And yet talks are on-going to make his contract permanent by paying MSI (the company who “owns” him) an eye-watering sum, reported to be around £32m. Which is more than we paid for Berba or, for that matter, anyone else. Ever. Spot the disconnect? Doesn’t take a genius.

There are essentially three questions:

1. Has Tevez really become a reserve?
2. Should we retain Tevez on a permanent deal?
3. How much should we pay for him?

Has Tevez really become a reserve?

I would certainly say that Tevez has become the second choice support striker to Berbatov. There’s been a lot of debate about whether Tevez is better than Rooney or vice versa, but to my mind Rooney is a much better fit with Berbatov.

The reason for this is that Berba isn’t a poacher who plays right up top all the time in the Van Nistelrooy mould – as we saw against Blackburn, he likes to pull off and receive the ball to feet with his back to goal. When he does this, Rooney is adept at pushing forward into the spaces behind Berba as an auxiliary target man (think of his goal against Aalborg as an example). Indeed, Rooney played much of last season as the main striker.

Tevez, on the other hand, is almost never to be found on the shoulder of the last man. He is rarely in a one-on-one situations (Rooney is sometimes criticised for missing too many, but at least he gets there), and is mostly to be found surging from deep or from wide. Therefore, when Berbatov drops off, it is unlikely that Tevez will “swap” and take him place as the line leader. We will lack the kind of central, goal-poaching presence in exactly the same way as we did for much of last season, relying instead on intricate moves or pieces of magic from deeper-lying players.

That is not to say there is not a role for Tevez. It would be criminal of Fergie not to try the 4-2-3-1 approach, with Tevez, Rooney and Ronaldo playing behind Berbatov. It might not work – it might be a case of too many cooks – but it surely must be tried. If it does work, and if a role can be created for Tevez to raid from a wider starting position (something he has done in the past for Argentina), then he certainly mustn’t be a reserve. But if it doesn’t work, then unfortunately the answer to the question is “yes, Tevez has become a reserve”.

So, should we sign him?

On the face of it (and not considering price for the moment), this seems like a no-brainer. Even if we can’t accomodate him regularly in a first choice line-up, over the course of the season injury, fatigue and just plain rotation will see him play a good number of games, make important contributions and score a decent number of goals. As an impact sub he would be almost unparalleled.

However, before signing a player who may have to spend more games than he would like on the bench, you need to know more about his temperament. On the one hand, you have the Ole Solskjaers, Darren Fletchers and Wes Browns of this world, who would prefer to be part of a successful squad than a starter for a team winning nothing. But Tevez seems a bit too good to be accepting this sort of role on a long term basis – the teams who coming knocking on his door will be of the Real Madrid calibre, not the Spurs calibre.

Therefore, even if he is initially happy with a role as junior partner in a rotation system, the offers and the stories linking him away from Old Trafford will be relentless. Such rumours, as we found out in the extreme case of Ronaldo over the summer, can be massively unsettling for both the player and the club.

In the long term, if Tevez can’t nail down a regular place in the first team, he’ll leave, even if it is reluctantly. Which begs the question – why sign him in the first place?

How much should we pay for Tevez?

This is the real crux. If we could sign Tevez for two more years at £10m, we should do it without batting an eyelid. But for £32m? For a player who may well end up being a regular substitute? On top of the £5 approx that we have already paid as his loan fee? It’s just madness.

Apart from the sheer ludicrousness of sitting our most expensive player on the bench two matches out of three, we’d have no hope of getting anything like our money back when he moves on. If we sold him on for £20m in 18 months time, we’d be doing well.

So if we do decide to sign him, about £20m is the most that we should be prepared to pay, and we should be looking to get that down to nearer £15m (at the cost of additional payments based on appearances, goals etc). But is there a deal to be done at that price? You would have thought not, since the company that owns his rights will be looking for a much bigger return on their investment, and could certainly get a higher price in the open market. And we could certainly buy a decent support striker who is happy to be part of a rotation system for that amount of money.

I don’t like where my train of thought leads me – where this article is going. I don’t want to let Tevez go, I love the lad, I love his attitude, and he’s scored some crucial goals for us. But pure, cold-eyed business sense dictates that, unless the dream-team Fab Four up front works, we may have to let Red Tev move on.

Penguin, the author of this article, also blogs here.

We have no idea what our best team is.

Simple as that. And to me, that makes us vulnerable. When the going gets tough, it helps to have habits to fall back on, to know how your teammates and going to react and where they will position themselves, to have the belief that comes from having got through this before together. If we’re not careful, we’re going to lose that valuable ingredient. In 1999, there was no doubt at all what our best eleven was:

Schmeichel – Irwin, Stam, Johnsen, Neville – Giggs, Scholes, Keane, Beckham – Yorke, Cole.

No question in anyone’s mind. So to rotate a couple of players here and there was useful and practical. They fitted into the side amongst the core of 8 or 9 players from the first team – Blomqvist, Butt, Solskjaer, Sheringham, Phil Neville, Henning Berg and others all played strong supporting roles in this context.

Even last season, nine of the eleven names on the teamsheet were set in stone:

EVDS – Evra, Rio, Vidic, Brown – ??????, Carrick, ??????, Ronaldo – Rooney, Tevez

You could have had a debate about Anderson, Scholes or Hargreaves to play alongside Carrick, and between Giggs, Nani and Park for the left wing slot, but the rest was clear-cut.

Now this season. I would say, based on performances so far and assuming a fully fit squad, I think there are five names, six at most, who definitely form part of our best team:

?????? – Evra, Rio, Vidic, ??????- ??????, Carrick, ??????, Ronaldo – ??????, (Berbatov)

And that doesn’t even take into account that we don’t know our best formation – do we play 4-4-2, 4-3-2-1, 4-2-3-1, 4-1-2-2-1?

Why don’t we know?

So why is it such a mess? Well, the most recurring theme is the transition to the next generation. Across the team, there are players who are just a bit too old to be play their best all the time, and there are players who will be good but haven’t matured fully yet. Complicating matters even further, in most positions there is a solid but unspectacular third player.

