 Friday, 6th Apr 2012 11:10 by Clive Whittingham It seems that despite the riches and fast start from the blue side of the city the Premiership title is once again destined for Manchester United and Old Trafford this season. OverviewBack in the days when I should have been studying for GCSEs and A Levels but was in fact spending nine hours a day playing Championship Manager I often found defeat difficult to swallow. This was surprising really, considering I was fast approaching my tenth year as a QPR season ticket holder so had been having set backs stuffed down my throat once a week for the majority of my teenage years but away from Loftus Road defeats irked me. I recall the look on the repairman’s face as he opened up the back of our family PC and informed my mother he’d never seen anything quite like it and asked if we’d accidentally thrown it down a flight of stairs before he arrived. We hadn’t, but little did my parent’s know the poor thing had actually been heaved across the room once or twice during a particularly stressful 1997/98 season in charge of Norwich City. Defying the point of actually playing the game I was a fiend for hitting Ctrl + Alt + Del immediately after a defeat to have another bash – to the point where it took my 27 attempts to get a point from Wolves in a crucial midweek match and the whole thing sent me into a towering, computer thrashing rage. Essentially hours of meticulous team planning, cheating and gratuitous violence against an inanimate object always ended up with me winning eventually. The fact that I’d not done so quite within the spirit of the game didn’t seem to bother me, and has never seemed to bother Manchester United either. Sorry, low blow. Like those long, lonely and slightly disturbing nights spent in front of a computer screen whatever happens in real life football always seems to wind up with the same result – Manchester United as champions. If they pull it off this season it will be one of their finest achievements. Just across the city is a team that has spent an unprecedented amount of money on an outstanding collection of players the likes of which the English game has never seen before. Manchester City’s ability shone through at Old Trafford earlier this season when they secured an unprecedented 6-1 victory. United meanwhile have had the purse strings pulled a little tighter than in previous years and responded to a midfield crisis earlier in the campaign by dragging Paul Scholes out of retirement. And yet whatever life throws at them United seem to triumph. With the customary aid of a diabolical refereeing decision in their last home match against Fulham they opened up an eight point gap over City and although that’s now back to five the Sky Blue side have taken to dropping points like confetti and arguing the toss over who is going to lash their latest free kick into the stand. That City performance at Old Trafford came at a time when Roberto Mancini seemed to have abandoned his previously negative outlook on the game and taken the reigns off his squad. Stung by a series of near misses, including one at Loftus Road, he’s reverted to type of late to the detriment of his team. United know how they’re going to play because they’ve played the same way with the same manager for a quarter of a century. That stability breeds consistency and we’ve seen this all before when the early pace setter chokes and they move calmly past to claim the title. Meh, it all seems so futile. InterviewFor the second time this season we welcome United fan Patrick Campbell to LoftforWords to give an overview of the current situation at Old Trafford. As ever, thanks to Patrick for his time this week. It seems like United are going to scoop up another title, what do you put the longevity of the success down to considering how much the team has changed over the years? Well we're not there yet and these things have a habit of twisting and turning and not panning out as you'd expect them to. It's still very much up for grabs, and obviously the derby game looms very large. But in regards to your question - the answer is an obvious one. Sir Alex Ferguson. There's nothing I can say about the man that hasn't been said before, so I won't even attempt to, but as United supporters alive today we owe him an inestimable amount. Why have Man City, and Newcastle and others before them, stalled in the way they have when the seemed uncatchable at one stage? I think that's a good question, and the answer is deeper than we might initially suspect. Is it simply a case of Newcastle, City et al "cracking up" and bottling it? In my opinion, no - but it is the mental rather than the physical that causes this. Everybody comes out with a statement at this time of the year along the lines of "United always finish strong." Is it true though? How many people say that but say it because they've heard Alan Hansen say it on TV? So it comes a self-fulfilling prophecy - United will finish strongly, right? Footballers earn a lot of money and are in their own little world most of the time but they read the papers, they watch MOTD, and they swallow this stuff just like everybody else does, really. I'd contend that we don't "finish strongly" but we "last the course" which is a bit different. Add in all