Arsenal can win the league because Chelsea and Manchester United are more interested in Moscow on May 21.
And I’m wondering whether Sir Alex is a sentimental Scot who could be turning into Sir Matt Busby
Matt played golf with three players on Sunday mornings. I think he played with Pat Crerand, Bill Foulkes and Tony Dunne. He kept his favourite players too long and his team declined. Bill Shankly was sentimental about his older players too. Bob Paisley wasn’t.
When Sir Alex is under pressure, he always picks his correct team. But when he’s on a roll, he indulges himself and brings in Giggs, Scholes, O’Shea, Wes Brown, Fletcher. At the start of this season, United sometimes looked like two teams, Sir Alex’s old favourites, and a new Latin team. On a bad day, we saw the worst of both.
In the FA Cup, he beat Spurs 3-1 with Rooney and Ronaldo attacking together down the middle, although Tevez also started that ciup tie at Old Trafford. In the league he changed the team and almost lost.
In my view, Sir Alex has copied Arsenal twice.
After 1989 he copied George Graham by having powerhouse midfield runners who could attack as six and defend as eight.
After 2004 he began to copy Arsene Wenger by having forwards with aeroplane pace.
In 1998, he had seen Overmars, Anelka and Bergkamp and he lost 1-0 at Old Trafford and lost the title. He continued to believe in width, crosses and momentum and that won the treble in 1999.
But he later sold Ruud van Nistelrooy in order to base his attack on Ronaldo and Rooney, and play a different way, having signed Saha to add more pace, and he now depended far less on crosses to a prolific centre forward.
His problem was that his midfield had to be re-designed to release pace.
So he bought Carrick, a two-footed keep-ball midfielder from Spurs, to service his flyers with 25-yard passes from deep positions. But he still wanted a disciplined anchorman to replace Roy Keane, so he chased Hargreaves and eventually got him.
At White Hart Lane on Saturday, he started Hargreaves and Scholes, who is back from injury, but that combination did not release his flyers effectively.
Spurs were fiery and United looked a bit lethargic and maybe Arsene Wenger was right to say United could suffer after that £1 million friendly in Saudi Arabia. Maybe this was where those flights caught up with the Red Devils, who weren’t as devilish as usual. So he took Hargreaves off on 45 and brought on Carrick and that didn’t work either.
So on 60 he took off Scholes and put on Anderson, his most dynamic midfielder. At the same time, Nani came on for Giggs.
Anderson is 19 and was bought for next season, like Nani. But he’s explosive, like Vieira and Petit were in 1997-98. He can win balls and whip them forward ; he can zoom away from challenges; he can carry the ball at the opposition, rocketing out of his own half like a dreadlocked meteorite. The chunky Brazilian is half Edgar Davids, half Vieira, an inside forward with a half-back’s power.
Counter-attack not just about skill and pace, it’s about where the move starts, how it starts. What’s important is the tackle, the interception, the first pass, the moment when the ball is lost by one team and gained by the other. Is the pass forward or sideways? Is it early? Is it accurate? Does it stretch the other team? Does it scare them?
If that first pass is early, and forward, and accurate, Man Utd will have a good chance of scoring. It’s the start of the move that usually dictates whether the end of the move is deadly.
When Arsenal had Bergkamp and Vieira they were very dynamic, the team best-equipped to play stylish power football and slice you to shreds with a purple patch of five shots and three goals. (When Fabregas volleys a pass into the run of Adebayor, and the big black arrow outpaces Richards and Dunne, Arsenal recapture the thrilling penetration of yesteryear.)
For United at Spurs, falling a goal behind in 21 minutes was very bad news.
Jenas was clipped in the box by Hargreaves, who caught his heel, and as Jenas fell he appealed for a penalty and, in my view, deliberately handled the ball while he was on his back, looking away from the ball, so that Hargreaves could not reach it and Aaron Lennon could.
As we saw on the Match of the Day replay, and as Alan Curbishley pointed out on Sky’s Goals on Sunday, Berbatov’s movement was sublime.
He anticipated that the keeper would slap the cross away from the near post, so he waited and moved a yard sideways, so that he was balanced and ready when Van der Sar slapped the ball straight onto his foot. Then he side-footed home from six yards. It was so slick it looked rehearsed.
A very clever goal but an intuitive one. You can’t teach that. You can’t teach strikers to be as supercool as that. Berbatov made it look so easy. But it wasn’t anywhere near as easy as he made it look. Torres, great as he is, could not have scored that goal.
It was Michael Dawson, not Tevez, that knocked in Nani’s corner.
As I say, I think Sir Alex is a bit sentimental about his senior players. He can’t play Giggs and Scholes against top six clubs because their legs have gone. He can play them quite happily against Bolton, Middlesbrough, Wigan and Birmingham
At Man City, I’m told Arsenal won the warm-up 5-0 before winning the game 3-1.
The energy expended by Wenger’s wonders in the warm-up was far, far greater than that of the nonchalant, casual City players.
Petrov is like most wingers since football began in 1888. Against Derby, he was the best player on the pitch, playing against a mug. Against Sagna, he didn’t fancy it at all. So when he was just inside his own half and gave the ball to Hleb, he just stood there with hands on his hips.
Petrov-Hleb-Fabregas-Hleb-Sagna-Adebayor-goal-oneniltoAFC- game over !
Apparently, AC Milan and Real Madrid now want Adebayor.
I’ve got two short words to say to that. The first word begins with the sixth letter of the alphabet. The second word has three letters.
If Milan are watching Arsenal, and want Adebayor, they’re worried.