ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: ALEX FERGUSON has told Michael Owen that he will get more games over the coming months after starting the striker only once since his Champions League hat-trick at Wolfsburg almost six weeks ago.
Owen’s time at United, which began five months ago with an insipid 63 minutes against today’s opponents, Burnley, has been a mix of spectacular interventions – such as the hat-trick in the Volkswagen Arena and his winner in the Manchester derby – and near anonymity.
Ferguson has suggested that he does not regard Owen and Wayne Rooney as a compatible partnership and last Saturday, when attempting to force a win at Birmingham City, brought on Mame Diouf, his new arrival from the Norwegian club Molde, rather than England’s fourth-highest international goalscorer.
Yesterday, however, United’s manager said Owen would have more playing time from now on because Dimitar Berbatov had turned down the chance of an operation and would have to nurse a knee injury until the end of the season and that Rooney, sooner or later, would have to be rested.
“Michael needs games and we are going to try to solve that,” Ferguson said. “I have no problem with him, it is just the blend of your strikers. We like to see Wayne Rooney going through the middle and everyone knows Michael is a last-defender player – his movement and positional sense in the last third of the field are excellent. But it is a difficult choice to play two through the middle in the modern game.
“However, there will be times when we will change the pattern of the team. Wayne can’t play every game if we want to retain his freshness.”
Ferguson dismissed any suggestion that Rooney could be sold to service Manchester United’s debt as “total rubbish”.
He said Diouf had been preferred to Owen because he wanted to check the Senegal striker’s performance levels before registering him for United’s Champions League squad.
The manager has challenged Berbatov to more than double his goals tally in the second half of the season. “I still think Berbatov is a good scorer, I really do,” Ferguson said. “He has scored six times but if we get to the end of the season and he has 15 he should be happy. That should be the target for him.”
Ferguson yesterday refused to take questions on Manchester United’s bond issue, although one of the club’s most prominent supporters, the bookmaker Fred Done, who is worth €576 million and owns the Betfred chain, said he would “not touch it with a bargepole”.
The bookmaker said: “I am seeing empty corporate boxes, I am seeing empty seats and there are tickets on open sale which you did not see a year ago. I am seeing cracks in the team. It is just debt-ridden and as a supporter, it saddens me. I hope we do not go the way of Portsmouth.”
Edwin van der Sar will become Manchester United’s oldest post-war player if he returns to the team for today’s game at home to Burnley. He has been on compassionate leave since the end of December.
Van der Sar returned to training this week for the first time since his wife, Annemarie, suffered a brain haemorrhage last month and the former Netherlands international goalkeeper has been asked to decide whether he is ready to play against Burnley at the age of 39 years and 79 days. The post-war record was held by another Dutch goalkeeper, Raimond van der Gouw.
“Edwin has come back to training and has done very well,” said Ferguson.
“He has been out for a few weeks and it is great to see him back. He will give us so much experience when he eventually does come back, which is important to us.”
Guardian Service
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