SOCCER ANGLERS:If Manchester City were offering €110 million for Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand, it might seem inflated, but it might also make sense, write MICHAEL WALKER.
MANCHESTER UNITED’S numbers descend like this: 34, 27, 22. The current mark is 10. The improvement is gradual, but marked and impressive.
Chelsea’s numbers, meanwhile, ascend: 22, 24, 26. Their current mark is 12. The deterioration is gradual, but slight.
For the record Manchester City’s numbers go: 48, 44, 53. Their current number is 30. But that’s Manchester City.
We are talking goals conceded in the Premier League in the past three seasons – plus this one not long past its halfway stage. This does not feel like dry statistical analysis; what this shows is that last season City conceded more goals than United and Chelsea combined. It is already the same this season.
In this week of all weeks what that makes you think is: if City were offering €110 million for Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand, it might seem inflated, but it might also make sense.
It could be justified as intelligent and ambitious team construction. And necessary.
City already score goals, only Chelsea have more this season; what a difference the presence of Vidic and Ferdinand would make to City’s defence – and their absence to United’s.
What City’s new owners in Abu Dhabi want to do, apparently, is to alter the geography of the English and European game. But adding AC Milan’s Kaka to a squad presided over by four City managers since 2005 is not only a failure in terms of the club’s priorities, if we are to be cynical, it causes no hole elsewhere in England, particularly at Old Trafford. Buying Vidic and Ferdinand, now that would be altering the geography of football.
Alex Ferguson knows a bit about that. When he persuaded his board at Old Trafford to fork out a then-whopping (in fact still-whopping) €40 million for Ferdinand in July 2002, he knew he was not simply strengthening his defence, he was weakening Leeds United’s.
With hindsight it is easy to say that Leeds were in decline and not serious rivals, but on January 1st, 2002, Leeds were top of the Premier League and Manchester United were fifth. Leeds did tail off in the season’s second half, but Ferdinand remained a mainstay of the team.
Leeds conceded 37 goals that season as they eventually finished fifth. The next season, post-Ferdinand, they conceded 57 and finished 15th. This is known as material difference.
On a lesser scale perhaps, though not to Charlton Athletic, when Chelsea took Scott Parker to Stamford Bridge for €13 million this month five years ago, Charlton were fourth in the Premier League having just won at Goodison Park. After Parker left, Charlton won four of their next 14 games and finished seventh. Now they are bottom of the Championship and the Parker money is gone.
There is more than one side to every transfer story. City’s pursuit of Kaka troubles us morally because of the size of the numbers, and because it is a hedonistic, egotistic diversion for a club who lost 3-0 at home to Nottingham Forest in their FA Cup match.
What Mark Hughes has been saying virtually since he succeeded Sven-Goran Eriksson is that City need defenders. He got his way with Wayne Bridge – which Chelsea fans say weakens Chelsea – and there was interest in Arsenal’s Kolo Toure.
But the man Hughes has been talking about all week is Kaka.
Hughes was in his second spell as a player at Old Trafford when Ferguson broke the transfer record to bring Gary Pallister from Middlesbrough. Hughes had left by the time Ferguson broke it again for a defender when he bought Jaap Stam from PSV Eindhoven.
Ferguson has a track record, and reputation, for acquiring mercurial forwards and midfielders, but in Pallister, Stam and Ferdinand he has also broken previous fees to recruit central defenders who can lead. Steve Bruce cannot be ignored in that, nor now can Vidic.
Can Kaka, for €110 million, really do for City what Vidic, for around one-tenth of that, has done for United?
Today United go to Bolton. The last time United conceded a league goal was against Blackburn on December 3rd. Vidic was on the bench. Six league games have followed and Vidic has played in all of them. In two of them, Sunderland and Chelsea, Vidic has scored.
No wonder Ferguson was piling praise onto his Serb yesterday. He compared Vidic’s unobtrusive excellence to that of Denis Irwin’s. At a time when Ferdinand is injured and Jonny Evans, albeit with natural gravitas, is learning his trade, Vidic’s leadership has been a foundation of United’s rise. It was similar last season when, from March 1st, United went on a run of five league games without conceding once. All were won, so was the title.
Lyon were also beaten that month in the Champions League, 1-0. Another clean sheet. In 12 games to the European Cup final United kept eight clean sheets. It’s a pattern created by design.
What City are doing by comparison appears haphazard. Hughes insists he is in charge, but what if a bullish Wigan do today what Forest did a fortnight ago? What will Jesus tell Kaka to think then? Television continues to show the brilliant goal Kaka scored against United at Old Trafford in the European Cup semi-final two Aprils ago. City fans must salivate at its repeated sight: two United centre-halves colliding as Kaka eases through.
It’s just that United’s central defence that night was Wes Brown and Gabriel Heinze. Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand were missing. Someone in Abu Dhabi should be told.
It's Year Zero at Luton
ALL THE while, on another planet, life goes on. Luton Town drew 2-2 at Chester City the other night. That gave Luton their ninth draw of the season and their 30th point. Yet there they sit, bottom of League Two, the old fourth division, beside a large zero.
Financial mismanagement provoked the Football League to dock Luton 30 points before the season started. It was a severe decision, seemingly weighted to ensure Luton drop out of the league they first joined in 1897.
But now it is year zero for Mick Harford and his players and they can see third-bottom Grimsby 14 points ahead.
Luton are at Darlington today, Kaka.
Magic is relative
THE MAGIC of the FA Cup – Part 687. It returns next week with Derby hosting Nottingham Forest on Friday night, which should be worth watching. There are good ties at Hartlepool and Cardiff.
It certainly beats the Crystal Palace-Leicester City replay on Wednesday night when a dismally low 6,023 turned up.
These are not small clubs but this is midweek in January and a recession is upon us.
As for magic, let’s move on.