GK: EVDS (fading legend); Kuczszak (solid middle-man); Foster (future superstar)
RB: Neville; Brown; Rafael
CM: Scholes; Hargreaves/Fletcher; Anderson
LM: Giggs; Park; Nani

The striker issue is different, and we’ll come onto that. But for these four positions, there is a tough balance to strike between experience, competence and potential. Filling the gaps with EVDS, Neville, Scholes and Giggs would leave you concerned about the energy levels of your team, particularly in the last third of the game. Use TK, Brown, Fletcher and Park, and you will get solid performances but rarely a match-winning performance. Opt for Foster, Rafael, Anderson and Nani and the thrills of watching young talent blossom will be tempered by heart-attacks as they make mistakes and learn some tough lessons in the heat of battle.

On the strikers, things have been stirred up the purchase of someone who is not comparable to anyone else in the squad. When Berba is fit and firing, he must surely play – and equally, there can surely only be space for one of Tevez and Rooney. Here the variables are different. Berba is the sort of player who will run hot and cold more emphatically than Rooney or Tevez, because he contributes little when he is not scoring or contributing to goals – how will Fergie react to a cold spell? Which of Rooney and Tevez will play best with him, or will it be the case that each partnership offers a subtly different skill set? Is there a way of accomodating all three in a different formation? The are questions to which nobody, not even Fergie, has the answer, so we must wait and see.

Outside factors

I can’t finish this article without playing this game. So what should our best team be? Assuming a fully fit and reasonably on form squad, what is our best team? Hmmm?

First things first – did you immediately start putting together a line-up in your head? Or did you mentally ask “what is the match”? If you’re in the latter group, you seem to be in line with Fergie’s current thinking, that a game away at Chelski requires a totally different team to a game at home to Bolton.

I’m not sure about this approach. I would prefer to play our best side, and say “here you go, do your worst, because we know this team is good enough to beat anyone”. It’s a slightly simplistic view, though, when you have a squad at your disposal that offers all sorts of shades of grey rather than forcing you to pick black or white.

Indeed, as the CL final showed, a creative team selection can really gain the initiative, and tailoring the complexion of your line-up to the occasion appears to be logical. But then, would you care to recall the away leg of the Barca semi? No, me neither – it can be taken too far.

Who would you pick?

For the sake of argument, I’m going to give you four line-ups. First, what I regard to be the best team we can select, assuming I had to pick a team for a game without knowing who the opposition were or where it was to be played. Second, home to a big four or major European team, assuming I accepted the principle of adjusting my team to suit the occasion. Third, away to a big team. And fourth, against lesser PL opposition.

Best team (blindfold)

EVDS – Evra, Vidic, Rio, Brown – Nani, Carrick, Anderson, Ronaldo – Rooney, Berbatov

EVDS just gets the nod over Foster for his experience, but a few impressive performances from Foster would change my mind fast. Neville looks too sluggish, Rafael to weak defensively. Nani gives us the attacking flavour that I think we should approach every game with. Anderson and Carrick have all the attributes between them to be a sensational partnership. Rooney links more naturally with Berba at present.

Home to a “big” team

EVDS – Evra, Vidic, Rio, Brown – Park, Hargreaves, Carrick, Ronaldo – Rooney, Berbatov

Park shores up one wing, making up for the fact that Ronaldo won’t track back – the central midfielders only have to cover one errant winger. Equally, Evra provides extra impetus behind Park going forward, whilst Park provides more cover for Evra’s over-enthusiasm going the other way. Hargreaves gives more mature and secure bite to our midfield, where Anderson can be a bit of a gamble.

Away to a “big” team

EVDS – Evra, Vidic, Rio, Brown – Hargreaves, Carrick, Anderson – Ronaldo, Rooney – Berbatov

Three in central midfield ensures we get a foothold in the game, with Anderson having licence to bomb on if the foothold turns into a more sustained advantage. Ronaldo and Rooney are more flexible, looking to start raids wherever there is space.

Lesser team

Foster – Evra, Vidic, Rio, Rafael – Nani, Carrick, Anderson, Ronaldo – Rooney Berbatov

Gives Foster and Rafael valuable experience. Rafael’s and Nani’s attacking prowess is more relevant against the large number of teams that set up with ten men behind the ball.

Obviously many of you will have alternative opinions, but that’s what the comments are for. Should we be adjusting for who are opposition are and where we are playing? And how would your four line-ups look?

Ed: Penguin, the author of this article, also blogs here.

The biggest criticism and the biggest source of frustration has been our lack of attacking prowess. Where have the dazzling football, the breathless attacking moves, the surgical unpicking of defences gone? Why haven’t we dominated games, creating hatfuls of chances?

Well, think back to last season. Aside from individual moments of brilliance, what defined us most was our team play. The speed with which we moved the ball, the spaces our players found and the almost telepathic way in which they were picked out by their colleagues. Nobody could live with us – even Chelsea, the second best team in Europe, supposedly, had to shut the game down and turn it into a scrap because they weren’t good enough to play us at our own game.

This team play didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the result of a settled starting line-up, chosen from a limited pool of players with a high degree of consistency. The players built their level up and up and up, and they did it together. They became a machine, greater than the sum of their (very considerable) parts.

This season

This season, so far, we have been the opposite. A collection of players, all doing their own thing and all doing all right in their own way, but not playing together. No long strings of passes, no mesmerising interplay. But this shouldn’t be a surprise. To illustrate, let’s look at the front six (ie midfield and attack) we have played in the first five matches of this season (excluding the Charity Shield and the Super Cup, and including subs where the sub has played a significant portion of the game).

Giggs (Possebon), Carrick (O’Shea), Scholes, Fletcher; Rooney, Campbell
O’Shea, Fletcher, Scholes, Anderson; Tevez, Rooney
Anderson, Carrick (Giggs), Scholes (Hargreaves), Rooney; Tevez, Berbatov
Park (Ronaldo), Hargreaves (Anderson), Fletcher, Nani; Tevez, Rooney
Park (O’Shea), Fletcher, Scholes (Ronaldo), Hargreaves; Rooney, Berbatov

What a total mess it has been. Not, of course, because that is how Fergie has chosen it – he is no Benitez (don’t get me started on Benitez) – he has had to cope with a series of half-fit, tired and old players through no fault of his own. But look closely:

• we haven’t had the same central midfield pairing for two matches in a row
• our starting central midfield pairing has only finished the game together once
• there have been two midfield substitutions in four out of the five games
• the only ever-present, Rooney, has played as a centre forward twice, as second striker twice (with two different centre forwards) and as a right-winger once; and that after being rushed back from a debilitating virus which wiped out his pre-season
• the most-used midfielder, Scholes, is too old to play effectively for more than 60 minutes
• the best performances have come from supposed bit-part players, Fletcher and Park, who are used to coming into any line-up and fitting in regardless
• two of the three hardest games of the season (Liverpool and Chelsea away) are included in this group of fixtures
• our golden triangle of Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez (who scored 71% of our goals last season) has played together for only 30 minutes; last season would have been a different story without them, and indeed was a different story when Ronaldo was suspended, Rooney injured and Tevez pressed into action before he was ready.

