This squad might be less than the sum of its parts

NORMALLY, dear reader, you and I are already putting the past weekend to bed and looking forward to the future on these Wednesday mornings, aren’t we?

Masochistically continuing to examine such a Saturday as the nightmare just past would be akin to delving into one’s own cold vomit after a night of unwise drinks-mixing. Frankly, you just want the wife to clear it up so you can move on. (As it’s the day after St Patrick’s, some of you will doubtless be finding that a particularly apt topical simile.)

Still, such potentially historic moments do demand a considered pause, so let us hold our nose and proceed.

I recall only too well the last 1-4 home defeat that also seemed to drop out of the clear blue sky in January 1992. Fergie growled on Saturday night that after such a crushing defeat, what this club does is “respond”, and it is oft-forgotten that this is precisely what we did back then, scoring two tremendous cup victories over our then closest rivals Leeds. But within the month, the hitherto hidden faults that Denis Bailey had so unexpectedly revealed in our team resurfaced, stronger and more deadly: a title lead considered invulnerable was eventually whittled away and we ended up with only a League Cup. Aye, that same trophy currently glowering at us like an omen from our sideboard.

Give that our next opponents are the usually supine Fulham, we’ve got a very good opportunity to fulfil Fergie’s ‘respond’ request, and most Reds would still back his subsequent assertion that “United will still win the league”. Indeed, to lose from this still-commanding position, given the largely accommodating remaining fixtures too, would be disastrously comparable to 1992’s collapse. Mind you, few were impressed by the next line Fergie came out with — that United “had been the better team” on Saturday.

One can only hope such an absurd comment was the result of over-rapidly draining the e300 bottle of wine Mourinho gave him last week.

So, just “a bad day at the office,” as Alex dubbed it, or something more sinister? You may recall I wrote last week of my (now-justified) fears about the Inter/Liverpool double-header and it shouldn’t be forgotten that our performance against a very average Italian outfit was as alarming as the result was welcome. In short, both Inter and the Scousers created half a dozen golden chances against the supposed Greatest Defence Ever Seen on our ‘impregnable’ home turf, the difference being that Liverpool took most of theirs. Ferdinand has looked shaky; Evra has had a patchy month since he was ‘blackspotted’ for a possible summer sale; O’Shea has had all his journeyman limitations exposed once more; and Vidic was simply unlucky to have had a once-in-a-season stinker when the whole world happened to be watching. In other words, the issue this week with our defence was surely about form, not class.

Yet all that said, one underlying theme of this column for the past 15 months or so remains worth replaying. I agree with Fergie when he claims this is the best squad we have ever seen, the mere assemblage and maintenance of which does him and his staff so much credit. The question remains, as one of my most esteemed colleagues Mr T Ropical at Red Issue put it: given that this is true, why then are we not much MORE dominant?

This may seem perverse, looking at the trophy cabinet, but it reflects the hardcore’s Princess-and-the-Pea dissatisfaction with the management somehow leading that stellar combination to several big-match disappointments, way too many un-Unitedesque 1-0 scrapes, and having to resort to grisly clinging-on throughout the European Cup and League latter stages last season.

“Less than the sum of its parts?” is the question that recurs: I hope Saturday wasn’t part of a definitive affirmative answer.