised the answer was not obvious. “I always do. What’s the point in hanging around?”

It is sometimes hard to credit that Scholes lives on the same planet as Cristiano Ronaldo, and David Beckham before him, never mind plays for the same team. But Manchester United has always been a broad church, as old Labour used to say of itself back in the days when MPs used to fall out with each other over ideas and ideals, and no one would ever attempt to argue that Scholes has not been as valuable a servant to his club over the years as any of the bright-lights set. Not that Scholes is necessarily the early-to-bed homebird everyone takes him for. “I like a night out as much as anyone,” he protests. “I just seem to get away with it, I suppose.”

It was Scholes who took United to last year’s final, scoring the only goal in two legs against Barcelona, though he does not imagine Wednesday’s game will follow a similar script. For one thing Barcelona are better than they were this time last year. “They weren’t in such great form last season,” he says. “They will be a different proposition this time, they way their league has gone, and in any case it’s always a different game over two legs.” For another, sadly, Scholes can read the writing on the wall. “I can’t really expect to start,” he says. “I didn’t play in either of the semi-finals, and I didn’t play against Arsenal last Saturday.

“I want to play, I want to play in every game, but there’s a time when you have to accept you won’t be playing every week, especially at a club like this. Personally I find it hard to train every week and then not get a game at the end, but at 34 I don’t suppose I can complain. I just have to focus on being ready when the call does come.”

Scholes knows Sir Alex Ferguson will use him if he possibly can, but he also knows sentiment will not play a part this season. Not for him, at any rate. While Ferguson more or less promised Scholes a start last year because he felt for him having to sit out the 1999 final, this time the same sort of noises have been made about Park Ji-sung and John O’Shea. Scholes may have to be content with a place on the bench, though Ferguson clearly feels he can still make an impact. “I’m sure Paul will be involved at some point on Wednesday,” the United manager says. “We’re having to use him sparingly now but he’ll still get plenty of games next season.”

“I am starting to feel my age a bit,” Scholes says with customary frankness. “I’m starting to think this might be the last time I do this, or that, and on the pitch my game has changed as well. I don’t get forward as much as I used to, there are other people to do that now, and that’s why I don’t get as many scoring chances. I still enjoy playing but I don’t want to go on longer than I should do, and I’ve started to think about what I might do afterwards. I would like to stay in the game if I can. I am going to give coaching a go next year to see if I’m cut out to do that. I don’t know about managing, I’ll see how the coaching goes first.”

It is possible that Scholes would not have lasted this long without retiring early from international football, a decision he does not regret in the slightest. “It’s always nice when international fixtures come around, you get a week to 10 days to rest and relax,” he says. Coming from anyone else that could sound provocative or disloyal. When Scholes says it, you just picture him sitting at home in carpet slippers. He must be a club manager’s dream, even if Sven-Goran Eriksson and Steve McClaren sometimes found his attitude frustrating.

An expression of contentment and pleasure usually settles on Ferguson’s face when asked to consider Scholes, as if life would be a wonderful thing for managers if all footballers were made that way. Scholes can embark on his coaching career knowing he has spent his entire career absorbing lessons from one of the best, yet at the same time it is most unusual for a footballer to reach his mid-30s after a highly successful career and only ever have played for one club and worked for the same manager. Has he noticed any changed in Ferguson over the years? Have his methods altered or his manner mellowed? “He’s just the same as ever as far as I can see,” Scholes says. “He’s not changed at all. He’s still someone you want to stay on the right side of.”

Finally, has Scholes any ambitions left, now that he has won just about everything that club football has to offer and has been to more Champions League finals in a little over a year than most players manage in a lifetime? This is the moment to disclose an unfulfilled yearning to wind down his playing days with Oldham Athletic, something his manager has often hinted might be the case. Instead Scholes thinks and comes up with something even more Scholesian. “Yes, I have got an ambition,” he says. “I’d like to get back to playing for United.”

A point was all Manchester United needed and a point was all Arsenal let them have – quite literally, since Arsenal’s win at the Emirates in November, coupled with this comfortable stifling of the champions’ attacking ambitions, only underlined the fact United have taken just five points from a possible 18 against their top four rivals. But none of that mattered a jot as United celebrated their record-equalling 18th title on the pitch at the end.

