Saturday 9th December brings what looks like a routine league fixture for United against relegation fodder in the form of Wolves. Normally, Sir Alex would rest players for this fixture, giving Wes Brown and John O’Shea a run out with a bench full of experience in case things don’t work out.
Tomorrow will be different though.
An injury list that now includes Nemanja Vidic for the season, and adds Javier Hernandez, Tom Cleverley and Anderson to the Da Silva’s, means a team that will look like this:
De Gea,
Smalling, Jones, Ferdinand, Evra
Valencia, Giggs, Park, Nani,
Rooney, Welbeck
4-4-2 with a bench including Young, Berbatov, Macheda, Evans, Pogba and Lindegaard.
The engine room will be full of endeavour, and Rooney will drop back to make a 5 in midfield, we will win 3-1, close the gap to 2 points. I can just imagine Sir Alex with a glass of French red wine talking about horses with Mick McCarthy after the routine win.
That’s my prediction.
However it will prove nothing, other than the English Premier League has many levels of which Wolves are in the lowest level.
United remain a team in transition, that means they are changing either into the level that contains Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs or to the upper level in which Chelsea and Manchester City can buy the best players in the world and win the League. Which is it to be?
I remain convinced we need to plan for big changes, to release our expensive failures and build a new central midfield with players that can match David Silva, Luka Modric and Michael Essien.
We need players that drive us forward like Bryan Robson and Roy Keane did in the past, players who excite like Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Leo Messi. Ryan Giggs and Park Ji-Sung don’t do it for me and Anderson, Michael Carrick and to a lesser extent Cleverley aren’t at this current state of time good enough.
So tomorrow we can paper over the cracks, close the gap and breathe a sigh of relief. But it will prove nothing. Of course if I’m wrong and Wolves cause an upset then it will be a full blown crisis!
With Chelsea playing City on Monday it’s a weekend to enjoy, and after the disappointments of the last 2 weeks at least I can have a weekend off from asking what the plan is for United 2012, a question we all need to have answered before too long.
Is it time for Sir Alex to step down, is Rooney the player we bought, who will fill our Captain role in midfield. Three questions that will need to be answered convincingly this season.
Steve Burrows CBE @ifollowsteve
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