Quick trivia question – without cheating, who was United’s fourth top scorer last season?

Is it any wonder that we’re losing midfield battles? Or that our strike force isn’t firing as a unit? Nobody has the first idea who’s going to be on the pitch from game to game, and are having to adjust to significant personnel and formation changes 2/3 of the way through each game.

People are complaining about losing our mojo as though they seriously expected us to have one under these circumstances, and complaining about tactics which try to sneak 1-0 wins. I find watching these games as depressing as everyone else, but frankly we need those 1-0 wins to keep going at the moment – the glorious, champagne-football-riven 4-0 thrashings will have to wait until later.

Last season

By contrast, here is our “front six” from January, when we won every game and conceded only one goal:

Nani, Carrick, Anderson, Park; Ronaldo, Tevez
Ronaldo, Carrick, Anderson, Giggs; Rooney, Tevez
Ronaldo, Hargreaves, Carrick, Park (Giggs); Rooney, Tevez
Ronaldo, Hargreaves, Carrick (Scholes), Giggs; Rooney, Tevez
Nani, Carrick, Scholes (Anderson), Park; Ronaldo, Rooney

Note this time round:

• the standard formation, the consistency of personnel and the lack of significant substitutions
• two of our golden triangle were playing in every match, and all three played in 3
• Michael Carrick, whose intelligent ball retention, shielding and passing we have badly missed this season, played all five games (and also played in 9 out of the 10 games in which we scored 3 or more after his return to fitness in December)
• what inconsistency and substitutions there was is due to easing Park and Scholes back from injury and resting the over-used Anderson
• no top 4 opponents in the group of fixtures

This was a well-oiled machine producing the football we all love to see – there can be, and should be, no comparison with our current sticking plaster line-ups. We can get through this – we did so last season, when we had the same sorts of problems, by grinding our a series of uninspiring 1-0 wins which kept us in the game until we got back to full strength. Until then, let’s not write off our entire squad and management team as no-hopers and has-beens.

Answer to trivia question – Louis Saha, aka Mr Glass, who we would all have sworn blind was injured for the entire season.

***

As an aside, I’m starting up my own blog for additional musings which don’t fit in here – I intend there write a bit about general football matters which only affect United in passing or not at all, to publish collections of links to good articles written elsewhere on the web, and to try my hand at match previews and reports (I doubt they’ll be anything like the quality which RR produces so regularly). I’m not sure how it will turn out yet, but if you dropped in occasionally or signed up to the feed to see if you like it, then so much the better.

The Heskey Trap

Back in the mists of time, before Rooney had established himself, Emile Heskey was one of England’s first choice strikers. Bear with me, all those of you who are about to switch off because I’m talking about the England team – there’s a moral here. Michael Owen played off him, and behind him was a midfield containing Scholes, Gerrard and Beckham, all in their pomp. Ashley Cole and Gary Neville provided energetic attacking support from the wings.

This was an embarrassment of riches, a pool of talent that should have been able to shred all but the most Italian defences. When they got in right, the speed and intricacy of their passing and movement was impossible to live with.

But they got it right only once in a blue moon, because of Heskey. Not even because of what Heskey did – he wasn’t in the same league, but he didn’t actively hinder the passing football played behind him, he just milled around the area hoping for a cross – but because of what his presence made others do.

Knowing they had a big, powerful physical presence up front, the English defenders started to lob long balls up to him. Not just occasionally, but all the fucking time. The keepers followed suit, launching o-zone puncturing kicks, hoping that Heskey would either win a free kick or some scraps for Owen to feed off. They simply bypassed the superstar, fantasy football midfield in the hope that some over-enthusiastic big bloke would scare and hustle international defenders into mistakes. No crosses from the by-line from Beckham, no intelligent through balls from Scholes, no fearless bursts from Gerrard, no using Owen’s pace to stretch the play – just long ball after long ball to Heskey.

Now, I am an England fan (second, obviously). This had me banging me head against the wall, game after game, to the point that I could no longer watch and that even the merest inkling of this tactic is enough to get me going. And there was the merest inkling of it on Saturday against Liverpool.

Yes, we needed some height up front, and a physical presence – those attributes were oft repeated on this blog and elsewhere during the tortuous summer search for a striker. And yes, occasionally good things will come from high balls to Berbatov, like the free kick he won in the first half. Despite this, the long ball should be a last resort or a surprise tactic – not, I repeat not a staple to fall back on whenever we’re under pressure.

We have the players to play some of the best football going, from back to front. A feature of our play is how cleverly we recycle the ball from our defensive third into quality possession in midfield. Nobody’s interests will be served (least of all Berbatov’s) if we add a higher percentage of hopeful punts into our repertoire.

Let’s hope I never have to mention this again.

Cristiano’s Wet Hen Routine

Moving on, I don’t need to recap Ronaldo’s record from last season, no to regurgitate the entirely deserved praise that his many match-winning performances received. Let’s take that as a given, and understand that I am making the only recommendation I can think of to improve his (on-field) game.

No, not to stop diving. I don’t think he dives all that much, and certainly nothing like how much he used to. He will always be accused of diving, because he is always seeking to beat people and always being kicked at – sometimes he is caught, sometimes he goes down expecting the tackle, and on the odd occasion he goes down anyway. I contend that the reason for the dives you do see is his level of frustration with the number of blatant free kicks that he does not get given – whether consciously or subsconsciously, he is trying to even up the balance.

What he must stop doing is showing that frustration in the way he does. You can all picture it – he has just been blatantly brought down, and for some unfathomable reason has not been given the free kick. He sits down on the floor, arms waving up and down at the referee, then he looks up at the heavens, ostentatiously pulls his socks up and drags himself to his feet. The next couple of minutes are characterised by a bemused, “what do I have to do to get a decision from this ref” smirk.

