Filed under: Manchester United, Champions League, Premier League, Football
When Rio Ferdinand speaks, Sir Alex Ferguson usually listens.Ferguson only recalled Ferdinand after a 10 week injury lay off in the Champions League quarter-final against Chelsea after the defender assured the Manchester United manager that he was over his fitness problems.
But do not expect Ferguson to pay much attention to Ferdinand's argument that resting some players for Sunday's game with Blackpool might actually jeopardise United's chances of revenge on Barcelona in the Champions League final.
"Last time we had two weeks to prepare and we rested beforehand, but sometimes if you down tools too much you can get a bit lackadaisical and we don't want that," said Ferdinand.
"We're used to playing week-in, week-out, Saturday-Tuesday or Saturday-Wednesday. Sometimes when you have two weeks of doing nothing, your body doesn't react as well as if you were bouncing into the final off the back of another game."
Yet Ferdinand, Edwin van der Sar, Nemanja Vidic, Nani, Wayne Rooney and Javier Hernandez are all expected to be given the afternoon off by Ferguson on the final day of the league season.
And rightly so.
Fans of Blackpool's relegation rivals Wigan, Birmingham, Wolves and Blackburn will moan that Ian Holloway's side will have an unfair advantage on Survival Sunday if United rest their big guns.
But imagine Ferguson's horror if, for instance, Rooney suffered a serious injury six days ahead of the Wembley showdown with Barcelona.
Roberto Martinez, the Wigan manager, has already acknowledged that he will not blame Ferguson if Blackpool get the result they need at Old Trafford to survive, the Spaniard insisting Wigan's undoing will have been down to his side's own lack of consistency over the last nine months.
With the title already in the bag, why should Ferguson put United's pursuit of a Premier League and Champions League double on the line?
Ferguson, of course, has been here before.
Neil Warnock was furious as Ferguson left out key players on the final day in 2007 and Manchester United were beaten at home by West Ham, who stayed up at the expense of Warnock's Sheffield United.
Ferguson faced a similar scenario when he sent a team comprising squad players and youngesters to Hull a few days before the 2009 Champions League final against Barcelona. The likes of Ritchie de Laet, Rodrigo Possebon and Lee Martin came away with a 1-0 win at KC Stadium before the first team lost in Rome.
With a third Champions League triumph in 12 years in touching distance, the United manager will ignore the threat of a fine from the Premier League as he plots to overcome Barcelona.
He will rotate his resources accordingly with John O'Shea, Chris Smalling, Wes Brown, Jonny Evans, Anderson, Darron Gibson, Paul Scholes, Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Owen all set to feature against Blackpool.
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