Kids give cause for self-belief

THE slack subediting at the London ‘Telegraph’ did at least encapsulate the slightly mixed feelings about United’sshowing at the Hawthorns.

The front page carried a picture of beaming newbie Young captioned ‘United off to a flyer!’, whilst page 3 featured Alan Hansen chuntering that ‘United are hardly off to a flyer....’

The ex-LFC man did at least have the grace to make a joke about his past misjudgements of young United teams — “you’ll never win owt with kids”, and it never gets old does it? — but there’ll have been a fair few Redssharing his misgivings about De Gea, and the fact that he plays behind a very inexperienced back four over the next few weeks.

Nonetheless, watching some jump onto the newly-launched bandwagon that’s heading in the direction of a burning stake with a frail young Catholic attached is galling — he’s not Massimo Taibi just yet, surely, so less of the Joan of Arc treatment, eh? !Mind you, Taibi didn’t start this badly: he was man of the match in his first game.

But the point is that Taibi came good in the end — back in Italy, where he won many player of the year polls as he saved his new club from relegation almost single-handedly. De Gea is just a kid, barely speaks English, needs to put on at least two stone, and will require several games just getting used to the aerial bombardments beloved by many Premier League mediocrities, let alone anything else. This is what happens when you invest in young prospects; you’re not buying the finished article, and it’s unfair to treat him as though he were such a thing.

We can be a tad harsher, though, on Rio, if you like. I was reading up this weekend on the Cork microbiologist Dan O’Sullivan, who has discovered the properties of bisin, a substance that stops organic properties rotting. “Pity it’s too late to slather some on Ferdinand,” I mused, as I watched the hapless Twatterer hobble off for the nth time in the past two years. How the Glazers must regret not cashing in when they had the chance, as they contemplate yet again having to pay him 120K a week for the next couple of months’ indolence (and the rest of us shudder at the hundreds of extra inane internet outbursts he’ll be able to inflict upon us during his lay-off).

Fortunately, Phil Jones is already impressing, whilst Smalling has long been established as reliable value. Hansen, I hope, may well be proved wrong to have dramatised the dangers of United navigating the next two months with a defence whose average age will be about 21; as many pointed out at West Brom, we actually looked even more settled at the back after Vidic and Rio had departed.

Breezy self-belief is contagious at the moment, the result of suddenly grasping how young and fearless our team seems to be. Wes Sneijder may or may not arrive — and he is apparently making noises about kowtowing to Gill’s constraining fiscal demands — but there’s undoubtedly a feeling that United’s deadwood summer clearout, and the retention of much-coveted talents Welbeck and Cleverley have given the squad a fresh sheen.

They and Hernandez, The Twins, and Chris Smalling are held in genuine affection, acting as a counterweight to the less appealing older guard such as Anderson, the preening Ninny, Owen et al. These aspects ought not to matter — the classic line being “support the shirt, not the man” — but in reality they do. That goodwill is going to go a long way, no matter what learning-curve defeats may await.

We’re not expecting one of those against troubled Tottenham, mind, whose fans arrive on Monday night. The game’s on the telly, so perhaps many will prefer to stay behind and watch it on their brand-new plasmas (slightly smoke damaged). If they’re expecting to mount a smash ‘n’ grab raid on the points, they can think again.

Hey, come back, I’ve got another dozen of these...