All of which makes referees absolutely hate him. They get visibly bored of having to give him free kicks all the time, so occasionally they turn a blind eye to a foul just to even up the averages. I mean, one player can’t get fouled that often, can they? So some of them must be dives (after all, I know Ronaldo dives, don’t I?), so I must have given him a free kick for a dive somewhere along the line. Then they see him go down easily to do some averaging-out of his own, and that makes them hate the whole process even more.

Ronaldo needs to view the ref as a goodwill project in each game he plays. He needs to ref to be his mate, to sympathise with him when he is on the receiving end of all the fouls he draws. When he goes down, he needs to get back up again straight away and wait to see if he’s got the free kick later. He needs to shift his image in the eyes of refs as a diver and a whinger who makes them look as bad as defenders half the time.

Last season, it was quite clear that a few refs turned up at the game with the specific intention of “cracking down on Ronaldo’s antics” – not all the time, just some of the time. Others started neutral, and got more and more bored with him as the game went on.

From what we’ve seen over the summer, I doubt Cristiano has the necessary mindset to pander to a sub-species such as referees, but I hope I’m wrong. It would be the last major breakthrough for his game.

“God, don’t we all just want Daniel Levy to fuck off? I mean, I can’t see why he doesn’t just accept defeat and sell us Berbatov. He knows he’s going to have to eventually anyway, so he should just get it over with now so we can all get on with our lives. And that tapping-up complaint he filed is a load of shit. By the time he gets his head out of his arse, we’ll be five points off the pace. He is behaving unprofessionally and generally like a cock, and I hate him.”

Do you agree with the above? Then you must be a blinkered United fan like me, because any objective (or for that matter, and other type of) observer should have nothing but praise for Levy’s actions.

Spurs have seemed the most likely entrants into the elite Top 4 Club for the last few years, and barring a dodgy lasagne they would probably have consigned Arsenal to a season in the UEFA Cup. They are now routinely signing some of the best young talent both from the UK and abroad, along with some shrewd purchases of more experienced players. Bale, Woodgate, Hutton, Bentley, Zokora, Bent (admittedly at a hugely inflated price), dos Santos, Modric and, or course, Berbatov have been added to home-grown talent like King, Lennon and Huddlestone. It’s an impressive squad, albeit one whose last eighteen months have been characterised by underachievement.

Until they secure the sacred Champions League place, many of their players will harbour higher ambitions. And the top 4 will see their closest rival as an obvious place to go to pick up Premiership-proven talent, because it should be easier to buy from within the PL than from top continental sides. However, to sustain a challenge for membership of the elite, Spurs need to keep broadly the same squad together for a handful of seasons, so they can grow as a team. At the moment, much to the delight of United and co, they are in danger of becoming a feeder club.

So Levy’s behaviour during this intensely tedious and drawn-out saga is entirely in Spurs’ best interests. In the short term, he will secure an above-market price for a player who has mentally already left the building, funding further investment in the current squad. But more importantly, in the long term he has sent a clear message for the January window and beyond:

“I can’t stop you bidding for our players, but if you want to sign one of our stars then be prepared for us to make the transfer more miserable, disruptive, drawn-out, inconvenient and expensive than you could imagine. If you think you can come over here, tickle our tummies and take the players we scouted and we bedded into the Premiership and do so without a fight, you’re very much mistaken. Now fuck off before I report you to the FA for something.”

And who can blame him. We picked off Carrick two seasons ago, Berba is still (I believe) almost certain to follow; only the da Silva twins will deter us from tracking Hutton and Bale; and we’d probably have tried to sign Lennon already if he could stay fit for more than two games in a row. That sort of interest inevitably leads to cordial relations souring – think of PSV, who provided us with Jaap Stam, Ruud and Park, but have since made it clear that we’re not really welcome anymore, evidenced by our failure to secure players like Arjen Robben.

Robbie Keane, incidentally, is an exception to the rule. For one thing, Liverpool paid way too much for him – he may only be 28, but he is a big gamble for that amount of money. Also, he has been with Spurs through thick and thin since 2002, and nobody at Spurs could deny him a shot at the Champions League before he is too old. It would be comparable to Ole asking us for a transfer a year before his injury – we’d have hated to see him go, but he’d have gone with our blessing.

Berbatov, on the other hand, took four months of his first season to settle in, had a purple patch, immediately started agitating for a move, and then sulked for a while when he didn’t get it. Spurs are treating him with just the same loyalty as he has treated them. So whilst, as a United fan, I subscribe to all the views I started the article with, as a follower of football I think Levy has it spot on.

Oh, and I got all the way through without drawing a comparison with Ronaldo – it would have been too easy.

You can put together “great” teams, you can have “great” players, but what elevates a side into the timeless category is weight of achievement. It’s what makes Ferguson the best British manager ever, and Wenger just a worthy sideshow; it’s what makes Giggs one of the best players of all time, and Gerrard a footnote in comparison. It’s why everyone knows exactly what you mean when you say the Treble, why everyone (however grudgingly) acknowledges that as a seminal footballing achievement; it’s why names like Solskjaer and Sheringham appear alongside Schmeichel and Keane in everyone’s dictionary of footballing legends.

This season we can complete a hat-trick of Premiership titles and retain the European Cup. To do either would put this team into that timeless bracket. To do both would make them the best English club side ever.

The Premiership is harder to win than the top division has ever been. The points tallies required for victory demand relentless excellence over the entire season, starting from game one – the second half of the season push for which we became renowned is not good enough any more. Our main rivals have nearly unlimited money to spend, a squad which regularly sits £25m players on the bench and haven’t lost a match at home for two years. The chasing pack contains two teams who would have been good enough to win the league five years ago, featuring some star players who are coveted by every other club in Europe, including ourselves.

The next tier of clubs are more intimidating than ever before, as a combination of TV money, foreign ownership and the availability of cheap overseas talent allows them to build impressive squads of their own, packed with internationals. Anyone who claims that games against Spurs, Portsmouth, Villa, Everton, Man City or Blackburn will be easy is deluded. Even lower down, we are only too well aware of the surprises teams like Middlesbrough can spring.

We’ve won a hat-trick of titles before, but then we were by far the best team, with more money and more pulling power than anyone else, in leagues with ten teams of comparative deadwood who our reserves could and did beat. Whatever the talk of the “Big Four”, it’s the level of competition that would make this our greatest domestic achievement.