Yet, after failing to bring a save from Lukasz Fabianski in the whole of the match, there could be some sympathy for Rafa Benitez’s assertion that, in some areas, United have not always been the best team this season.

Much of a forgettable first half had been played at walking pace on a warm day, with United rarely managing to generate their usual tempo. The home side seemed to want to crown their season’s achievement with a goal fit for the cameras, too, tending to waste what good positions they achieved by going for something a little too ambitious.

Cristiano Ronaldo cut back a cross for Wayne Rooney when a level ball would have found Carlos Tevez in a much more threatening position. Then a marvellous crossfield pass by Rooney was effortlessly controlled by Ronaldo only to be given away at the edge of the area.

Fabianski survived the first 45 minutes without any problems, which would have been more embarrassing for United had Robin van Persie not headed wastefully over the bar when picked out in front of goal by Andrey Arshavin. While Ryan Giggs and Rooney had opportunities at the other end, that counted as the game’s most clear-cut opportunity until Arshavin again caused problems for United by wriggling through on the left and supplying a cross from which Samir Nasri’s shot struck Van Persie and bounced clear.

Despite some below-par performances from key players, Giggs and Tevez among them, United resisted the temptation to tinker at half time. There were boos when Ji-Sung Park replaced Tevez after 67 minutes, followed by even more predictably chants of “sign him up” – though, in truth, it had not been one of the Argentine’s more persuasive displays.

Park had the ball in the net within minutes of coming on, only to be denied by a highly questionable offside flag. But at least his interchange with Ronaldo showed a willingness to run directly at the Arsenal defence. United will need a lot more of that in Rome.

• City won’t catch up with United overnight, says Hughes
• Win will put City in serious contention for Europe

The story of Manchester City’s life is that everything they do is dwarfed by Manchester United.

Mark Hughes’s players have won their past four games, picking up enough points to get among teams perceived to have had a good season, such as West Ham and Fulham, and if they continue their winning run this afternoon will be in strong contention for a place in Europe. Not that anyone will pay much attention. Should City win this afternoon, their neighbouring serial Champions League finalists will still be the story. The Europa League won’t come into it.

“All the City fans will be desperate to win the game, they would love to stop us winning the league and I can understand that,” says Sir Alex Ferguson. “It’s what derby matches are all about.”

True enough, though as Hughes contemplates going back to Old Trafford for the first time as a City gent, he is taking care to keep things in perspective. For all the money at Eastlands there appear to be few teams anywhere capable of living with United at the moment. “We’ve put on a nice little run and we are in decent shape,” he says. “Though from what I have seen United are playing exceptionally well too. They have so many world-class players, even in back-up positions they have world-class players, and we are nowhere near that level yet.”

It is City’s stated plan to match them one day, though not necessarily one day this season. Or indeed anytime particularly soon. “It will take time,” says Hughes, as he has in just about every interview since moving from Blackburn. City managed to win at Old Trafford under Sven-Goran Eriksson last season, when United were temporarily affected by the anniversary of Munich, but were beaten by a single Wayne Rooney goal in their home fixture in December.

“We’d like to think we have improved a bit since,” says Hughes. “It was quite comfortable for United, if I am honest, and I just think that maybe that shows where both teams are. United have had years of experience of playing and travelling in Europe and coming back and banging out performances and results in the Premier League.

“Just recently we have felt the benefit of two or three clear weeks and you find straight away that you get more players back, you get an energy to the training sessions because players have time to recover, and they’re not thinking about travelling and gearing up for another game in a short space of time.”

This begs an obvious question. Given that City are supposed to be aiming for the Champions League at the earliest opportunity and given that Aston Villa voluntarily bailed out of the Uefa Cup this season because they felt they could not possibly stay in it and hope to crack fourth place at home, would it not make sense to stay out of the even more preposterous Europa League and enjoy a whole season of clear weeks? Hughes thinks not. “We hope to be stronger as a squad next year and to be able to cope better,” he says. “It is demanding but we’ve really enjoyed the European games this year and it’s helped the development of the squad.”

