From failure to fab for Fletch

SO, apparently it’s all hail ‘TSP’, as Fletcher is known to many a so-called Top Red – it stands for ‘The Scottish Player’, and speaks Macbethishly of a long-gone time when his name would not be willingly uttered.

Well, we’re no longer in Kansas on that score, we can safely conclude.

The player once singled out for humiliation by Keano in 2005 has, if you believe the press chorus, replaced him as the Old Trafford midfield titan.

Certainly his goal was wonderful on Saturday, his pass completion rate exemplary – Keane-standard, indeed – and his all round commitment admirable. And in a season thus far marked by complaints, Fletch is regarded as one of the few unalloyed good news stories.

All fine and dandy, though I do tend to bristle when such conventional wisdom is shoved down my throat every day. Loathe though I normally am to resort to statistics, that refuge of those with no judgment, I cannot help but note that he still hasn’t broken into any of the national top 30 match rating average charts: not quite the new Keane yet, surely?

Incidentally, the Reds that are in the Top 30 are the usual suspects: Rooney, Berbatov and Evra (Vidic, the other hardy perennial, has understandably just dropped out).

Mention of Evra, last seen building a statue to his pal Thierry Henry, is a tad sensitive at this time, I do realise. But he was excellent again on Saturday: if only he’d been content to let his feet do all the talking, instead of opening his mouth to support The Great Criminal. En passant, one notes that Evra’s other best friend in football is David Ngog, Henry’s predecessor in the public cheat stocks, and a man whose amusing Anfield banner (“Ngog We Trust”) must nonetheless be the most inappropriate in football.

Still, such is his irrepressible cheeky charm, even the Irish-Manc Reds will forgive him his trespasses. As long as the crosses keep coming…

So Saturday was a perfect easing-in after the break, with Everton as compliant as they always been at Old Trafford. What’s more, we have an appetising stretch ahead of us now, at least in terms of feasting on points.

It is clearly a hostage to fortune to say so – like tugging a boatload of feeble pensioners to offshore Mogadishu and affixing a “we’re minted, we are!” sign to the mast.

But really: go look at the fixture list, lads – potentially Easy Street until mid-January, is it not?

Ten games that could well garner 30 points, if United act professionally. Yes, yes: big ‘if’. But that was what last season’s title was built upon – the ruthless demolition of the bottom 10 teams home and away.

True, Ronaldo, aka Chief Bully, has now gone, and Fergie has mused publicly about the failure to drown the weak as quickly as we used to do. Nevertheless, any failure to make the most of this harvest period would surely have consequences.

Indeed, during the week off, we have suddenly had a rash of published and private stories about the possible consequences for various players who are deemed to be “on trial”.

There’s muttering that Fergie’s planning a strip ‘n’ rebuild from June, not least as he realises the whole old guard will be going (Scholes, Giggs, Neville, Rio). Yes, I did include Rio: I can assure you Harry Redknapp wants to “rescue” him by taking him to Spurs, if he can convince the principals.

Harry also helpfully revealed he speaks to Rio all the time, that they text each other too, and that “there isn’t a finer centre-half in the world”. I’ll run through the rest of the ins and outs next week: you’ll see that there’s more than just 30 points at stake in these next eight weeks...