The Champions League has never been retained. Not in its current punishing format, with the leagues followed by a rock-hard knockout phase. The Bayern machine couldn’t do it, the galacticos couldn’t do it, the Treble-winners couldn’t do it. There are so many chances to slip up, so many hurdles to fall at. One bad day can be impossible to recover from. Real and Barca are stronger than last season, and as champions everyone will be gunning for us.

We can do it. We can do both of these things. We can be that team. We have a rock-solid defence, a flexible and resourceful central midfield, the world’s best player, two sensational support strikers, (almost certainly) a hyper-talented new centre forward, a deep and well-rounded squad which is both experienced and hungry, with both old heads and young blood.

But the line is thin. Ronaldo is injured to start with, and surely can’t be as good again. Rooney needs to climb again from his plateau, Berbatov needs to settle quickly to give us enough firepower going forward. Nani may be a season away from turning his talent into end product, and age is catching up with Giggs. Our central midfielders need to discover where the net is, and we have no top class cover for Evra. What if Rio or Vidic gets injured, or van der Saar really can’t last another whole season?

After one of the most boring and frustrating summers on record, we are about to leap headlong into our chance to surpass anything our rivals have ever done in their history. Hold your breath, and hope we smiling next May – if we are, history will smile on us.

[Ed's Note: There has been an assumption in the article that Berbatov's expected to join United. So excuse us if that deal falls through -- heaven forbid.]

By the way, I’m going to try out numbering and lettering my paragraphs to make commenting and debating easier. I’m going to touch on a lot of themes here, and so it may help facilitate debate if you can refer simply to paragraph 3a. It may not work, but hey.

1. The squad

First of all, I’m going to set out all the options we have in each position, so that we start this debate by looking objectively at the resources at our disposal.

GK: EVDS, Kuszczak, Foster
RB: Brown, G Neville, O’Shea, Hargreaves, R da Silva, Evans [Simpson is now out on loan, in case you missed that]
CB: Rio, Vidic, Brown, O’Shea, Evans, Silvestre
LB: Evra, Silvestre, O’Shea, Evans, F da Silva
RM / RW: Ronaldo, Nani, Park, Giggs, Hargreaves, Fletcher, Rooney
CM: Scholes, Carrick, Hargreaves, Anderson, Fletcher, Possebon, O’Shea, Giggs
LM / LW: Ronaldo, Nani, Giggs, Park, Evra, Rooney
CF: Rooney, Ronaldo, Tevez, Campbell, Giggs [Manucho is still awaiting a work permit; Welbeck has been mysteriously absent from pre-season games - anyone with info why please post it below]

In short, we have at least 5 genuine options in each position. Yes, you read it right – five. Not two, as Mourinho once advocated, five. Some better than others, but none would disgrace the shirt. Some overlapping, too, but there are thirty distinct players there, not counting Manucho, Welbeck or any other youngsters like Gibson.

2. The striker

a) Let’s also get the striker issue out of the way right here. Yes, we need another one – it is the only area where we have inadequate cover. Yes, it would have been nice to have wrapped up Berbatov already. But should we have gone out and splurged on a striker, any striker, just so we have someone for the start of the season? Definitely not. And yes, a fast start is desirable and a huge advantage, but we hardly got one last year and we coped.

b) It takes a rare combination of skill, temperament and potential to become a United signing. Being good isn’t good enough – you have to be good in the right ways for the team, just ask Seba Veron. Should we have signed Robbie Keane for £20m, just because we could probably have sewn it up by now? Dean Ashton for £17m? Peter Crouch for £12m? Or should we wait for the right guy at the right price?

c) My answers to those questions are please no, good god no, not for that price and yes, in that order. Also, just because we’re not reading stories in the press doesn’t mean that progress isn’t being made. If you’d just been reported for comments made in the media about Berbatov, you’d be pretty stupid to antagonise the selling club by continuing to make comments in the media about Berbatov. This is how we do business these days – quietly, behind the scenes, and not like Real Madrid.

d) I will admit, though, that our lack of interest in Huntelaar is surprising. But then there are a lot of top clubs on the hunt (sorry) for strikers, and none of them have put a concrete offer in for him – so what do they know that we don’t?

3. The injury list

a) Here’s the list, first up:

Ronaldo (ankle, 2 months)
Rooney (virus, first two games)
Nani (suspension, first two PL games)
Anderson (Olympics, August)
Carrick (virus, probably CS only)
Hargreaves (tendinitis, possibly fit from start)
Park (knee, possibly fit from start)
Saha (sniffly nose, the rest of his life)

That’s a pretty brutal spate of injuries – particularly so because it has focused entirely on our midfield and attack. We would happily trade, for example, Evra for Rooney and Brown for Nani, since we could easily absorb those injuries in the defence but would keep some of our attacking potency.

b) To illustrate further, this is what a comparable injury list would be for our rivals:

Chelsea: Drogba, Anelka, Joe Cole, Mikel, Deco, Essien, Malouda, Shevchenko
Liverpool: Torres, Keane, Babel, Mascherano, Alonso, Benayoun, Kuyt, Voronin
Arsenal: van Persie, Adebayor, Nasri, Rosicky, Fabregas, Diaby, Walcott, Bendtner

c) So to criticise United for not being able to absorb the injuries we have suffered without a drop in performance is to criticise the whole league, and probably every other top club in Europe (I don’t know the Barca, Real, AC Milan or Bayern squads quite well enough to do a similar comparison with them – if you do, please do so in the comments). Those teams would be lucky to put eleven players on the field who could beat Hull, let alone who have every chance of keeping us afloat for a few weeks if needed. We should instead be saying how lucky we are to have a few golden oldies and Tevez to reliably fill the void.

4. Should we have more cover?

However, to take our own squad in isolation and knowing Ronaldo was out for the first two months, would it be optimal for us to have signed more players? The answer to this remains no. There is a roadblock practical reason for this, and an objection in principle.

a) The problem is that you are trying to attract players when they know full well they have no chance of playing if the squad is anywhere near fully fit. This immediately rules out players who are really good right now or likely to become really good in the next year, leaving us with two types of player: youngsters for the future and oldies who might have an Indian summer. We already have the oldies, thanks, barring a miracle loan signing akin to Larsson. Equally, youngsters who are over a season away from being good are probably no better than what we can cobble together internally.

