Admiring how Fergie played his cards

FIRST we were The Crap Invincibles; then the Not-So-Crap Vincibles; now we’re finally The Really Quite Good, Actually, Champions. Saturday will determine if that appellation is to stick, or replaced by something loftier.

The basic statistics of just the Premier League season, however, tell a simple tale. Virtually flawless home results — if not necessarily performances — counteracted sometimes shockingly inept away day displays, many of which nonetheless saw us getting away with it.

In the Good Old Days of two-pointers, the results tally would have been hailed as wonderful, keeping to the Busby maxim of “win at home, draw away, and you will be champions”. Not anymore: now it’s deemed 32 out of 57 points ‘lost’. Such is progress.

Of course, one should admit that the standard of opposition was much higher in those days: if we wave away Fergie’s ludicrous protestations at the weekend about this being the “toughest league ever” and so forth, we can concede that only beating our oppos away 25% of the time was disappointing to say the least — especially as the previous season produced a 58% win-rate on our travels. But Fortress Old Trafford remained intact, and the Holy 19th was ours nonetheless.

This partly speaks to the under-performance of our opponents; Chelsea’s Ancelotti-driven decline, Man City being another window away from the finished article, and the Emirates King Canute, with his absurd refusal to buy British defenders, or spend the big bucks made available to him. One thing you can say for Fergie’s United: they seem to have a Napoleonic knack for capitalising upon ‘enemies who are busy making mistakes’. We did it during those fateful six weeks in 2003 when a normally superior Arsenal had their funny turn, and again from 2007-8 when Roman’s tinkering derailed what should have been an unstoppable Mourinho-built machine.

But that’s the carping done. (Well, apart from re-iterating the complaints we make every single season about: excessive tinkering – a hundred-plus changes in a row; the frequent resort to negativity when under threat — e.g. Arsenal away; the failure to find a settled, dominating midfield such as we had in 1994 or 1999.) This was our most ‘squaddy’ of titles, and the shepherding of that collective to the finishing line must be counted as one of Fergie’s greater achievements, notwithstanding the relative lack of style and our rivals’ incompetencies.

Consider what he had to cope with: Valencia and Hargreaves’ long-term injuries; Carrick and Fletcher’s health and performance travails; the Rooney Rebellion, and form-slump; Rio’s seemingly eternal absence; Scholes and Giggs’ creaking limbs; the fact that he bought two almost unusable pups in Bebe and Obertan; the apparent lack of transfer resources; and latterly, coping with the high drama of The Giggs Affair. Yes, he has some culpability for elements in that list ! but the point is this: how well he has generally handled the available cards in his hand from week to week. We even saw such marvels as the Arsenal cup-tie, when Fergie tried one of his usually woeful cunning stunts on the selectorial and tactical front, yet saw it come off spectacularly — and against the hated Professor himself, too.

Highlights? Beating City via Rooney’s wondergoal; the Berbatovian slayings of Liverpool and Blackburn; knocking Arsenal and Liverpool out of the cup; all four of the displays against Chelsea; the unexpected early flowerings of Hernandez and Smalling; and the title-gripping comebacks at Blackpool and West Ham. Lowest point? City at Wembley. All else paled in comparison.

You’ll notice I barely mentioned the European Cup there, and that’s because it has been so easy and, frankly, dull: we shouldn’t forget that one factor in our league success has been the surprising lack of resource-draining from that competition. But the final verdict? Heck, it witnessed the 19th. And will thus be immortal in the memory, whatever Barca do to us. That’ll do, no?