Sir Alex’s Dash For Youth …
Did Sir Alex hang ‘For Sale’ signs around the necks of certain members of his playing pool when proclaiming next season’s dash for youth?
” We have worked hard. We are very pleased with the young players we have got,” said the manager in an interview with the Manchester Evening News. “We have good coaches and have done well to develop players in the academy such as Jonny Evans, Craig Cathcart and Darron Gibson. The three Irish boys are exceptionally good.
“We’ve also got Lee Martin at Stoke at moment. Danny Simpson is at Sunderland and Phil Bardsley is at Aston Villa. It is a good crop. Gerard Pique is in Zaragoza’s first team every week now in Spain and he has good potential. Giuseppe Rossi is at Parma and scoring goals.These are boys with potential at that age, at 19. They give us a future.”
Ferguson’s comments will be music to the ears of the players mentioned and to fans disappointed by the slow conveyor belt of talent from the youth ranks to the first team in recent years. The promotion of Wes Brown, Darren Fletcher and John O’Shea is a meagre return indeed for a club of United’s ambitions.
Sir Alex will also have delighted those supporters who take the manager at his word and wish to see greater competition for places at Old Trafford. As mentioned already within these pages, United’s first team tends to pick itself, with only Patrice Evra and perhaps Louis Saha under genuine pressure from the threat of hungry understudies.
However, those players who currently hope of first team action only as a result of an injury to an established star or a loss of form, will find little encouragement in the manager’s words.
“What we do next year is a big question mark for us,” Sir Alex added. “You can appease them by putting them on loan for a spell. But once they have had that loan period, they don’t want to be on loan forever. They want to come back and get into the first team.
“The question is, how do we view them in terms of first-team positions next season if we decided to bring them on at the same time? I think we will probably do that. “That will be a challenge for them then, but also a reminder to everyone else that there are players looking to take their position.”
Thus, the guillotine has been raised, with only the names of the under-performing players to be decided before heads roll. Ferguson has mostly identified defenders as being the best of his youth bunch which could mean an exit for Gabriel Heinze, long rumoured for the Old Trafford chop. It is unlikely that United will dismantle lightly the strongest and most experienced crop of defensive talent assembled during Sir Alex’s reign, which could mean a reprieve for Wes Brown or Mikael Silvestre, whose versatility is considered a plus by the manager.
John O’Shea’s doggedness and versatility should ensure another year but Kieran Richardson and Darren Fletcher should get out their maps of Britain and call in the estate agents. It will be hard for the manager to say goodbye to Fletcher, given the personal capital invested in the player but fan disapproval and a two year career stall mean a change of environment might be of benefit to all concerned. The likely arrival next summer of Owen Hargreaves only underlines the appeal of a transfer to all parties.
The boldness of Sir Alex’s claim to dispense with established players in favour of emerging talent, whets the appetite for the season ahead, even as United’s pursuit of glory this term gathers pace. If the manager follows though on his declaration and calls home his loan stars, United’s squad would dispense with it’s ‘Dad’s Army’ tag at a stroke and be well placed to rival Arsenal as the natural home to a new generation of the country’s finest brightest stars. AU
© Copyright: Absolutely United 2006
