United show new life after Death

Manchester Utd 1 Everton 0: A GREAT stadium echoes to the expression of many things on the final whistle; triumph, relief, panic and even boredom. The sound of Old Trafford when Mark Halsey blew for full time was one of inevitability.

Unusually for a man whose mantra is that Easter is the critical time of any football season, Alex Ferguson had identified the period between Manchester United’s return from the Club World Championship and the resumption of the Champions League as the decisive phase of the domestic campaign.

Between the end of December and mid-February, the Manchester United manager reasoned his players would be slightly disoriented after their return from Japan and weighed down by injuries. Their response has been seven straight victories with a collective scoreline of 13-0.

Nearly all the attention has focused on the nil. The stadium announcer told the half of Old Trafford who had bothered to remain to the end that Edwin van der Sar had set an English league record, overcoming Steve Death’s 18 hours and 23 minutes without conceding a goal, achieved when Reading won the Fourth Division championship in 1979 – a run broken, incidentally, by an own goal.

In truth, the Dutchman had one serious shot to save and this against an Everton side whose bloody-mindedness after the loss of almost all their recognised strikers had upset Liverpool and Arsenal in three successive games.

For all their resilience, for all that they ruthlessly targeted Gary Neville as the one weak point of a seamless defence, for all that Phil Jagielka and Joleon Lescott proved themselves the equal of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, David Moyes was forced to concede it was not enough.

“When you get in a run of clean sheets like they have, there is a determination not to give it up,” said the Everton manager, himself a one-time central defender. “You could see that written in their faces.”

Were Jose Mourinho to study a video of this game in preparation for Inter Milan’s encounter with United in the Champions League, a match the marketing department at Old Trafford is billing as “The Special One versus the Very Special One”, he would recognise much of his Chelsea side in the team Ferguson has assembled.

And in Michael Carrick, United possessed a midfielder who was part Michael Essien, when charging down Mikel Arteta and dispossessing Steven Pienaar, and part Frank Lampard, when volleying Cristiano Ronaldo’s chip past Tim Howard’s post or driving into the penalty area, as Ferguson had urged him to, which won the penalty that divided the sides.

Bryan Robson, who could scarcely have played better himself at Old Trafford, said of Carrick: “It’s his understanding of where to be on the pitch that has impressed me more than anything else. He knows the areas to be in, regardless of where the ball is, which is a priceless asset.”

For all the success that Fabio Capello has instilled into England, his decision to ignore Carrick for competitive internationals ranks alongside his casual dismissals of Michael Owen as the hardest to understand. Had Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Owen Hargreaves been fit, he may not have started, and starred, in the victory over Germany in Berlin.

There has long been an uneasy alliance between the supporters of Everton and United on the basis that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” and the chorus of “Rafa’s cracking up” that began in the away section at Old Trafford was quickly echoed by the Stretford End and beyond.

There is little Rafael Benitez can do with United in this kind of run. Had Everton possessed a genuine striker, had Arteta not tripped Carrick, they might have settled for more than honourable defeat.

As it is, there was another clean sheet and the fall of a 30-year-old record. For Van der Sar and his back four there is life after Death to ponder. The British record of 1,196 minutes without conceding, set by Everton’s goalkeeping coach Chris Woods when at Rangers, is next in line while the world record, the 1,275 goalless minutes kept by Atletico Madrid’s Abel Resino in 1990-’91 is also vulnerable.

Curiously, for all Resino’s heroics, Atletico did not win La Liga that season, having to contend with the extraordinary Barcelona team created by Johan Cruyff. There is nothing nearly so formidable blocking Manchester United’s path.

Guardian Service