Old Trafford ‘crisis’ averted as new-boy Nani turns it around

CRISIS? What crisis?” asked Fergie in Jim Callaghan mode before the press pack last week — and despite me being the type always to decry a glass as being half-empty, surely he had a point?

The first Tottenham victory at Old Trafford since December 1989 was successfully, if fortunately, prevented, and suddenly we have at last crept into the top-half TV-frameshot, as though turning up fashionably late at a title-chasing party and asking if there’s any punch left.

Ahh, December 1989: now THERE was a proper crisis. Or take the dark period Fergie chose to refer to, the autumn of 1992, when a similarly-poor start led to us at one point trying comically to engage the services of David Hirst (incidentally, nice rewrite of history by Fergie there — his claim that we would have won the title that year even if we hadn’t signed Cantona was, umm, playful to put it mildly). This isn’t a heart-stopping crisis — yet. It’s still mere mild indigestion.