the talk about the experience of Ferguson, Giggs, Scholes et al though and teams are suddenly up against this incredible mental barrier which sometimes doesn't exist - it doesn't need to Having said all that, we're on a really good run at the moment. We're not going to win every game this month - because football doesn't work like that - but neither will City, so we've just got to drag ourselves over the line. This Sunday is a big day. What do you put United's failure in Europe down to this season? Is it a wider problem with the English game? Were United just complacent this year? Champion’s League group - complacency and then unable to raise our game when we suddenly found ourselves in the shit. Europa League - there was always this uneasy feeling about that competition. That we didn't belong in it, that a defeat wouldn't be a terrible thing, that it was an afterthought compared to the league. Wider problem? Maybe. Bilbao were superb technically, but the way the Premier League is I don't see English teams/England national team changing how they play anytime soon. Who has been the stand out performer this season, who is the weak link in the team? "Weak link" is a very difficult one. Everybody has been good. De Gea was shaky at the start but has settled down, Ashley Young has contributed at important times, Evra has had a better season post-Suarez than his previous two campaigns. I think our strength is that we don't really have a weak link - our players might not be sensational and stylish and flamboyant but we've won an awful lot with Michael Carrick at the heart of the midfield and long may that continue. Stand out performer? Antonio Valencia is getting better and better - he's fast developing into the Andrei Kanchelskis winger I always hoped he could be. I've never been a big fan of Johnny Evans but he's done magnificently this season with Vidic being out. Paul Scholes still looks a class above everyone else. Wayne Rooney hasn't been playing brilliantly this season but has scored plenty. Danny Welbeck I'm a huge fan of....it's been a very fun season to watch so far. Where, if anywhere, would you like to see the team strengthened? Midfield is the obvious answer. Scholes and Giggs won't be around forever, Fletcher might not ever play again to be honest, you can't rely on Anderson. We have high hopes for Cleverley but another body or two in there wouldn't go amiss. Is the strength of feeling against the Glazer's still as strong as it once was? What's the situation there at the moment? I don't like talking about them to be honest. Any success we have is despite them, not thanks to them, and every £ that they take out of the club to use for their own personal gain is a dagger to the heart. Having said all that, you look at some owners at other clubs and the old "be careful what you wish for" springs to mind. At the moment we have a club, and we have Sir Alex Ferguson, so we can't complain too voraciously. God help us when he goes... ManagerIn Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal we’re seeing the last of an almost extinct breed of manager in our sport playing out their final days. There will never be another pair like them, given 25 and 12 years respectively, to manage their teams.
Ferguson was appointed at Old Trafford in 1986 and has since won (pause for breath) 12 league titles, five FA Cups, four League Cups, ten Charity Shields, two European Cups, one Cup Winners Cup, one Super Cup, one Intercontinental Cup and one World Club Cup. But he didn’t win anything at all until 1990 and in the modern game he’d probably have been sacked somewhere around the 1988 mark of his tenure. The Mark Robins goal in the FA Cup at Nottingham Forest is the oft quoted “saved his job” moment but the chairman at the time Martin Edwards has recently laughed off the suggestion that Ferguson would have been sacked had he lost that game. He’s right, he probably wouldn’t, and they’ve reaped unbelievable rewards for sticking with him. In the modern era he’d have been sacked long, long, long before that goal and game at the City Ground. We will never see his like again. It’s odd, having just reeled off that unprecedented honours list, but to be honest I always look at his achievements at Aberdeen as the mark of what a good manager Alex Ferguson is. He won three Scottish league titles at Pittodrie, four Scottish FA Cups and one Scottish League Cup. Look at how embarrassingly awful Aberdeen have been since he left 25 years ago, and how Rangers and Celtic dominated that tin pot set up north of the border before and since. Christ 25 years on and Ferguson remains the last man to win a Scottish league title without managing one of the Old Firm. That’s how good this man is. It makes me physically sick, but he’s utterly brilliant at what he does. Arguably the greatest of all time in this country. The problem United have, apart from the debt and subsequent inability to compete in the transfer market, is that sooner or later he’s going to need replacing. He tried to retire at the end of the 2001/02 season, amazing to think back to that now considering what he’s achieved since, and at the head of the queue back then was England manager Sven Goran Eriksson. God, so near and yet so far from pure and utter hilarity.
