By Umaru Fofana
First off, I am a diehard Manchester United fanatic. And as someone whose first love is football, you can imagine what that means. Even with the avowed principle of impartiality my employers at the BBC know about the first. And even with her extreme jealousy my wife knows about the second. Regardless, they have come to live with it.
But I am also a realist. Hence my consternation about the downward spiral that my team is on like a free-faller from space. First to state the obvious: the post Alex Fergusson era has started with a nightmare. How I wish we had not slept to have dreamed in the first place! With only 16 games to go, the team is in seventh place with 14 points behind the league leaders - Arsenal. Probably the worst performance by any defending champion in the English premier league. And by the look of things, it will get worse and may not get better until after a few years when the lads in the academy have come through.
Of the current crop of players hardly does anyone, apart from the sensational Belgian teenage winger Adnan Januzaj, play with wholesome commitment. The United midfield is almost non-existent, the defence is in sixes and sevens with only Phil Jones doing anything impressive to me. And the fearsome striker Robin Van Persie has been plagued by injury for most of the season only to be replaced by a feeble Danny Welbeck.
As if to kill a dead man, the team's most influential player - Wayne Rooney - is also nursing injury. But that is the least of the Rooney worries for any Man U person right now. My gut feeling tells me that if not by next week, then certainly during the summer transfer window, Rooney will leave the club. Experience has taught me that when a player is frenetically rumoured and even reported to be leaving a club and ends up not leaving, the unpublicised deal is often to wait only until next summer. Remember when Thierry Henry, Patrick Vierra, Cesc Fabregas et al wanted to leave Arsenal at varied times? Remember when Christiano Ronaldo wanted to switch to Madrid? That seems to be pattern.
With United having managed to keep Rooney last season amid all the talk and fevered speculation that he was Madrid-bound, it is almost impossible to keep him beyond this season. Ronaldo needs a workaholic at the Santiago Bernabeu and he sees that in Rooney. As the 31 January transfer deadline approaches I feel like a man whose wife is in a caesarean theatre. On tenterhooks! Will she or will she not make have a safe labour?
Clearly Rooney's heart has not been in the team for some time now. Made worse by the fact that he has a history with new Manager David Moyes with whom he parted ways at Everton amid acrimony and verbal tirades. But as my friend and football enthusiast Isaac Massaquoi would say, the captain band would have changed the Englishman's attitude and perhaps even his aptitude. I agree with him. Is it not unfair and de-spiriting that when Nenamja Vidic is off the field Patrice Evra and not Rooney gets to get the captain band?
Meanwhile Captain Vidic is leaving the club at the end of the season. At least so says his agent. Van Persie will not leave but his spirit will dampen, if not already, to match his last two years at Arsenal when the club took a nosedive. It is often like that with big stars. When their team ebbs they flow by leaving.
But how do you strengthen a team in the shape that Man U are in at present? A very tall order for a club that has not been bought over by some Arab millionaire or Russian oligarch. In my view, it is easy for a club as big and troubled as United are, to turn to their academy but for midfield players only. Not so for world class defenders and attackers. That was what emasculated Arsenal for almost a decade and the big boys in the team started to leave for greener pastures even though they always had a good midfield. But even in those trying times at the London club things did not get as bad as they are now for the Manchester side. The Gunners always made it to the Champions League even if sometimes by the skin of their teeth. For United, chances are the team may not even make it for Europe's elite club competition next season. For a team of that stature, that is a colossal relegation. And with the aura that used to mesmerise opponents having disappeared, Olympiacos may well knock us out of Europe.
Now a team that fails to make it to the Champions League can hardly afford to get the readymade top players in world football. With Man U not making it to fourth place in the league this season, hardly will big hitters come our way because they want to join the elite footballers; hence next season may be another mountain to climb to the form we are all too known for.
Again with the clock ticking on the January transfer window we need to have the real big boys - that is those who are willing to leave and their clubs inclined to let go of them. But for a club in such dire straits and obviously this rattled and desperate, any player the current English champions approach will have their price tag doubled. Reason: they are a desperate club and they will pay, the home club would think. Ask Jose Morinho and the tag he has put on Juan Mata or even the increased release fee of £ 50 million Athletico Madrid are now asking for Jorge Resurrección Merodio a.k.a. Koke.
But with a deal having collapsed between Inter Milan and Juventus for the Colombian midfielder, Fredy Guarin, Manchester United may just make a move for him in exchange for the unsettled United forward Javier Hernandez, to strengthen its middle. Guarin's move to the Old Lady fell through after Inter fans raised hell that the 27-year-old was leaving for 30-year-old Vucinic considered too old. And the deal did not go through.
And hoping that Guarin's deal does go through this January, Tom Cleverly will be a nice partner. With Van Persie back in the fray with fitness, United should be able to hold the fort to at least make it to fourth place in the league and clinch that play-off Champions League spot next season. Then we can start talking about bringing in Koke from Vicente Calderon. But for now, like I had predicted in the first week of the season, United cannot defend the title which I think will go to Arsenal. But I never thought the team would struggle this much to make it to the top four which is a combination of the fact that the team has dropped and the league has become more competitive. Enjoy your weekend football.
(C) Politico 23/01/14