Therefore, the pool of players who will sign for us knowing that they will only get regular first team football if we have an horrific injury crisis and who are good enough to play for us even on a part-time basis is pretty small. The only name I came up with was Eidur Gudjohnsen, but there we go.

There is a third category of players, those who are in it for the money and a quiet life. Step forward, Carlo Cudicini (the best keeper in the Premiership when Cech was bought) and Wayne Bridge (only Evra and Clichy are better). But then is greed and lack of ambition a combination of qualities you want in a United player, even if we could afford them?

b) Whilst I’m here, I want to touch on Aaron Ramsey, who has attracted a lot of inches on this blog. A commonly-held belief is that the reason he went to Arsenal is because Fergie couldn’t be bothered to go and meet him. Whilst this doesn’t look very good (particularly set against fireside games of snooker with a young David Beckham, etc), it is wrong to say that this cost us Ramsey’s signature.

What cost us Ramsey’s signature was that we wanted to buy him and loan him back to Cardiff for a season. Arsenal, on the other hand, wanted to take him straight into the first team squad and offered him a shot at Premier League football. He (understandably, in my view), preferred the latter option. This isn’t speculation or my interpretation of things – this is what Cardiff chairman Peter Ridsdale said in an interview with the BBC.

So to use this as a stick to beat United and Fergie over the head with seems a bit silly. We didn’t need him for this season, but tried to secure him in the long term – he’s not so wonderfully amazing that he had to be signed immediately like we did with Nani and Anderson. Ramsey was thinking short term – end of.

c) The objection on principle is that I don’t want to return to the era of utility players. You all remember it – Djemba-Djemba, Kleberson, Phil Neville, Quinton Fortune, Diego Forlan all as integral members of the first team squad. Good enough to be in the squad, but not good enough for the first team. Fergie splintered our transfer budget, signing lots of bit part players rather than one big name. Would you have him spend £10-15m of our summer transfer budget on a fourth reserve player, or save it and secure the player we have identified as The One? I’ll leave that one as rhetorical.

5. I’d like to say one more thing before I throw this open for what I imagine and hope will be a fairly heated debate. I’m not a “loyalist”, I’m not supporting United for the sake of it, and I don’t believe the sun shines out of Fergie’s arse. Everything I’ve offered above is, in my opinion, closely reasoned and supported by facts. So if and when you disagree with me in the comments, please try to make your responses the same.

In summary – our team is going to be badly under strength for the first two games of the season. That does not make our squad defective and does not mean we should spend millions of pounds willy nilly on squad players to compensate.

In the continuing absence of any concrete developments from the summer, I want to look back on our staggeringly successful last season and draw out some of the reasons why we were so damn good. These apply both to why we’ve gone from being written off in the summer of ‘06 to the best team in Europe, and also what we did even better in 07/08 to achieve such heights. Then I’m going to darken the tone slightly by picking up three things which could scupper our chances.

THE POSITIVES

1. Squad depth

Last season, with the exception of centre forward, we had high class cover right across the board. Not only high class cover, in fact, but a lot more than 11 players who deserved and were fighting for a first team spot. This allowed us to cope with all the injuries thrown our way; but more importantly, to have genuine flexibility to mix and match our team to suit the exact circumstances.

2. Weakness of our rivals

Arsenal had a great first XI, but as soon as form, fitness and fatigue scratched that surface they were gone. So, this summer they have sold two first team regulars…as much as we now (patronisingly) applaud Wenger, he really is a masochist.

Liverpool had two great players (Torres and Gerrard), one fouling centre back who the press often call great (Carragher), an amusingly foul-mouthed midfielder (Mascherano – thanks again for that red card), a few has-beens (Finnan, Hyppia, Riise), a few might-yet-bes (Babel, that kid they play at right back), and some journeymen / donkeys (Crouch, Kuyt, Pennant, Kewell)….sorry, did I get carried away there? What I meant was that they were entirely reliant (as opposed to over-reliant) on two players.

Chelski were unlucky with injuries, but that said the African Nations was a fairly predictable drain on their resources and Mourinho bought badly last summer (Malouda, Alex, Ben Haim & Pizarro, none of whom were good enough for their first team). And the upheaval of Mourinho’s departure was entirely caused by their owner.

The good thing is that what little activity there has been so far this summer has made Arsenal’s plight worse, kept Liverpool broadly the same (although Keane could be a good signing) and left Chelsea up in the air (what if Drogba and Lampard leave next week, just before the season starts?)

3. The fear factor’s back

In the depths of our three-year slump, the most damaging development was that we had lost the fear factor. Teams used to turn up not shaking in fear and hoping to keep it down to 2-0, but genuinely thinking they could win. So they had a go, and against our weakened team came away with points far too often. Last season they were 1-0 down in the coach on the way to the game again, and it showed.

4. Everyone taking responsibility

In previous times, when we have had to bring in John O’Shea, Darren Fletcher, Ji-Sung Park and co they have played like second stringers. Like good, old-fashioned triers, but ones who know they’re not quite cut out to be in the exalted company they are in. But last season, they were. Anderson and Nani played like present day stars, not ones for the future. Wes Brown was an integral part of our stingiest ever defence, including a quite sensational performance in the second leg against Barcelona. Hargreaves rose above his disappointments to be our most consistent player in the last month of the season. Park, too, played like a man possessed for that month. Even Silvestre came back into the first team against Chelski and gave a good impression of a regular left back.

Not only did we have squad depth, but the quality, maturity and attitude was spot on right through the squad.

5. Confidence in the tough games

Often the difference between a good season and a great season is performance in the so-called “six-pointers”. But since that doesn’t extend to the Champions League, let’s just use the less snappy phrase “games against other elite clubs”. Whereas in some previous seasons this has been our weakness, this time round we were superb, with only the last minute penalty against Chelski blotting our copybook (even that in a game where we played a below-par team):

Chelski: W 2, L 1
Arsenal: W 1, D 1
Liverpool: W 2
Barca: W 1, D 1
Roma: W 3, D 1
Overall: P 13, W 9, D 3, L 1.

6. Suitability for Europe

Our squad and style of play is now much more suited to success in Europe. With the very honourable exception of 1999, it doesn’t often wash in Europe to have a flimsy defence and rely on scoring heavily. Most of the top sides, particularly in Italy, are too good to be overwhelmed defensively, so keeping clean sheets is much more important. Equally, we had the players to make the 4-3-2-1 system work properly against better teams, with plenty of players all over the pitch who could provide solid defence and then switch effortlessly into fluent attack (Evra, Carrick, Rooney and Tevez to name but four).

