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Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is applauded by players after his 1,500th and final match in charge of the club following the Barclays Premier League match between West Bromwich Albion and Manchester United at The Hawthorns on May 19, 2013 in West Bromwich, England. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Legendary Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has retired.
Manchester City have added four top players to a squad already overflowing with quality.
Chelsea have added two players with great potential to an already formidable squad.
Jose Mourinho, one of the few managers who could face Ferguson as an equal, is back at Chelsea.
Wayne Rooney looks set to leave Manchester United and join Chelsea.
Manchester United have selected a manager who is yet to win a trophy in his career.
David Moyes has no Champions League experience.
Manchester United face Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City in the opening games of the Premier League.
Manchester United are in dire need of a central midfielder to partner Michael Carrick.
Thiago Alcantara rejected Manchester United and Cesc Fabregas looks set to do the same.
Manchester United haven’t been able to sign a single player this window so far.
One injury to Michael Carrick and Manchester United are as good as dead.
Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra are no longer the force they used to be.
Manchester United’s best winger last season was a 39-year-old.
Yeah, that seems all. Phew. Quite a bit, huh? So as a Manchester United fan, how does all of this make you feel? Afraid? Angry? Frustrated? Indifferent? Or just plain and simple sad?
I’m not here to give a sermon on how you shouldn’t feel down and out, because it’s natural to feel just that. But I’ll tell you this – it’s the most interesting phase in your life as a Manchester United supporter.
Sure, as a United lad, you’re always within arm’s length of being a part of timeless history, and we’re all probably so used to this that we take it for granted. But this moment in time is unlike anything our generation has ever witnessed. And I’m not talking about the absence of Sir Alex.
Change.
It’s a scary prospect, change. Especially when you’re sound, safe and happy with how you were before and even more so, if you are not sure if things will be as good as before. But it’s also one of the most thrilling aspects of your life.
It brings to the fore a whole new array of qualities about yourself that you had no clue about. It can be good, it can be bad. It’s unpredictable.
And therein lies the thrill. In simple terms, it’s a gamble. And your job is always to make it as intelligent a gamble as possible. And Manchester United is as good a gambler as you’d ever see.
It’s hard to choose between the Busby Babes and the Fergie Fledglings, but both of them are right up there with the greatest footballing gambles of all time, who went on to become the blinding stars that will shine forever in the footballing sky.
Trees will become extinct if you let a romantic Red let his feelings run wild with pen and paper. Then there was the ultimate human gamble in football – Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. It was a gigantic wave, a storm, a revolution, sweeping and uprooting everything on its way.
And more often than not, the mastermind of ground-breaking gambles in Manchester United’s history has been that wily old man from Govan. For all the lyrics that have been waxed about him, not enough has been said on how good a gambler he was. His unpredictability in almost everything he did was out of the world.
He saw things that normal managers, let alone normal humans, just couldn’t see. It was like he was standing on a different plane altogether, with a pair of futuristic binoculars in hand, intently peering into the footballing world from above, and madly cackling away at the simpletons who were trying to catch up to him.
He wasn’t just any gambler, he was the greatest of them all. And now he’s gone. Just like that. Forever. But not without a final sleight of hand. His final gamble.
David William Moyes.
The odds couldn’t be more stacked against a manager while succeeding someone like Ferguson at a club like Manchester United, and David Moyes has never won a single trophy or had anything to do with the Champions League. That, ladies and gentleman, is what you call a classic Ferguson Gamble.
And like always, it’s a highly intelligent one.
Here is a man who has carried a club with peanuts as their budget above richer and more popular clubs, year after year. Here is a man who has a real eye for talent and a work ethic like no other. But above all, here is a man who adores the talented youth. And quite frankly, that is the secret key to the chamber of footballing secrets, especially all the Manchester United secrets. And he has the very pedestal to rise above and walk into the exalted corridors to open that chamber: a six-year contract.
These two factors, together, might solve all the problems that appear to plague Manchester United at this moment in time.
There’s no harm in admitting the obvious and accepting it like a honest football fan – Manchester United aren’t able to attract top players any more, not in the way they used to before. And that’s okay. We’ve been here before.
Manchester United are facing foes more formidable than ever, and they themselves seem to be at their shakiest in a long long time. That too is okay. We’ve been here before as well.
Danny Welbeck of Manchester United celebrates with team mates Michael Carrick and Ryan Giggs after scoring a goal during the match between the A-League All-Stars and Manchester United at ANZ Stadium on July 20, 2013 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
And every single one of those times in the past, the answer has been one and only one. Youth. That’s not an answer every club reaches to. But that’s how Manchester United roll. And they roll pretty well. So Wayne Rooney might leave United for Chelsea (or wherever) and United might end up not signing a central midfielder after all.
Both Robin van Persie and Michael Carrick might get injured sometime this season and they might make an early group stage exit from the Champions League, possibly even end up in the Europa League, or worse, face the same fate as City. And you know what, that’s still okay.
Moyes keeps saying all the right things and I’m happy he does. He admits he has to set his trophy record straight right away and that’s true. But it’s not the end of the world if he doesn’t, certainly not his and certainly not Manchester United’s. We’ve been here before, remember?
And from here, we’ve also been at Camp Nou, where Beckham, Sheringham and Solskjaer would combine and take the team to the promised land. And the road that took them through those uncertain, thorny wilds was again, the road of youth. And this is where the intelligence in Ferguson’s gamble comes into the picture.
He might have gone, but has left the incoming manager a squad of champions. Young and hungry champions. And to cap it all, there are such luminous little lights blinking madly in the background – Januzaj, Lingard and Zaha. Throw in a bit of Michael Keane, Nick Powell and Angelo Henriquez and factor in the incoming young Fabio and you have a bunch a crazily talented youths who have what it takes to climb the ultimate summit and build their home there.
All they need is time. And that’s what Ferguson’s last gamble was all about. Moyes is ready to give them that time. Marquee signings and rampant money-spending can give you a pretty cool camp on top of that footballing summit, but Manchester United were never about camps. They want the entire summit to themselves and for their castle, something that’ll last a lifetime.
And unlike others, they have always been patient in climbing the summit so as to be able to carry the maximum supplies to last an era. And I hope that continues this time as well. In fact, I’m sure it will. It may not be this season, it might not even be next season or the season after that, but when it does happen, that’s going to be the only thing that’ll be on everybody’s lips.
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And who knows, maybe we could still find the wily old man, with his rusty futuristic binoculars, intently peering at the footballing world and cackling away like always, in years to come. It’s his final gamble after all.