Hughes has never been one to shirk a challenge, and though he admits he hardly knew what he was letting himself in for at City, he believes necessary action has been taken to put an ordered structure in place. “I feel a lot happier with the situation I’m working under now, I feel that the changes that have been made on and off the pitch have made the club stronger,” he explains.

“When I walked through the door the situation I found wasn’t quite what I was expecting and it’s taken time to change things around, but we’re through that now and in a better place. Overall I’ve enjoyed it. At times it’s been frustrating, other times it’s been infuriating and other times it’s been really stimulating. It’s been a whole range of emotions and things that we’ve had to face that we couldn’t have anticipated. We have come through it together, though, and as a team we are getting there. I think you can see that, in fact if ever there was a good time from our point of view to go to United, it’s now.”

Opinion is coming round to favouring Wayne Rooney as Footballer of the Year, with Frank Lampard his nearest rival

Opinion is coming round to favour Wayne Rooney as Footballer of the Year, not because he has had a particularly spectacular season but because his consistency and competitive instincts put him at the head of an otherwise level field.

Frank Lampard might be Rooney’s nearest rival, with events in this week’s Champions League games possibly helping decide between the two. Lampard was withdrawn in the first leg of Chelsea’s semi-final at Barcelona, whereas Rooney, although confessing later to not having had one of his better games, played a full part against Arsenal and is sure to feature prominently in Tuesday’s second leg. One goal at the Emirates might be all Manchester United need, and in his new position on the left flank of the attack Rooney has been making goals as well as scoring them.

Sir Alex Ferguson believes Nemanja Vidic would be just as worthy a recipient of the award as anyone, though perhaps the manager is bound by loyalty to overlook the defender’s sudden fall from grace against Fernando Torres and Liverpool that is bound to cost the Serb a few votes. Rooney has grown stronger towards the end of the season, coming back to his best after injury forced him to miss a few games in January and earning his manager’s approval for accepting his new role in a reshuffled attack without complaint.

“Wayne is actually starting to enjoy playing on the left now. He’s still scoring goals but in a different way,” Ferguson said. “Where he eventually settles down depends on the make-up of the rest of the team, but he’s capable of playing anywhere in a forward position and the great thing is he’s happy to make any position work.

“He started off as a midfielder for Everton, after all, and he’s not the sort of player to say he can only play at centre-forward or through the middle. Even when you do play him at centre-forward he’s all over the pitch in any case, because he always wants to be involved in the game. That’s his style, he has a wonderful appetite, he works his socks off and he is unselfish. I don’t think anyone could argue with him as Footballer of the Year. He’s certainly been consistent enough.

“We ended up having to pay Everton £28m for him but even at that price we got a bargain. We had known about him for a while by then, and already tried to buy him a few years earlier when the price would have been lower, but ­Everton knew what they had.”

Rooney announced himself to the rest of the world with a goal as a 16-year-old against Arsenal, and seven years on anything remotely similar would surely put United into the Champions League final. Only the nagging doubt that they did not do their performance full justice with a single-goal victory in the first leg is preventing United supporters travelling to London full of confidence, though as Rooney has said, just a single goal at the Emirates will leave Arsenal needing three, and United do not go through many games without scoring.

“Arsenal will have to attack us now, but I think they were always going to do that anyway,” Ferguson said. “We’ll be ready for that, and it will be a big boost for us if Rio Ferdinand is fit to play. He was coughing a bit of blood after the first leg but he’s only got a bruised lung, there’s nothing broken, and he’s got a chance for Tuesday.”

In the other semi-final Barcelona travel to Chelsea without two of their most experienced centre-backs, the injured Rafael Márquez and the suspended Carles Puyol, and that in turn leads Ferguson to believe the home side will prevail. “I think Chelsea will go through now, they are in the driving seat,” Ferguson said. “Barcelona are a dangerous side at home, but the loss of those two defenders makes them vulnerable for the away leg.”

And would the United manager fancy a second successive Champions League final against Chelsea? “I wouldn’t care who we played,” Ferguson said. “We’re not there ourselves yet. If we get to the final I’ll be happy.”