PAUL SCHOLES learned yesterday that he had escaped the injury that every footballer fears the most - the ruptured cruciate knee ligament - in Manchester United's 3-0 defeat of Aalborg in the Champions League, but the prognosis was still bad news for Alex Ferguson, who will be without the central midfielder until mid-December.
Scholes (33) damaged the medial ligaments in his right knee in a challenge with the Aalborg captain, Thomas Augustinussen, on Tuesday night. Whereas Ferguson had stated the former England international would miss at least six weeks, Old Trafford's doctors believe a 10-week rehabilitation is more realistic .
The better news for Ferguson is that Michael Carrick should be able to return to full training. Carrick cracked a bone in his foot during the 2-1 defeat at Liverpool on September 13th, but hopes to be available for United's next home game against West Bromwich Albion on October 18th.
Ferguson can also rely upon Anderson, Ryan Giggs, Darren Fletcher and John O'Shea to deputise in midfield. Yet Scholes's latest diagnosis, which conceivably rules him out of the Fifa World Club Cup in Tokyo in December, comes at a bad time for Ferguson, who remains concerned about Owen Hargreaves and his recurrent problems with tendinitis.
Wayne Rooney, who twisted his ankle against Aalborg, had a scan yesterday and is unlikely to face Blackburn Rovers on Saturday but should be fit for England's World Cup qualifiers against Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Meanwhile, United fans will hope, in the future, Dimitar Berbatov will look a lot happier when he has scored for the club. His celebrations were muted, to say the least, in the 3-0 Champions League defeat of Aalborg in Denmark on Tuesday, when his body language was far from what might have been expected of a striker who had just broken his duck for his new club.
"I was angry," the Bulgarian said yesterday.
If United's supporters did not already realise it, they will quickly have to learn that the club's new signing can be a difficult man to read. The former Tottenham Hotspur player barely mustered a smile when he lashed in his first goal and there was little more than a sheepish grin for the second.
Nobody, however, should confuse his restraint with indifference. Berbatov was simply ruminating on his "embarrassment" that he had not scored earlier in the game when he was presented with an open goal after Cristiano Ronaldo had got in the way of an attempted clearance by the Aalborg goalkeeper.
"I was relieved, obviously," said Berbatov, reflecting on his first goals for the club. "But I didn't celebrate because, first of all, I was disappointed to miss my first chance. Sometimes you get only one chance in these games and, for a guy who has been bought for all this money, I really have to take these chances. So that is why I was angry.
"I was frustrated about what I had done. I got the shot all wrong and I was embarrassed. I just kept trying and, of course, in the end I scored two goals. But I'm still angry and disappointed with myself because of the first one I missed."
It was the kind of slack finishing that smacked of a player with confidence issues after two disappointing and one mixed performance in his only other games for the Premier League and Champions League holders.
Yet Berbatov's first two goals should soothe his self-belief and, as Ferguson pointed out, there is another topic to address when considering his inability to make a more immediate impact - namely that the rest of the team have to learn how to play with him, too.
Berbatov is not a slouch, but he is not particularly quick either, and there have been too many times over the last few weeks when team-mates have tried to set him running clear rather than playing it into his feet. "The players need to understand just how good he is in terms of his ability to lead the line," said Ferguson.
Guardian Service
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