SAF: Let The Fight Begin …
Telegraph: As a manager, it is one thing to win a championship it is quite another to retain it.
Since the Second World War only six men have done it: Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson, Bob Paisley, Sir Matt Busby, Stan Cullis and, er, Bob Jackson, who steered Portsmouth to the 1949 and 1950 titles before decamping to Hull.
Ferguson knows what to expect. Although Manchester United are used to teams raising their game against them, a Manchester United who are champions, provides extra incentive to opponents. United will face a sharper edge this time, although Ferguson believes the motivation will be different.
“From 1999-2001, we won the title three times in a row and the season after that was very difficult because we felt, at the time, that there was an edge with teams trying to stop us,” he said.
“But now I think teams are more interested in their own situation. There are seven or eight teams who you expect improvement from and they will not merely be interested in stopping Manchester United, they will want to do it for themselves. The Premier League is more than stopping Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal; it doesn’t come into it in the way that it did.”
With Carlos Tevez having formally completed his move from West Ham yesterday to accompany Anderson, Nani and Owen Hargreaves, this has been Manchester United’s most expensive close-season, surpassing even the £47 million outlay that brought Juan Sebastian Veron and Ruud van Nistelrooy to Old Trafford in 2001. Curiously, United struggled to find any consistency in the season that followed, although Ferguson claims he no longer feels the intense pressure that transfers bring to a manager. The failures of Mal Donaghy and Ralph Milne might have cost Ferguson his job in 1989, but even if Nani barely kicks a ball, the damage done to Manchester United will not be that great.
“There was more pressure on me when I was signing players at the start of my time here,” he said. “Before we won the championship in 1993, every player we signed caused me to be asked whether this was the final piece in the jigsaw? We signed Viv Anderson, Brian McClair, Steve Bruce and Mark Hughes and every time it was the old question - is this the final piece in the jigsaw? And that remained the same until we had won the league. After that the pressure was off.”
It is unlikely Tevez will start against Reading tomorrow as Ferguson believes he is still not fully match fit.
“It’s difficult to assess whether he will be ready for the Manchester derby [on Aug 19]. If you put someone into a derby, you want to make sure they are spot on because it is always frenetic.”
