The actual football season is not even over and there are still two pieces of domestic silverware to be decided as it all looks likely to go right down to the wire but that hasn’t stopped the journalists from telling everyone who Sir Alex Ferguson will be buying this summer.
As United fans, we’re used to this now. We seem to have been linked with just about every midfielder in the Europe at some point in the last six or seven years with “Giggs and Scholes getting on and nearing retirement”.
Indeed, Richard Tanner of the Daily Express not only seems to know who SAF will be buying but he has also allocated our manager his spending budget – £100million!
I normally treat all of these articles with the contempt they deserve – 99% of them turn out to be pure fabrication written by journalists with not enough real news to write about.
However, I have to say that, whilst £100million might be stretching it a bit, we really do look like we need to splash some serious cash this summer.
Let me just say right away that I am not one of these United fans who think that we should be winning everything every year. What I want to see is United competing for everything every year. It would actually be very boring if we won the Premier League every season.
Despite what some people have said about our team in recent years, we have been competing.
In the last five seasons (excluding this one), we have won four Premier League titles, two Carling Cups, one Champions League (and four Community Shields).
In 2010, when we didn’t win the Premier League, we finished second and, as well as our Champions League success, we were also beaten finalists in two other years in the last five.
I would obviously have preferred to have won at least one more of those Champions League finals but we had to accept on both occasions that we just came up against arguably the greatest ever club side the world has seen.
This is what I call competing and I’ve generally been a pretty happy United-supporting bunny for the last twenty years, not just this last five.
As things stand, we are still in with a shout in the title race. It is probably out of our hands now (I very much doubt we will make up an eight goal deficit in two matches – stranger things have happened, though!) but if it ends up with us losing out on goal-difference well, that would be gutting but it makes a bit of a mockery of anyone saying that this team “isn’t good enough” or whatever.
We remain the team to beat on a domestic level.
The problem this season is that the depth of our squad has been a bit exposed and this, I believe, is why we have been poor in all the other competitions. I still disregard the Europa League, I said at the time and I remain of the same opinion – we didn’t want that one and it was no great shakes when we went out when we did.
We had a tough Premier League fixture list around that time which we negotiated brilliantly to put us in a commanding position in the League and it may well have been the case that we wouldn’t have seen that had we attempted to play midweek Europa League matches here, there and everywhere.
What was never a part of Fergie’s masterplan for this season though was for us to go out of the Champions League in the Group Stages.
The group we were handed was, on paper, one of the easiest we have ever had. We should have sauntered through it but we were, frankly, appalling at times. I still have no explanation for why this was the case – the team was largely the same team that had done so well in Europe in recent years and was still largely the same team that has put in some excellent performances against better domestic opposition this season.
I did question at the time whether some of our players had perhaps lost some of the “appetite” for the Group games. That after the glamour of a few Champions League Finals in recent years, the grind of the Group Stage wasn’t quite so appealing anymore. I don’t know but if that’s at all the case then those players need to shape up or ship out.
What has also gone against us this season is the most horrendous injury list. The loss of Vidic early on was the biggest blow and I do wonder if some of the “softer” goals we have conceded this season (especially in our last couple of games) would have been prevented if we’d had Vidic in there.
But the midfield has also had major problems. The jury has always been out on Anderson and this year was, perhaps, make-or-break for the lad. Unfortunately, due to injury, he hasn’t had the chance to make his case. This hasn’t exactly been unusual for Anderson though so if he is as injury prone as he seems to be then perhaps that makes most of the decision for SAF.
Then we have Tom Cleverley. This was supposed to be the season when Tom came back to Manchester United and showed us all that he was ready to take the step up and become a first-team regular. Again, injury has blighted his season, though and the jury remains out.
Darren Fletcher has had no luck with injuries throughout his career but this season was perhaps the cruelest blow of all for him as it was revealed that debilitating illness that he has been suffering from for quite some time was the reason why he took so little part last season and next to none this season.
What all this meant is that Paul Scholes had to come out of retirement to answer what basically amounted to an SOS (Save Our Season) call. Paul remains as superb as ever and has certainly had an impact since his return but his return did have a whiff of desperation about it.
What we have started to get used to in recent seasons is Fergie sitting at Press Conferences as the season is about to start and saying “I’m happy with my squad. I’m happy with what I have got.”
As I said earlier, our record in recent seasons has proved him correct in his assessment, despite the disappointment from some of our fans that he hadn’t gone out and splurged £40m on the pet midfielder of the month.
In Fergie’s defence, he couldn’t have predicted the injury situation we have had to contend with but I do feel that there were some signs already there. This isn’t the first time we have had massive injury problems in recent years (Carrick and Fletcher as centre-backs, anyone?)
Fletcher’s situation was perhaps “predictable”. Anderson had never really shown enough to suggest that he was going to come through this season and become the missing piece of the jigsaw even had he not suffered his injury problems (which, in themselves, have been something of a recurring, hence perhaps “predictable”, problem). Cleverley was always going to be a bit of a gamble.
I think most people felt that we needed to spend on a top-notch, proven midfielder last summer but I do accept that to spend £30-40million on a player “just in case” is the type of extravagant excess normally associated with our money-no-object rivals in blue.
And, let us not forget, that the last time Fergie spent big on that “match winning, answer-to-everything” midfielder (Veron), it didn’t exactly work as planned. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.
However, looking back on the season, he must surely accept that we are now in need of something more in midfield? There are question marks over almost all of our midfielders for one reason or another (Carrick is probably the only one who still ticks all the boxes for me and god only knows where would have been this season had he picked up a nasty injury).
Paul Pogba, should he ever decide to commit to us, remains an interesting prospect but he still looks at least half a season away from even being considered for the first team and, clearly, getting his head in the right place is the more immediate priority with that player.
I’d still say that £100million is a little over the top for what we need right now but I can see a net £50million being spent this summer. Not just on midfield, might I add. With Fabio looking likely to move away from the club, the left-back cover needs to be addressed and I do believe that Evra could use the competition.
So, yeah. Silly season is upon us and I suspect that Fergie will make his transfer moves early this summer because buying after a major International tournament (Euro 2012) has not always been the best policy. Interesting times loom.