Sunderland 0 Manchester Utd 1:THE BRITISH prime minister may have had trouble on Wearside over the weekend but Manchester United's record these past four years is more difficult to fault, and the defending Premier League champions are doing all they can to cling on to power, winning yesterday at the safe seat Sunderland call the Stadium of Light in a style more convincing than the arithmetic would suggest.
To extend the political metaphor, the Reds’ problem is that the Blues are ahead going into Denouement Day, and the swingometer will go into meltdown if Chelsea lose at home to Wigan next Sunday.
If the top two both win, Carlo Ancelotti and company will be champions by a single point and Alex Ferguson, who knows a thing about bookmakers and their odds, is not about to gainsay the 33 to 1 they are offering against his team claiming the title for a record fourth season. “We’re clutching at straws,” he said last night.
United knew their crown was slipping from the moment Chelsea overcame Liverpool earlier in the day. They still set about their work with obvious spirit and desire, as one expects from any line-up Ferguson sends out, but the momentum has been with London’s pride since their 2-1 victory at Old Trafford four weeks ago – a situation reinforced when United were held 0-0 by Blackburn eight days later.
Ferguson will not have it, but without the matchwinning magic of Cristiano Ronaldo and the goals he and Carlos Tevez used to score, they are not as good as they were. Chelsea kept their best players last summer and are about to reap the rewards.
Sunderland have made good progress after finishing 15th a year ago, and Steve Bruce could teach his old mentor a thing or two about the value of strikers, having profited handsomely from his investment in Darren Bent. United knew this one was never going to be a gimme. Bruce’s charges had lost only one of 17 previous home games in the league and in Bent paraded a striker at the peak of his powers, with 24 goals in the league this season. Any misgivings United fans may have had will have been exacerbated when Ferguson’s starting line-up was announced, and two England defenders, Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown, were on the bench, with Johnny Evans and John O’Shea given preference. Ferdinand and Brown would both have preferred to play, so close to the World Cup.
Ferguson tweaked his formation to accommodate an extra striker, Dimitar Berbatov, alongside Wayne Rooney, and again restricted Michael Carrick to a substitute’s cameo, underlining how the England midfielder has been marginalised since the error which cost United dear against Bayern Munich.
If Carrick’s future is in question, Berbatov’s surely lies elsewhere after another exasperating performance. Finishing more like Uncle Bulgaria than that country’s principal goalscorer, he spurned three inviting chances, two of them at close range.
After an even-steven start, which saw Rooney and Ryan Giggs threaten at one end and John Mensah and Lorik Cana head over at the other, United seized control and took a deserved lead in the 28th minute when Nani, set up by Darren Fletcher, scored with a bristling shot from right to left. It was a classy goal, but talk of a new Ronaldo is premature. They may have their Portuguese origins in common, but Nani has contributed three league goals this season to Ronaldo’s 18 last.
With United ahead, Paul Scholes and Giggs kept possession flowing towards Craig Gordon’s goal, and it took a combination of Sunderland’s assiduous defending and Berbatov’s profligacy to keep the score down. Supplied twice by Rooney, the strolling sulk fired horribly wide, then missed from two yards. For a gobsmacking encore, he wasted a cross from Giggs at similar range and was promptly substituted – surplus to requirements, permanently it would seem.
Carrick, who replaced him, had a shot cleared off the line by Michael Turner, and by the end 1-0 did scant justice to United’s superiority. Almost as an afterthought Ferguson sent on Owen Hargreaves in the fourth minute of added time. England’s forgotten man, making his first appearance for 21 months, was on for all of 35 seconds. We can safely assume that Fabio Capello will not have been nudged.
From that perspective, neither will Bent have done his World Cup prospects much good with an anonymous performance which left in question his ability to succeed against defenders of Nemanja Vidic’s calibre.
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