7. Prospects for the future

Well, with the exception of Ronaldo, this squad has the potential to grow together for the next five or so years. In fact, last year’s squad had a somewhat raw feel to it in midfield and attack at times. Tevez took a while to settle in, Anderson stepped up magnificently but failed to score a single goal, Nani’s decision-making looks like Ronaldo’s did four years ago and Hargreaves was out of sorts until April. We can expect a lot more from these players and others this coming season.

THE NEGATIVES

1. No standout assistant manager

It’s no great secret that we’ve always struggled when Fergie hasn’t had a first class coach working with him. Brian Kidd, Steve McClaren and Carlos Queiroz have all been integral parts of our best sides; their ability to devise cutting-edge training routines and support the squad in a complementary was to Fergie were essential. It doesn’t look like we’re going to start the season with a “specialist” assistant, with various of Fergie’s underlings helping out. That makes me nervous.

2. Reduced return from Ronaldo

No secrets here. With Ronaldo out for the start of the season, and questionably motivated thereafter, we need others to stand up and be counted. Big season for Wayne Rooney, and whichever striker we buy (I’m still confident of Berbatov) needs to hit the ground running. We can’t afford another start like last season.

3. We were lucky with injuries last time round

I mean, I know Vidic was injured for most of the last two months, Scholes missed a lot of games before Christmas and Gary Neville didn’t play at all. But we had most of our key players fit most of the time, and we can’t rely on that again. If Rooney missed injures himself on the first day again, for example, we could be in serious trouble by the time he and Ronaldo return. Equally, our defence wasn’t quite the same without Rio and Vidic at its heart. We have a great squad, but injuries could still screw us.

That’s my lot. Any themes you would draw attention to?

There’s no doubt that we have been spoilt in the past. In the nineties, our youth system produced a quite extraordinary series of top class players. I don’t need to list them, but I will anyway because of the memories they bring back: Sharpe, Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Nicky Butt. All effectively “free”, and all of whom played their best years for United.

But the next generation we all prayed for has never arrived. The only graduates of the youth system since the Golden Generation are Wes Brown, John O’Shea and Darren Fletcher. All have been loyal servants, but hardly the stellar talents we were blessed with before. These days, we hear good things spoken of a young player, maybe glimpse him once or twice in the first team, and then hear he has been sold off to a lesser Premiership side or a Championship team.

I want to look at why that has happened, and whether it means our youth system is now effectively redundant as far as the first team is concerned.

Why are so few youth players making the first team?

There are two main reasons for this:

1. Lack of opportunity
Quite simply, the Premiership is much more competitive than it used to be, and so there are very few chances to blood young players.

Back in the nineties, there was a far larger gap between the top four or five teams and the rest. It was very plausible to play five or six second string players against any team in the bottom half of the table and come away with an easy 2-0 win. We had an easy way of trying out youngsters and seeing if they made the grade. Not only that, but the number of points required to win the league allowed for a bit more margin for error, for a few off days when the rotation didn’t work.

Contrast to the present day. Access to cheap foreign (mainly African and Eastern European) talent and plentiful loans has allowed almost every team in the league to be competitive on their day. Fielding a weakened team, for example, at home to Middlesbrough would be a risky undertaking. Similarly, increasingly high standards are expected at the top of the league – witness Arsenal’s Invincibles and Chelski’s extraordinary unbeaten home record. Each season, records are broken for the standard at the top.

Off days aren’t an acceptable risk any more, they are too high a price to pay for learning about a couple of promising youngsters. You need a big, battle-hardened squad, with two players who could play all season in each position. Playing Wes Brown in the centre of defence instead of Pique in March and April was a classic example of safe not sorry. How will Danny Simpson ever get a run in the right back position when Brown, Neville, O’Shea and Hargreaves can all do a job there?

These days, the best we can hope to do is loan our young players to lesser teams, and see what we can tell from their performances from their loan clubs. This is pretty unreliable, though – what we need to know is not whether a player can nail down a place is a worse team, but whether they have the pedigree to live with the big boys. There’s only one way of finding that out, and that is the baptism of fire.

[The only light at the end of the tunnel here is substitutes. From next season, teams will be allowed to name seven subs - that would allow for a mixture of impact players and youngsters. If we're 2-0 up with twenty mins to go, we can bring on Welbeck and Simpson for some experience. If it's 1-1, call on Nani and Tevez to get a goal. O'Shea, Hargreaves and Foster can shore things up and cover injuries. Previously with only 5 spots available, obviously Welbeck and Simpson are the ones sent to sit in the stands.]

2. The new system
If you want chapter and verse on this, you need to read this fascinating interview with Brian McClair which RR linked to a while back. I really can’t recommend highly enough that you read the whole thing, but for the purposes of this article (and since I can’t improve the journalism there) I’m going to quote three passages from it:

The basic principle of the academy system – that clubs can only recruit boys up to the age of 11 who live within an hour’s travel of their academy base – is one for which Ferguson has a long-standing antipathy.

If the current academy system had been in place in the late 1980s United would not have signed Beckham, who grew up in Essex. McClair does not believe they would have signed the Nevilles either, as they would have been snapped up by Bury at an early age and a prohibitive price put upon them. Scholes, he says, would have been at Oldham Athletic’s academy. Giggs would not have had the chance to leave Manchester City for the club he supported. United might have got Butt; they might not.

McClair: “If you look at that group of players who won the 1992 FA Youth Cup for United, nearly every single one of them played at the highest level because they were the best from Northern Ireland, they were the best from Wales, the best from England, the best from Scotland. You can’t compare anything to the Beckham, Butt, Scholes generation with what happens now. It’s impossible to do that now.”

So is our youth system redundant?

To me, it is not redundant, but it has a very different role. It will never be a regular direct source of first team squad players, never mind first team players. However, it has a number of important functions in the modern era:

1. Panning for gold – What we must now hope for from our youth system is to find one big player every five years, one absolute superstar. A Wayne Rooney, a Cesc Fabregas. Those players are out there somewhere, and we need to give ourselves every chance of being the ones to sign them on. We must keep dipping our sieve in the river for the one time that we find a nugget of gold in our hand.

