Looking Onward From the Bottom of A Pint

By: Taylor Rockwell | May 27th, 2009

To begin with, I watched today’s game at a local pub surrounded by my fellow United supporters. About sixty minutes in, they all (rather belligerently) began making their traditional excuses. We should have been playing Chelsea, Puyol is a crybaby, Messi used HGH… all nonsense and poor excuses for the truth: United were once again exposed as a team weaker than previously anticipated.

To be certain, Barcelona deserved this victory. They played excellent football, took their chances, and made “the greatest centerback pairing in history” look foolish multiple times. All credit to a classy squad and a classy manager in Pep Guardiola.

That said, I thought the United team on the pitch tonight was shocking, and it started with the lineup. Wayne and I agreed on what it would be, and we pretty much nailed it. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that, for two major reasons, we were mildly doomed from the start.

Firstly, Daryl made an excellent point on The Offside frontpage. Whilst Barcelona were debating their midfield options, we were complaining about Darren Fletcher’s suspension. Fletcher has certainly come on this season, but would he ever see the pitch for a healthy Barcelona side? Probably not. United definitely have a wealth of riches on their roster, but I can’t say that, after tonight, our midfield leaves me feeling supremely confident for next season. Perhaps with a fully fit Hargo back, things will look different. But does one player with questionable knees make an entire unit look world class? Perhaps… if it’s Slave… but apparently he doesn’t play midfield anymore.

Which leads me to my second point. There has been something troubling me about the United squad of recent weeks and it came to me right around the time Slave hit his 5th shot wide in the opening 10 minutes: when did our once deadly winger start playing center forward? In our match preview comments, Wayne and I both agreed that there was no way Slave would be played out wide because Fergie wouldn’t risk him not tracking back. Let’s extrapolate that for a second. Essentially, one of the greatest managers of all time can’t get a player on his own squad to do that which is expected of him. So, instead, we sit a forward with debatable influence (Berbatov) and start a winger (albeit an incredibly talented winger with phenomenal ability) up top.

Hindsight is always 20-20, and I know that it’s foolish to second guess things that can’t really be changed… but screw it. I’m doing it anyway. If I gave you the following two lineups, which would you rather see United attack with: The one we went with tonight (Ando, Carrick, Giggs, Park, Rooney, and Slave) or one consisting Ronaldo, Carrick, Ando/Park in the midfield, Tevez and Rooney out wide, and Berba up top? Barcelona obviously isn’t Tottenham, but when we had the four headed monster pushing forward, we scored five goals in quick succession. Could the same lineup have changed the fate of United tonight? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact remains that tonight we seem to have been hoisted by our own petard. Instead of playing free-flowing football, we panicked after an early goal and let Barca completely dominate.

So where do we go from here? Despite the result, United remain one of the top clubs in Europe… and, obviously, the world. However, I don’t think that we can afford to rest on our laurels. To assume that a healthy Wes Brown, a healthy Hargo, and another year for the kiddies (Macheda, Possebon, Rafael, et al) automatically means we’re in the running for our fourth straight EPL title would be a regrettable bit of arrogance. United ended up victorious in multiple competitions this season and were an impressive/entertaining side at times, but I think most would agree that they never looked completely confident from start to finish. Their run of clean sheets was amazing, but was often accentuated by a dearth in goals. Finishing the Premiership with 90 points was amazing, but taking only five points out of a possible eighteen against other Big Four opponents was not. Making it to the Champions League Final two years in a row was amazing, but looking impotent for large sections of the match was not.

Solidifying the roster with role players, bringing an end to the Tevez saga, dealing with the inevitable Slave situation, and deciding just what the 2009/2010 squad should look like are all big issues on the horizon. Dealing with them effectively and intelligently will keep United playing the kind of football we’ve come to expect from them. Failing to do so… well… that’s just not a viable option.