A seventh league title in nine years could not ease the pain of losing in Munich and Alex Ferguson’s team might split up
David Lacey and M&G reporters
A championship hat-trick is still sufficiently rare in English football to be worth a second glance. Yet such are the changed priorities among top clubs that no sooner have Manchester United joined Hudders-field Town, Arsenal and Liverpool in winning the league for a third successive season than their minds were elsewhere. For United the reality is that pulling domestic titles out of a hat like the flags of all nations is not the trick on which the success of their season now depends. Sir Alex Ferguson’s players could not overturn a 1-0 deficit against Bayern Munich at the Olympic stadium on Wednesday to reach the European Cup semifinals losing 1-2 on the night and a seventh Premiership title in nine years was a matter for consolation, not celebration.
Gary Neville put it rather well after Middlesbrough’s unlikely 3-0 win at Highbury on Saturday afternoon and their own earlier 4-2 victory over Coventry City had confirmed Manchester United as champions once more. “I think this is the first time a championship has been won but not celebrated,” the United defender declared. More than a continued interest in this season’s European Cup depended on Wednesday’s result. This match might have greater implications for the future development of the side. Ferguson is refusing to panic despite the disappointing Champions League exit but skipper Roy Keane claims it may be time to break up the team.
Ferguson admitted he was unhappy with his side’s defending in the first half in Munich, but he would not be drawn on his plans for the team. Instead he argued, rather unconvincingly, that United are as good a team as Bayern.
It is hard to agree with Ferguson’s assessment and Keane feels time may have run out for this United team. The Reds skipper said: “The players gave their all, but we are just not good enough and maybe it’s time to move on. “Maybe it’s the end of the road for this team, I’m not sure.”
Sublime though a number of United’s displays have been this season they played their best football in the Premiership before Christmas, since when results have been more consistent than performances.
Away from home in the Champions League, moreover, their record is poor: one victory in six games, with particularly poor performances against PSV Eindhoven, Anderlecht and Panathinaikos. Already the United manager must be thinking about how he would like the side to evolve next season, at the end of which he is due to retire.
Even when Liverpool were winning the championship with comparable regularity Anfield paid as much attention to the next team as the one getting the medals. So it was with Manchester United after Ferguson had narrowly missed out on a hat-trick in 1995: David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary and Phil Neville came in as regulars after Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis had moved on, with Steve Bruce following a year later. This has to be the way of it if the kind of success United have achieved since the early Nineties is to be maintained, and Ferguson is more aware than anybody of the dangers of complacency as is Keane, who has been the team’s severest critic this season.
The backbone of the side looks as sound as ever. At 7,8-million Fabien Barthez has proved a bargain. But for him United’s interest in the Champions League would have been confined to an armchair in front of the TV screen much earlier.
It says much for United’s ability to improvise that they broke the back of the championship contest largely without the authority at centre-back of Jaap Stam, who was kept out by injury from the end of August to mid-January. The versatility of Gary Neville allied to the early maturity of Wes Brown had much to do with this. The ease with which one player can fill in for another remains an essential strength of this side. When Dwight Yorke went broody, in stepped Teddy Sheringham to form a prolific partnership with Andy Cole. Sheringham is United’s leading scorer with 20 goals and, if, assuming Ruud van Nistelrooy is signed, Ferguson then sells a striker, Yorke would be favourite to go.
Scholes and Ryan Giggs have had their best seasons to date, Beckham his best half-season. Meanwhile Keane remains the essential driving force, a giant of an all-round footballer who so regularly makes the right choices that it is taken for granted. Old Trafford still wants to see Keane’s presence in the side for a few years yet. The Premiership needs a tighter contest next time and maybe Leeds United the last remaining English team in the Champions League will help provide it. A championship which is a foregone conclusion by Christmas and all over by Easter has limited appeal.
Saturday’s TV-oriented staggered kick-off times did not help the dramatic effect either. The crown of English football was found under a Middlesbrough mulberry bush while the winners were making their way home from Old Trafford.