Just when his stewardship has been facing criticism, Alex Ferguson has hit back, writes Richard Williams

ONE WAY and another, Alex Ferguson may consider this to have been his most satisfactory week-and-a-half since May 1999, when Manchester United staged a smash-and-grab raid to capture the Premier League, the FA Cup and the European Cup in the space of three matches spread over 10 hectic days. Now, at a time when his squad and his stewardship have been facing criticism, United have put together a mini-sequence of results that launches them towards the latter stages of the season with their morale at a new peak.

First, two Saturdays ago at Old Trafford, came the 4-0 demolition of Hull City – a relatively soft target, as they go, but the occasion for an unanswerable demonstration of Wayne Rooney’s wonderful vein of goalscoring form. Next, at the same venue, came the League Cup semi-final victory over Manchester City, Ferguson’s men recovering from a 2-1 first-leg deficit to shatter their neighbours’ vaulting optimism with a performance that was no less convincing for being completed at the last gasp.

And yesterday the concluding panel of the triptych was nudged into position, with Arsenal, the team whose current ambitions most closely resemble their own, brought down to earth just when they believed they had taken wing. If the north London side deserved credit for the way they responded to the 3-0 hammering by Chelsea in front of their horrified home crowd two months ago, this defeat may turn out to be the one from which, for this season at any rate, there is no recovery.

Back in August, when United landed an early blow on Arsenal’s title hopes with a 2-1 victory at Old Trafford, Arsène Wenger launched a series of exasperated broadsides, the most vehement of them aimed at Darren Fletcher, United’s Scottish midfield enforcer, whom he accused of playing “anti-football”. His comments drew a heated reaction from Ferguson, to whom the progress of his fellow Scot has been a source of considerable satisfaction.

Yesterday, as part of an ingenious tactical reshuffle, United’s manager used Fletcher in a very different role, with responsibilities heavily weighted towards the art of construction. Whereas on Wednesday night Paul Scholes had pushed up into the number 10 position, behind Rooney and ahead of the screen formed by Fletcher and Michael Carrick, now the latter pair moved ahead of him into the old inside-forward positions, with Scholes as the holding midfield player – a role in which, at the age of 35, he generally gives away too many free-kicks and is always in danger of picking up yellow cards.

Here, however, it worked like a charm. Without needing to strong-arm their opponents, the three central midfielders displayed enormous authority, occasionally switching roles while creating the platform from which their wide men – the sizzling Nani on the right and the reliable Park Ji-sung on the left – could mount the counter-attacks that shaped the match.

For all the hard graft of Alex Song, just returned from the Africa Cup of Nations, Arsenal were porous in the middle and undermanned on the flanks, where neither Bacary Sagna nor Gael Clichy received adequate support.

“The counter-attack has always been a part of our game, particularly away from home,” Ferguson said afterwards. “Arsenal play a lot of good football – they get the ball up to the edge of your box right away, but if you can win the ball there and counter-attack quickly, you can make a lot of chances against them.”

And so it proved as Nani, Rooney and Park all profited from breaks executed at lightning speed.

Quite justifiably, Wenger has made a point of emphasising his team’s success in scoring more league goals than any of their rivals this season despite losing their three main strikers for long periods. Yesterday, however, they were at their worst in attack, caricaturing the effeteness of which they are often accused – even, on days like this, by their own fans.

Andrey Arshavin, toiling alone up front, fluffed a couple of early chances but when, after 25 minutes, William Gallas rumbled forward to hit a first-time shot over the bar from long range, it was as though the centre-back had grown tired of watching all the tippy-tappy stuff going on in front of him. Sadly for Arsenal, his intervention failed to influence his colleagues, who continued their fruitless attempts, like Hamlet, by indirections to find directions out, threading short passes across the face of the United area until one of them lost the ball and sent their opponents racing forward again.

For United in their present form there are few worries as they lurk a point behind the Premier League leaders. Chelsea have a game in hand but, even on a serene run of eight league matches without defeat, Carlo Ancelotti will now be feeling Ferguson’s hot breath on his neck.

Guardian Service