THIS is the season in which Sir Alex Ferguson turned on its head the old idea that winning the championship is all about taking points off your main rivals.
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VICTORY: Alex Ferguson lifts the cup
At the 11th time of asking, he found yet another
way to get to the finish line first – losing home and away to Liverpool
and taking only one point from Arsenal, although it turned out to be
the one with which he clinched the prize on Saturday.
Where did the rest of the winning tally of 87, with three more on offer at Hull next Sunday, come from then?
It
would be ridiculous to describe as flat-track bullies the team which
has seen off Inter Milan, Porto and Arsenal on their way to the
Champions League final. And which crushed Chelsea – at their lowest
point – 3-0 at home and secured a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge. But
there has never been a season in which the power and depth of United’s
squad has made itself felt so emphatically in the routine games; the
ones where the points-ometer ticks over and the total mounts up.
Remarkably,
United have completed the home and away double over 10 of the current
bottom 12 teams, with Hull still to be visited on Sunday. Not since
Newcastle claimed a point on the opening day at Old Trafford have the
stragglers and the also-rans been able to put any kind of obstacle in
their way.
It represents
67 points and nice, steady work. Against teams in the present top
eight, however, they have won five, drawn five and lost four, which
tells us United are not actually as superior to everyone else as the
current mood suggests .
It
also reminds us that, while three triumphs in a row might create the
impression success comes easily to United, it is in reality a hard,
gruelling slog to win a Premier League title, the hardest in world club
football. Remember, too, that this has been achieved in the wake of one
of the most demanding seasons the club has known in 2007-08, when the
European Cup victory which followed the league win was not sealed until
a penalty shoot-out in Moscow in May.
United
have also been on a mid-season trip to Tokyo in this campaign for the
Club World Cup matches in December against Gamba Osaka and LDU Quito.
They returned to claim one of their most significant away wins at Stoke
. It was about this time Liverpool failed to capitalise on their
absence, drawing with Hull and Arsenal .
Liverpool,
who have lost only half as many matches as United, have to acknowledge
that seven draws at home have cost them their best chance of the prize
in years. And if that is not enough to infuriate the statistically
minded Rafa Benitez, how about their own record against the big three?
They
harvested no fewer than 14 points from their main rivals – doing the
double over both United and Chelsea – and still missed out.
But as a man who seeks both solace and justification in the details,
Benitez surely will not have forgotten that his team had the biggest
number of representatives picked for Euro 2008 before this season
started. And four of them were in the victorious Spanish squad which,
obviously, was involved for the full four weeks. United sent five. None
went beyond the quarter-finals.
Wealth
is another of the details which has determined the outcome of this
title race. But while United are the richest, the significant factor is
the way in which Ferguson has used the money.
He
has shaped the most impressive squad in the club’s history by blending
superbly the mega-money signings such as Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov
and Michael Carrick with less expensive but vital captures like Nemanja
Vidic , Park Ji-Sung , Patrice Evra and Edwin van der Sar .
It is no small achievement, either, to have kept the home-grown pair of
Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes performing so significantly for so long and
to have the new breed of youth team products like Darren Fletcher, John
O’Shea and Jonny Evans making such an important contribution too.
The
result is that United may finish with four trophies this season. The
result, in microcosm, was on display last Wednesday, when Wigan offered
United the serious kind of challenge which typifies the competitiveness
of the Premier League and when, also, United’s immense strength in
depth saw them through.
Ferguson
says he will not buy big this summer. But it does not alter the task
for the remainder of the Big Four. They do not just have to match his
best XI, they have to match his squad, too. If they haven’t worked out
now who they need to buy to do so, it may be too late already.
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