Tinkering is not the way to go Fergie

SO, did we get safely through last night?

Last week, the Lyon president observed it would be “catastrophic” for United if we fell, which wasn’t overstating the case: given the virtual weekend-off the team had at Craven Cottage, it’d be almost inexcusable.

You know the basic script by now: fans hate tinkering, management loves it. We tend to grumble that in the Good Old Days, tiny non-rotated squads would play just as many matches in a season as do today’s spoilt Fauntleroys, on much worse pitches too, without a word of complaint. We are told that today’s faster game requires more resting but surely the improvement in training technology and practices should compensate for that? Liverpool won titles and European crowns with 14 players; even as recently as 1994, United almost won a treble with, in essence, 13 players.

My theory has always been that managers have introduced “mucking about,” as I prefer to call it, to give them something meaningful to do, especially if they have coaches who do all the training for them, such as is the case at Old Trafford.

The egomaniacal likes of Benitez, Fergie et al love to “pit their wits,” as the media flatteringly labels it; bosses seem to be unable to bear the fact that for the 90 minutes, it’s the footballers’ kingdom, and instead always attempt to be seeking to interfere with play. Offside! OK, maybe I am being a tad facetious but I do recall Fergie half-joking in 1995 that his best team so obviously picked itself that he didn’t have much to do on a Saturday, which revealed rather more of a truth than I think he intended.

Anyway: all that said, Saturday was one of those days when you cut the boss some slack and give him a tinker for free. Fulham are precisely the sort of opposition that induces a desire to take a vacation, and thus it was that instead of roaring in complaint when we saw Rooney AND Ronaldo on the bench, we just shrugged it off. The training ground exercise that then unfolded showed we were right to be so easygoing.

Admittedly, had Danny Murphy buried his early chance to make it 1-1 in the manner with which he used to smack us at Old Trafford, we would have been bellowing for the introduction of R&R&, but the window of opportunity soon slammed shut for the Cottagers.

Incidentally, one also wonders whether a similar window crashed down on poor Louis Saha’s butterfingers too, whose unimpressive display seemed to encapsulate his entire United career. Curiously though, Saha received a rare public vote of confidence from an effusive Fergie last Tuesday; what was that all about, then?

Machiavelli raises his head: word is that, in fact, United were contemporaneously dangling Saha plus a shedload of cash in front of Lyon for the services of Benzema this summer, and two UK tabloids further claimed that Fergie had tapped up Karim.

Certainly Lyon president Aulas was furious enough about the alleged goings-on to denounce the “destabilisation” of his player by United, which in turn produce a chuckling and unconvincing denial from Fergie.

If all this is true, I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Fergie was whispering in Saha’s ear: “no, of course you wouldn’t be under threat by Benzema’s arrival, Louis: look how nice I have been about you in the papers today….”

And thus a turkey would be induced not only to vote for Christmas but to baste itself too. Ah Fergie: he’s still worth his weight in gold when it comes to ruthless realpolitik.

Meanwhile I trust we are going to take the imminent FA Cup tie seriously, especially given the way the route to ultimate victory has opened up. A bit of the spirit of 1958, 1977 and 1996, please: the correct response at United when we lose an FA Cup final is always to storm straight back to Wembley to try for immediate atonement.

Tinker ye not, please Sir Alex: a touch of the Tommy Doc’s is preferable this time.”

Richard Kurt, whose “Red Army Years” is only available via [e-mail]