A succession of his former key players have ventured into management clutching a “he played for Alex Ferguson, maybe some of it rubbed off on him” ticket and have, by and large, been a complete failure. Steve Bruce has had some success with Birmingham and Wigan but has just been justifiably sacked by Sunderland, Mark Hughes we know all about, Bryan Robson is so bad I find myself chuckling about him on the tube into work, Roy Keane is obviously mentally unhinged and so it goes on. For me, you want to be the man replacing the man who replaces Alex Ferguson. Whoever comes in first will fail, it’s inevitable. Look how United reacted when Ferguson said he was going to retire but was still in charge. Sadly I fear that may be David Moyes, who really should move on from Everton right now and actually start winning things at a better equipped club but seems set to just sit there, underfunded and doing an unbelievable job for no reward, until Ferguson finally hangs up his stopwatch. There is only one man that could come into Old Trafford after Ferguson and continue the success. And if they got him, I fear that success would continue for another decade or more if they could persuade him to stay for that long. Jose Mourinho. The Glazer’s have done nothing positive for United whatsoever but if they somehow managed to snare Mourinho as Ferguson’s replacement then those of us who’ve suffered through 20 years of red dominance would probably have to settle down for at least another ten years of the same. Scout ReportBe brave. I think it really is as simple as that. The rare teams that succeed at Old Trafford these days are the ones who show the occasion no fear and QPR may as well do that this Sunday as anything else. There are few weak links in this United team and they have a better player in every single position than QPR who are as long as 14/1 to win this game with some oddsmakers. Their win against Chelsea earlier this season equalled a 108 year club record for 18 consecutive home wins. But I do think a part of the problem teams have when they come here is a mental one. United’s main problems this season have come in Europe against teams like Basle, Benfica and Bilbao – middle of the road clubs in European competitions over the past few years but teams that don’t have a whole history of heavy defeats on this ground weighing them down when they visit it. The received wisdom from English teams who turn up here once a year and lose is that you should sit back and try to last for as long as possible before maybe trying to snatch a goal of your own in the final 15 minutes if you made it that far. Those European teams, and Man City and Blackburn in the league, all got positive results on this ground this season through simply playing their normal game and attacking. Hell at the end of last season Blackpool were in the game for far longer than they would have been had they approached it negatively by just going all out attack – eventually they lost 4-2, but then they do have Ian Evatt at centre back. The idea is that if you attack United, or even try to press them high up the field, then they’ll just destroy you in the spaces left in behind. But a good team shape can close that space while remaining positive and this United team isn’t filled with speedsters like the younger Giggs, Kanchelskis, Ronaldo and others who have revelled against such opposition approaches in the past. They’ve conceded 15 times at home this season, their worst record for ten years, so they’re giving teams chances to hurt them. That said I thought it was hugely impressive at Spurs this season when, out of possession, Wellbeck and Rooney would drop back to form a midfield six that took turns in pressing the ball high up the field in the knowledge there was plenty of cover in behind them. When I last saw them against Fulham the visitors could easily have scored a couple of goals in the first half by pouring enough men forward in attack to allow Clint Dempsey to receive possession in a hole between the United centre backs and central midfielders. When you do actually commit a few men forward it seems to surprise them and Taarabt could easily do a similar job to Dempsey for us on Sunday. In that match United played Rooney off Wellbeck in attack and went very direct and long at times – I couldn’t make my mind up whether this was just a lethargic performance or whether there were signs of that complacency that cost them so dearly in Europe this season. I also saw them lose badly at Newcastle earlier this season who played with Demba Ba and Shola Ameobi in attack and simply overpowered a United defence. Blackburn enjoyed similar success with Yakubu and Samba to the fore earlier this campaign so the physical power that Mark Hughes has added to the QPR team this season may come in useful here. Hughes’ QPR has done better against the bigger teams in the league than it has in the seemingly more winnable fixtures, probably because our method of sitting deep and playing with deep lying midfielders then counter attacking works better against teams that actually come forward towards you regularly, but Athletic Bilbao showed the value of pressing high up the field against this United team in an awesome Europa League tie. Or, we could ignore all of that and rest everybody ahead of much more realistic points winning opportunities against Swansea and West Brom later this week. An interesting dilemma. 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