Keane's rant is timed to perfection

Manchester Utd v S Prague: The annual Roy Keane rant arrived yesterday. Though nowhere near as vitriolic as previous years, when Keane has castigated colleagues for their "Rolex culture" and playboy lifestyles, the captain made his displeasure known about the stuttering progress of Alex Ferguson's team.

Typically, Keane did not spare himself, saying he was "hoping for a lot better from myself". However, his main gripe was about the problems United have encountered in knitting their lavish individual skills into a collective force.

"This squad has more individual talent than any other that I've seen in my 11 years here. But individual talent counts for absolutely nothing," he volunteered. "It's what the team does that matters.

"The talent is there, there's no doubt about that - just come and watch us every day in training and see. But it's doing it in a match that matters. It's about all the players performing and working together as a team to get the right results."

Keane pondered how a team with such attacking talents could have been so unproductive in front of goal. United have scored only 11 goals in their opening 11 Premiership matches and, citing the frustrations of Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Portsmouth, he made no attempt to defend his team-mates.

"We missed too many chances at Portsmouth and gave away two bad goals, which is a recipe for disaster at any level," he said. "With the chances we created, you should be hitting the target more and certainly scoring more often. If you're going to miss the kind of chances we did against Portsmouth, you're going to cause yourself trouble."

Ferguson has ordered extra shooting practice before tonight's visit from Sparta Prague, a match which should not impede United's progress to the knockout stages of the competition.

"On the evidence of Saturday's display at Portsmouth, I may as well have picked myself," said Ferguson. "I was always told by my father and my coaches to hit the target and that's the only advice I can give my players right now.

"We've always been high scorers, in the Premiership and Europe, so it's a concern when we're not scoring as many as we would normally. From my experience as a striker, when you're scoring you don't think you're going to stop. And when you're not scoring you don't know where the next one's coming from. Strikers are not unbreakable; they rely a lot on confidence."

Ferguson suggested Wayne Rooney was suffering from tiredness after his burst of games - "don't forget he had 96 days out and missed our pre-season," he said - and the teenager's place in attack is vulnerable because although Ruud van Nistelrooy is suspended from domestic competition, he is eligible tonight.

Van Nistelrooy will return having served the first two games of a three-match domestic ban which has ruled him out of Sunday's Manchester derby.

With just two Premiership goals all season - both from the penalty spot - the Dutchman's lack of form is a major worry, especially as Alan Smith, Wayne Rooney and Louis Saha are struggling to find the net just as badly.

In continental combat though, van Nistelrooy is virtually peerless in the scoring stakes. Within three years of his arrival from PSV, he has already eclipsed Denis Law's European scoring record for United, while a combined 37-goal Champions League tally from his time in Holland and England leaves him trailing only Raul in the all-time competition charts.

And though he claims to have a strike-force the envy of Europe, having watched his side's pitiful attempts to find a breakthrough at Portsmouth, Ferguson accepts van Nistelrooy is a man without peer.

"I hope every chance falls to him because his percentage of goals to chances is incredible. But it will come for the others eventually as well, I have no doubt about that because they are all scorers."

The trend will have to be altered pretty quickly if United are to stand any realistic chance of playing a major role in this season's title race. Already nine points adrift of pace-setters Arsenal and Chelsea, they are languishing seventh in the table and 14th in the overall scoring charts, with Crystal Palace's Andy Johnson scoring two more league goals than van Nistelrooy, Rooney, Smith and Saha combined.

Ferguson is also considering dropping Mikael Silvestre for tonight's game after his poor performance at Fratton Park and replacing him with Wes Brown.

PROBABLE LINE-UPS

MANCHESTER UNITED (4-4-2): Carroll; G Neville, Brown, Ferdinand, Heinze; Ronaldo, Keane, Scholes, Giggs; Smith, Van Nistelrooy.

SPARTA PRAGUE (4-4-2): Blazek; Pergl, Kovac, Homola, Petras; Poborsky, Sivok, Zelenka, Urbanek; Jun, Vorisek.

Referee: A Hamer (Luxembourg).