UNITED IN FREEFALL?

 

Image take from Manutd.com

 

Well, the week started with Keano ranting about his teammates and saying that a load of them should be sold. MUTV got told not to air the rant, Fergie and Keano were both supposed to have roasted the squad in private anyway. Taken at face value, Keane's reccomendation of selling a load of players reminds me of when Fergie sold Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis in the summer of 1995. On that occassion Fergie was able to bring in a certain trio of youngsters called Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes(then a striker) and David Beckham. And despite Alan Hansen's "You can't win anything with kids" after an opening 3-1 defeat to Villa, United went on to win the double that year.

So United have been able to get away with selling our hotshots before. Prior to '95 I had heard of Beckham, Scholes and Butt but only in terms of roughly cut youngsters. So, assuming the Keano's interested in the fast promotion of the reserves class of '05...what's available? Well Tim Howard started off solid in goal when he arrived in '03 only to fade out last season, and had to be replaced by Van de Saar in the first team lineup. Another Yank, Johnathon Spector has had his uses when needed in defense early last season, with Spaniard Gerrard Pique as more of a wildcard. That's goalkeeper and defence possibly sorted out and Rossi could supplement the attack but if we ditch the likes of Kieran Richardson and Darren Fletcher we'd be skating on thin ice in midfield, particularly with Keane himself on his way out.

OK, so right now, things don't look like they can get much worse but chucking some of our biggest names in the deep end in midseason simply smacks of a white flag. Can we rely on unpolished youngsters to get us from seventh to anywhere near a title(I'll settle for a Champions League spot) within only half a season? Sorry Roy, but that doesn't sound like a workable solution, particularly as Fergie knows what his back up crew are like and he's backing the first teamers - it's up to them to get themselves out of this hole.

Anyway, the disaster continued on Wednesday, United had the edge for a lot of the first half, it wasn't United at their best but it wasn't quite similar fare to the Middlesborough match either. Lille didn't really look like hitting the net though...until a defensive screwup allowed Lille's Slovenian midfielder Milenko Acimovic to hit the net in the 38th minute.

As for the second half, well...did we really look like winning this game? Ronaldo hit the bar but that was about it. It puts United down to third in the group(only a UEFA Cup spot)with two tricky looking games to go.

Luckily, we weren't the only English side to mess up in Europe this week. Chelsea of all teams paid a visit to Spanish side Real Betis...who managed to get a degree of payback for their trashing at Stamford Bridge with a 1-0 win, dropping down to second in their group.

The Scousers in the meantime took one look at the visiting Anderlecht and decided to show Chelsea how it's done in Europe, Rafa Benitez's fellow Spaniards Fernando Morientes and Luis Garcia putting the European champions 2-0 up before an Anderlecht player got sent off for swearing and Cisse finished the Belgians off, Liverpool now topping the group though they haven't qualified for the knockout stages yet.

That honour, belongs to Arsenal, with four wins out of four in their group. The fourth win came at Highbury with Henry opening the scoring before Robin van Persie added two more to take care of Sparta Prague.

Rangers in the meantime, went to Bratislava to take on Artmedia in what was pretty much a must win game but despite Dado Prso and Steven Thompson giving the Gers the lead on two occassions, Alex McLeish's crew were only able to get out of Eastern Europe with a 2-2 draw and one point. The result leaving them in an absolute dead heat for second place with the Slovaks with Inter and Porto still to deal with for both sides.

Dropping down a level, Bolton and Middlesborough both took care of business at home against oppisition from the former Soviet Union. Bolton saw off Zenit St Petersburg after Kevin Nolan hit the winner in a 1-0 win on a drenched pitch, Wanderers now looking like bankers for the knockout stages while Middlesborough dealt with Dnipro with a 3-0 win thanks to Yakubu opening the scoring before Mark Viduka came up hot for the first time in a while, Boro topping their group, maybe Viduka's hot form is a good omen for the Aussies in their World Cup playoff vs Uruguay.

A solid week for British clubs in Europe overall maybe, but as a United fan, I am honestly worried about the weekend's match vs Chelsea, maybe the players will get their heads straight in time though.

I hope so at least.

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