da casino： Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick has started for more Premier League games for the club this season than any every player bar Robin van Persie, further cementing his status as an absolutely essential part of manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s plan and his team’s style of play and while the question of legacy rests heavily on how they seek to replace ageing stalwarts Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, finding a replacement for the England international has become a pressing concern such is their reliance on him now.
da jogodeouro： To provide a brief snapshot of how integral Carrick is to the side, he was one of only three outfield players to start both the Sunderland game in the league on the Saturday and the FA Cup replay at Stamford Bridge 48 hours later against Chelsea, alongside Chris Smalling and Antonio Valencia, while David De Gea kept goal for both fixtures. Ferguson made seven changes, not too dissimilar to the eight made by Chelsea boss Rafa Benitez between the Southampton and United game in the same space of time, though interestingly the criticism for the Scot was in short supply when compared to the Spaniard. Nevertheless, squad rotation is an essential part of the modern game, which is what makes the fact that he has started 27 of United’s 30 league encounters all the more remarkable.
It’s not like the club are short of options either, with regular midfield partner Tom Cleverley, Anderson, Ryan Giggs, Phil Jones, Paul Scholes and Darren Fletcher all available for selection at various points in time during this season injury and illness permitting. This quote from Real Madrid midfielder Xabi Alonso sums up why Carrick is regarded right at the top of the pecking order, though: “In English football sometimes it seems hard for people to rate those who instead of shining themselves make the team work as a collective. For example Michael Carrick . . . who makes those around him play.”
The 31-year-old is still prone to fluctuations in form at times, but they’ve simply not been evident at all this season where he has been consistently excellent and the best forward passer in the entire league, with 782, 110 more than the next midfielder prior to the game against Sunderland and the international break. He may struggle to impress his own game on the opposition in big games, while simply guilty of letting others pass him by, but he’s a pivotal part of this United side and in his seventh season at Old Trafford he is on the cusp of winning his fifth league title, and that can be no coincidence. They can look rudderless when he doesn’t start now and they’ve come to really rely on him this season in particular.
Age has crept up on him, though, or at least on our perception of him and he could be said to be entering the final stages of what has been an illustrious career in terms of silverware. Like all players at this stage in their career, though, a re-writing of history takes place and people start to appreciate what he is rather than focus on what he’s not a lot more than they ever did before. He’s almost universally appreciated now compared to just two years or so age when he was England’s most divisive midfielder.
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That’s a direct consequence of observers understanding that he doesn’t have long left at the top and when you cast your eye around at the talent coming through, it simply makes you long for a younger version of Carrick, just like it did when Scholes initially announced his retirement last season. You begin to wonder why you had doubted such a clearly talented player for so many years. There was definitely a hint of Ferguson standing by his man on a number of occasions (although he looked to have lost faith in him for a spell after the 2009 Champions League final defeat to Barcelona), and Carrick could be said to be repaying him now.
However, he will be 32 in July and plans need to be prepared for replacing him long-term, just as there needs to be right down the spine of the side – Carrick, Vidic (31), Ferdinand (34), Giggs (39) and Scholes (38) – will all need successors brought into the club in the near future, but Carrick is arguably the most important of all of them at the moment given how key he is to the current system and style.
This is what makes the respective departures of Paul Pogba and Ravel Morrison all the more frustrating from a United perspective. Of course, with the side cruising towards the league title and holding a 15-point lead over their main rivals, this is hardly a club in crisis or some sort of nightmare scenario by any stretch, but in three maybe four years time they may be cursing their luck just as the did when they let go of Gerard Pique and he turned out to be one of the best defenders of his generation with both Barcelona and Spain.
There’s a sense of missed opportunity regarding Pogba especially and it calls into question Ferguson’s ability to handle younger players in today’s game. The no-nonsense approach doesn’t quite work with gifted young millionaires the same way it did even ten years ago, as Wayne Rooney’s brief flirtation with a departure before the club buckled and offered him a bigger new contract highlighted in 2010.
The mantra of ‘no player is bigger than the club’ may sound good when it’s trotted out, but it’s simply not true anymore. By refusing to bow down to the demands of a precocious brat such as the newly-capped France international in his demand for more first-team football, while it proved a tough approach that hasn’t hurt the club yet, the more he continues to perform to such a high level for Juventus, the more it seems a needless piece of strong-arming to prove a point has taken place.
The best quality that Ferguson brings as a manager is his ability to reinvent his teams and rejuvenate them with fresh, young and hungry faces and it would be foolish to bet on him doing the same again to great success in the future. He’s the Madonna of football management. Losing out on Pogba is not a disaster, but it robs the club of their safety net and ensures finding a replacement for Carrick, just as much as anyone else, is one of their top priorities over the coming years.
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