2. A source of income – selling off unwanted youth team players is a valuable income stream. I’ve gone over all our transfers since the Treble season, and come up with the following stats:

Total revenue from selling youth team players*: £66.7m (£35.7m**)
Total revenue adjusted for inflation***: £85.16m (£42.71m)

* Includes players bought at a young age to be developed for first team, eg Rossi
** Not including revenue from sale of Beckham, Butt and P Neville, who arguably fall outside the scope of this article
*** Assuming transfer price inflation of 10% per season

So from selling players who came through our youth system, if you accept my inflation adjustment, we have paid for Rio, Rooney, Ronaldo, Vidic and Evra. Even if you choose to discount the revenue from Beckham, Butt and Phil Neville (on the basis that they played their best years for us, so we had already had value for them by the time they left), we have paid for Rooney, Ronaldo and Vidic. So what we are effectively operating is a glorified part-exchange system, where we trade in five or six players who are good enough for the Premiership but not good enough for us for one first team regular. Note: I have included full details of how I got to those numbers at the end of the article for those of you who are interested – I thought it would disrupt the flow unnecessarily to include the full list here

By the way, a flipside of the loan system is that it is making it easier than ever for us to get value for our not-quite-good-enough players. For example, Sunderland would pay several million for Jonny Evans, and Stoke would like to pay us a couple of million for Frazier Campbell – before we’d have had to sell them into the Championship for much less. The indirect benefit of developing decent young players is increasing.

3. A finishing school – a major part of our transfer strategy now consists of buying up talented foreign players in their mid-teens and bringing them to Old Trafford to develop. Rossi and Pique were part of that system, and now we have players like the Brazilian twins and the young Italian striker we have just signed. A strong, competitive youth team set-up is obviously very valuable for helping those young signings realise their potential.

I don’t feel our youth system is redundant — far from it — but it’s role has changed significantly since the days of the Golden Generation. What are your views?

Youth team transfers since 1999
07-08
Richardson – £5.5m
Rossi – £6.7m
Pique – £5m
Bardsley – £2m
Shawcross – £1m
Total – £20.2m

99-00
Mulryne – £0.5m
Cook – £1m
Nevland – £0.25m
Total – £1.75m, adjusted for inflation £3.15m

I’ve tried to phrase that as openly as possible, because the spectrum of opinion is broad. To some, Rooney is a maestro who had a bad season. To others, he’s a good player who hasn’t quite lived up to his billing or his potential. I know that after a sub-par performance in the CL final, most of you were leaning towards the latter — decent player, great to have him in the side, but not as stand-out amazing as we had hoped. I disagree, and here’s my take on things.

The ultimate team player

Rooney, to me, is team spirit embodied. There are two things that make him enjoy his football — playing in the team, and the team winning. Contrast to Ronaldo, who (whatever he said in post-match interviews) is all about his own performance first, and the team second. He will play wherever he is asked to, for as long as he is asked to, without sulking or whining. The only time you’ll find him sulking is if he is substituted when he still feels he has something to offer the team.

This stat doesn’t show up in any tables. It’s not quantifiable in assists, tackles, metres run, shots on target, or any other stat. It just is — he is prepared to subjugate his own desires and achievements for the good of the team, and has done so from the moment he walked in the door.

That’s why he’ll be at United for life, driving the team forward long after any of our continental imports have moved on. And if you don’t appreciate him for that, especially after the hullaballoo of the last few weeks, then you should damn well start.

Out of position

This is a subset of the above, but the most important one. Let there be no doubt, Rooney’s best position is just off the front man, with a roaming brief. He should be allowed to drop off into midfield to pick up the ball, or move out onto either wing when he sees space, or to push past the front man when he sees an opportunity. Teams should (Fabio Capello take note) be built around him.

But at Old Trafford, for one reason and another, they haven’t been. Last season’s team was as close as I’ve ever seen Fergie go to building the team around a single player — admittedly it was around one of the best players we’ve ever seen playing at the peak of his powers — but it usually doesn’t work like that. Prior to that, Ruud was the key man, and Rooney had to play second fiddle.

Set against that, look at where Rooney played last season:

1. up top, as a lone striker — he’s not tall enough for that role, and does his best work facing goal. Still, he worked hard and made life as tough a possible for defences, in turn creating spaces and gaps for a certain other player.

2. on the left — often he and Tevez alternated, but it was clear that they should be where Ronaldo was not, thereby stretching defences as much as possible.

3. as a wing back — remember the first Barcelona game? I don’t know of many other players of Rooney’s status and talent who would not only accept that role but really take to it.

There was only a short period where he played as part of a traditional front two, and if you buy a season review DVD (which I am currently glorying in) you will remember some of the sublime interplay between Rooney and Tevez through the centre.

Finishing

Another criticism levelled against Rooney is that he doesn’t score enough goals. Well, I agree that his finishing isn’t as lethal as it could be — certainly not good enough to be our main striker. But then who said he was our main striker? He certainly hasn’t been very often yet. Nor does he loiter around the six yard box for tap ins, and he isn’t even in the area for corners.

Rooney should be compared, in the grand scheme of things, to the likes of Cantona and Sheringham. That’s the sort of player he is. Le God never banged in 40 goals in a season, but he scored crucial goals in crucial games, went on hot streaks, and had that aura which generally improved the performance of everyone around him. Sheringham was the ultimate dictator-from-deep, gaining a yard with his brain rather than his pace, and chipping in with occasional but important goals. There are even shades of the strength and combative nature of Mark Hughes, with the same ability to score stunning goals from distance.

I am honestly not exaggerating when I say that Rooney has the best bits of all these legends rolled into one, and so to judge him on the number of goals he has scored alone is laughable. How dare anyone condense the contribution of one of our best team players into an analysis of the most crude stat? Most people here know more about football than that, and should know better.

Loyalty

I’ll keep this short, because I’ve covered it in a previous article. Rooney is even more valuable to us because he will be with us for the rest of his career, unless we choose to sell him. There’s a good reason why British players come at a premium (Carrick for £18m, Rooney for £25m, Rio for £30m) — that’s because if you’re United, you’re buying that guy with a view to keeping him until he retires. I was variously called narrow-minded and a racist back then, but I reckon a few more people see my point now.

Nowhere in the various Ronaldo threads have I seen the comment “don’t worry, we have Rooney”. Well, I’m making it now. Build a team around Rooney, and we won’t regret it.