In Prague’s Toyota Arena last Tuesday the action in the stands held more interest than anything on the pitch. Sparta Prague followers, perhaps responding to a pre-match leaflet campaign, refrained from racist chanting suggesting football’s message to supporters from Eastern Europe may be finally getting through. Manchester United fans, for the benefit of Malcolm Glazer, shouted ‘Not For Sale.’ Then, midway through the second half, came a truly startling sight and sound. It was the United section belting out an old, old number: “All we are saying, is give us a goal.”
When did they last sing that? When did their fathers? Their grandfathers? It has been a standard, down the ages, for those wedded to other clubs but never those who love United. The goal is United’s calling card. In 2002, in domestic football, they completed a run of 126 games without taking part in a 0-0 draw. Now they have endured stalemates in consecutive games. If Sir Alex Ferguson were Austin Powers, we might fear he had lost his mojo.
No club in history has made nets swell like United, the leading goalscorers of all-time in English football and, by a striking margin, top scorers since the Second World War. Yet everyone knows it is Arsenal, these days, who set the goal standard. The Gunners had never out-gunned United in the Premiership until 2002-03, but since have been doing so at a rapidly increasing rate. United own the better defensive record this term, but their nine goals scored in nine games, set against Arsenal’s 29, explains the 11-point gap between the sides.
Scoring — obviously — is something required of Ferguson’s men if they are to halt their rivals’ unbeaten run, but beyond events at Old Trafford this afternoon you sense they will not restore their supremacy in English football until they restore supremacy in the penalty box. United defending their way to championships, in the style of a George Graham team, is something impossible to conceive. This season’s famine follows the privations of last season, when United’s goals total was their lowest in 12 years.
What is going wrong? At the centre of it is Ruud Van Nistelrooy, whose paltry eight league goals since the New Year represents an alarming diminution of his powers. ‘Number 10 In Crisis’ headlines can no longer be assumed to refer to Tony Blair. “It’s one of those strange things,” said Ferguson. “You look at Van Nistelrooy and say to yourself, ‘Well here’s a guy who’s only in his fourth season here and has scored more than 100 goals’, so there’s no reason to think this is going to last long.
“Strikers at United are no different from those at other clubs. They have an aura when they’re scoring, thinking they’re never going to miss. When they’re not scoring they wonder where their next goal’s coming from.”
Yet anybody familiar with Van Nistelrooy might conclude that, whatever problem he were to experience, self-doubt would figure far down the list of likely causes. “I’ve been in the game for 10 years and as a striker you go through good times when you score a lot, and bad times, when there’s a run of games where you don’t score. What you’ve got to do is carry on and think of the next game. That’s all there is to it,” he shrugged.
It would help Van Nistelrooy if his great rival were not casting such a giant shadow. It seems a quirk in history now that there was once an age when people argued over whether Van Nistelrooy or Thierry Henry was the greater striker.
Henry’s general play was always peerless but those in the Van Nistelrooy camp could once point to the Dutchman’s superior goal rate. On top of everything else, though, Henry is now outscoring his counterpart, by a huge 26 league goals to eight so far in 2004. In Prague there was a moment when Ryan Giggs struck a shot which skewed off a defender and flashed in front of Van Nistelrooy. He was six yards out and once would have buried it. Instead, he booted fresh air.
Later, Van Nistelrooy caught Sparta’s Pavel Pergl with an elbow, and you can always tell when the Dutchman is off his game because he gets irritable.
Arsenal’s players do not like him and will find it hard to resist if opportunity arises to wind him up today. Van Nistelrooy wants to play down last year’s game at Old Trafford, when he was disgracefully abused.
“Last year won’t mean anything on Sunday,” he said. “We’ve played Arsenal since and there were no problems. It’s finished. This is a new season. Just play the game.”
How he would like a goal, though, to exorcise last year. At Euro 2004 he showed, in Dutch colours, he could still be deadly, so maybe the problem is United’s. “The stats show we’ve had more shots than any other team in the league, so we’re doing something right,” Ferguson said. Stats can show many things. Didn’t Gerard Houllier always come up with numbers to ‘prove’ the virtuosity of his turgid Liverpool? The unmistakeable impression gleaned from watching United is there has been a drop off in their attacking play. They used to come at teams wave upon wave, using the width of the field to vary the angle of assault and building up such speed and crispness in their passing that when the time came for an incursion it would be a sudden thrust. To do that, however, you first need to pin them back and Gordon Strachan noted recently that United no longer press other teams in midfield.
One sign United have been piling less pressure on their quarry is that the penalty Van Nistelrooy scored against Tottenham recently was United’s first in 11 months. In the 2002-03 season, they won 14. Ferguson agreed the problem may be with his side as a whole: “It could be to do with team selection. There’s five months until the next international break. If we get consistency of selection it’ll make the difference.”
If this means Van Nistelrooy being supplied by a settled midfield of Roy Keane (doubtful today because of flu), Scholes, Giggs and Ronaldo, rather than a pick ‘n’ mix ensemble involving Kleberson and the rest, all the better. Van Nistelrooy has another reason for optimism. “Yes, we’re not scoring, but we’re sorting things out. We don’t concede goals. That’s the thing we’ve been working on and now it’s the final bit we’re looking for — to attack as a team and score. As far as I’m concerned it’s a matter of time.”
The last time Carlos Queiroz controlled United’s training programme, in his previous spell as Ferguson’s assistant in 2002-03, he did the same — tightened the defence before loosening the leash in attack. United won the league and rained goals by April, scoring 26 in their last eight league games. Yet they started slowly, scoring six in their first seven matches, and Van Nistelrooy also needed time to warm up. By mid-January he was still low down the list of leading Premiership scorers with eight, but finished top after exploding with 15 in his last 10. Even if United manage a similar turnaround, it is hard to see it affecting Arsenal. United may need a miracle. They have somebody capable of producing one in Wayne Rooney, 19 today. “It’s going better and better as a partnership. There was some good play between us against Sparta, moments when you could see our understanding developing,” Van Nistelrooy said.
Ferguson was reminded who, as a 17-year-old Everton substitute in 2002, stopped Arsenal’s last big unbeaten run. “Aye,” he said, “I hope he does it again.” Ferguson’s wife, Cathy, was woken at 7.15am on Friday by a knock on the door from a foolhardy local radio reporter, who wanted to deliver a birthday card for Rooney, now a neighbour of the Fergusons. The man of the house was already at work, pouring over ways to combat Arsenal. United are the only team Wenger’s men have not beaten in the Premiership these past two seasons and Ferguson noted: “you just had to watch (Arsenal’s draw against) Panathinaikos. Teams prepare better in Europe. We make sure there are certain things we don’t do against Arsenal.”
United know the defensive strategies to upset Arsenal’s gameplan. What they need, desperately, is a new attacking blueprint.
