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STEVEN HOWARDLast Updated: 11th May 2012
ALEX FERGUSON, at the venerable age of 70, faces the most monumental challenge of his trophy-strewn career.
Should Manchester City, as expected, win their first title in 44 years this Sunday, Ferguson will have to come up with the greatest master-plan of his 25 years at Old Trafford just to keep City on the radar.
Failure to do so and Roberto Mancini could well be half the way down the road towards creating football’s next dynasty.
The bottom line to all this is pretty simple — and makes desperate reading for United fans.
While Sheikh Mansour has ploughed £1BILLION into City, the Glazers have taken out half a billion just to service their original £526million loan to purchase United in 2005.
United’s latest yearly accounts revealed revenue streams had grown to a record £331m and an operating profit of £110m.
Yet almost HALF that went in paying interest on debt.
Yes, the Glazers made over £50m available to Ferguson last summer to buy David De Gea, Phil Jones and Ashley Young.
But the United boss will require a figure of almost double that to bring in new signings to bolster a club that, barring a miracle on Sunday, will complete their first campaign without a trophy for seven seasons.
WANTED ... Franck Ribery, Luka Modric, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Wesley Sneijder, Gareth BaleAnd even then, as with Samir Nasri last summer and as we are seeing with Lille’s highly-rated midfield star Eden Hazard, the players he wants may well chose City and their drop-of-a-hat £200,000-a- week wages instead.
Yes, again, a win at Sunderland on Sunday could see United end with 89 points, their third-best points tally ever and one achieved after most of a season without a defender in Nemanja Vidic as vital to them as Vincent Kompany is to City.
But that is more a sign of the declining standard of opposition in the Premier League where Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs have offered no challenge whatsoever to the Manchester clubs and where newly promoted sides Swansea and Norwich have finished comfortably in mid- table.
While City appear to be heading in only one direction, United are treading water.
Of the City starting XI that beat United 1-0 at the Etihad last week, nine were in the core 24-29 age group, where players are presumed to be at their best.
United had just two in that age bracket — Wayne Rooney and Nani.
It is in correcting this imbalance between promising young players and veterans like Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Rio Ferdinand that Ferguson’s main challenge lies.
He has to be ruthless and dispense with the services of Dimitar Berbatov, Michael Owen and Ji-Sung Park.
Anderson, as well, has never developed and is injury prone, while the enigmatic Nani continues to blow hot and cold.
Patrice Evra was exposed yet again in the Manchester derby — this time roasted and toasted by Nasri — while Fabio is being lined up for a loan spell at Benfica.
And how often does Michael Carrick hurt the opposition? He may have started 36 games this season but he has only provided four assists.
If only Ferguson had nailed down Wesley Sneijder last summer and given him the City-type money the Dutchman wanted.
There now seems little hope of that deal being revived.
As for 38-year-old Giggs and Scholes, 37, wonderful servants though they have been, how much have they really got left in the tank?
Yes, there are bright, fresh faces in De Gea, Jones, Danny Welbeck, Antonio Valencia, Chris Smalling, Tom Cleverley and Javier Hernandez, though Jones has struggled at times and Hernandez taken a step back after his debut season.
On a rough assessment, Ferguson probably needs two more full-backs, an attacking midfield player and a goalscorer seeing that, other than Rooney, only Hernandez reached double figures in the league while Welbeck, for all his ability, doesn’t quite look a 25-goals-a-season player.
And then there’s Rooney.
Unhappy to be played on his own up front as Ferguson tamely went for the draw at the Etihad, his body language seemed all wrong.
Red Devils striker Rooney looked like a man wondering where the cavalry was coming from, the man of a few seasons ago who was so concerned with the lack of big-name signings that he actually contemplated quitting the club.
Yes, finishing second with their third-highest points tally is far from a full-blown crisis as United fans will testify.
And, once again, this is a team in transition.
And didn’t United go three seasons without a title from 2003-2006 before seeing off the challenge of both
Chelsea and Arsenal to win four out of the last five and reach three Champions League finals?
This time, especially after their twin disasters in Europe, the problems would appear to go deeper.
And the biggest one is on their own doorstep.
A City victory over QPR on Sunday will give the club all the impetus they require to drive them on to even greater rewards in the Champions League.
Like Liverpool and United before them, they will continue to cherry-pick the best talent from home and abroad, find more ways round UEFA’s Fair Play Rules and get even bigger and bolder.
Ferguson has told the Glazers there is little or no value in the transfer
market. He has gone further by claiming it has become insane — and that City are largely responsible for this insanity.
Yet if Ferguson still wants to compete — and, remember, Chelsea will not be standing still, either — he will have to join in.
He would be mad not to
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