Filed under: Manchester United, Football
Hats off, then, to the new champions of England. Deserving winners of the title, though the margins were small, and the quality of the opposition wasn't up to much. In truth, it hasn't been a vintage season, and so of Sir Alex Ferguson's 12 championship-winning Manchester United sides, this one is probably the least impressive and domineering.Like United fans will give a flying one. It's their 19th title, the end of Ferguson's Homeric quest to "knock Liverpool off their f****** perch". It's an amazing feat: when the former Aberdeen boss arrived at Old Trafford, Liverpool had just won their 16th title, and would win two more before, in 1993, United managed to move up the roll of honour from seven, a number on which they'd been stuck since 1967. In less than two decades, they've managed to eclipse the most successful English domestic club in history. Oh, and they're also 90 minutes away from becoming champions of Europe for the fourth time. Not bad for a side in transition.
Nevertheless, even if United waltz off with a league and European double this season, it won't change the fact that this is merely a decent, but far from great, side. Nani, Antonio Valencia, Wayne Rooney (in patches) and Javier Hernandez have been excellent, and the veteran pair Ryan Giggs and Edwin van der Sar have enjoyed blistering Indian summers, but the team has rarely gelled with the cohesion of, say, United's 1999 treble side, or the swashbuckling double team of 1994. They spent the first half of the season being very poor indeed, while their away form has never been anything to write home about.
And despite United's eventual dominance of a poor division - thanks to that amazing record at Old Trafford - it really wouldn't have taken much to usurp them. Chelsea have ended up looking second best by some distance, thanks mainly to a lengthy and inconceivable mid-season loss of direction, yet they would only have required a couple of extra wins to pip the champs. Arsenal blew it spectacularly, a thermonuclear meltdown, yet while nobody in their right mind would claim such a shambolic and brittle outfit are even in the same ballpark as this United team, they too were only a couple of eminently winnable games away from a proper challenge.
Manchester City, meanwhile, didn't seem to want it enough. Next season, maybe. Meanwhile United are making off with the spoils, having totted up a points total that would have just about scraped a Champions League place in some other Premier League seasons.
But a strange thing has happened. Since United wrapped up the league, the general consensus that this is the worst United side for some time - pretty much a constant throughout the season (and a view held by a vast swathe of the United faithful too, it must be stressed) - has changed. Now the commentariat are pedalling the argument that this has been a "myth" which has developed over the season. United are in fact a superb outfit, and have been all along. How can they not be, with the title in the bag and a European Cup final to contest? You can't argue with results.
Except, thing is, you can. When you have more titles than anyone else in the country, you get a free pass to treat some of your successes with a haughty disdain. Liverpool fans used to do it all the time: their 1981 European Cup side wasn't considered a patch on the late 1970s team, or the one that won old big ears in 1984, while to fans in the know (and Alan Hansen) their 1986 double-winning side was, especially at the time, considered their worst by some distance for decades! Now it's United's turn to treat their roll of honour selectively. The 1996-97 side? Pah! The 2003 title winners? Great run-in, but no cigar.
There also seems to be an unwillingness to accept - by the denizens of Fleet Street, that is - that the English champions can somehow be a bit under par. Hence the hasty upgrading of United's current crop. Again, though, there is no shame in an average side coming top. The Leeds team of 1992 weren't one for the classicists, but that doesn't stop them being fondly remembered by large swathes of the country.
An opportunistic Ipswich Town side nipped over the line in 1962 when the great Spurs and Burnley sides of the era imploded, but that doesn't take anything away from the legend of their manager Alf Ramsey. The Aston Villa side of the early 1980s simply weren't very good at all, yet stole the league from Bobby Robson's great Ipswich, then snatched the European Cup from the reach of Karl Heinz Rummenigge's Bayern Munich. Like anybody in claret and blue cares that Ron Saunders' side wasn't the second coming of Hungary 1953 multiplied by Brazil 1970 on the end of a Barcelona-2009-shaped stick.
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