Manchester Utd 5 Portsmouth 0:THE GREAT Pompey Turkey Shoot done and dusted, now for the real test of Manchester United's resurgence. Their next three matches are away, against Aston Villa, Milan and Everton, after which the true capability of a team dangerously reliant on one man should be apparent.
For Wayne Rooney, still only approaching his peak at 24, this is fast becoming an annus mirabilis. England's best footballer now has 23 goals this season – 21 in 24 games in the Premier League, where he has scored nine in his last seven appearances – and he must be a shoo-in for any player of the year award. The thought of what United, or England, would do without him, should he get injured, must horrify Alex Ferguson and Fabio Capello. Horror or horrors, they might both be forced to turn to Michael Owen.
Patrice Evra, United’s only ever-present in the Premier League, has seen more than most of Rooney this season, and believes the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo has seen the forward blossom with greater, matchwinning responsibility.
“Wayne is a world-class player and is getting his just deserts now because he is more mature,” said Evra. “He understands what the team needs and he concentrates more on staying around the box. He has not lost any desire to press the ball and things like that, but now he knows he needs to score lots of goals because ‘Ronny’ [Ronaldo] has gone.
“Wayne has changed his mentality. Now he wants to score all the time, he wants to be a killer, and that’s very important for us.”
Without Rooney United frighten nobody, left dependent on the capricious Dimitar Berbatov, who is third behind Rooney and own-goals in their scoring inventory. Everybody at Old Trafford, then, is keeping digits, and everything else crossed that their principal striker stays fit and well. Nobody more so, one suspects, than the club’s owners, the Glazer family, who must know that Rooney is serving them well on two counts.
Not only is he keeping United on course for trophies, which in their eyes equates as profit, he is also stilling the protest against their debt-laden regime.
It is difficult for even the most disaffected fan to chant about the board’s machinations when the team are rattling in goals four and five at a time, and for the third home game in succession the choruses of “Love United, Hate the Glazers” gave way to delirious applause for Rooney and company as poor old Portsmouth’s remnants were taken apart.
Saturday’s match (make that mismatch) was one-sided to a near-pathetic degree, and the margin might have been doubled. The outcome settled by half-time, Ferguson withdrew Rooney, Berbatov and Darren Fletcher midway through the second half, with Wednesday’s trip to Villa Park in mind. As the league’s bottom team were routinely routed, the thought occurred that if United’s supporters feel the Glazers’ financial shenanigans are jeopardising their club’s future, they should bear in mind that there is always someone worse off than yourself. What successive absentee landlords have done to the 2008 FA Cup winners beggars belief, as well as the Fratton finances. Four owners in one season and a fifth on the way.
Their executive director Mark Jacob said yesterday that “several interested parties” had approached the board in the past three days with a view to yet another takeover.
“There are potentially two or three groups,” he said. “It is quite delicate at the moment, but we’re confident a group will be in place very soon to move things forward and allow Mr Balram Chainrai [who took over only last week] to step aside.”
Portsmouth face a winding-up petition on Wednesday, but an appeal has been lodged and Jacob believes it will prove successful.
The lugubrious Avram Grant is entitled to be sceptical. The Israeli may not be everybody’s cup of Earl Grey, but he deserves our sympathy. Nineteen months ago he came up against United in vastly different circumstances, as manager of Chelsea, and was unlucky to lose the Champions League final on penalties on a night when John Terry being on the spot meant something else.
Today, the fire sale of his best players calls to mind Leeds United’s demise in similarly dire straits, and there is every chance of Portsmouth going the same way. “I have two choices”, Grant said. “I could say, ‘It’s not what they promised me and I’m going,’ and I don’t think anybody could blame me for doing that. But I’ve decided to do my best to keep this club up. The players give everything and the supporters are great, so how could I leave them now? I will do everything I can to keep this club alive.” He intends to make “a few” changes for Sunderland’s visit tomorrow. The resurrection shuffle?
Guardian Service
