PREMIER LEAGUE:THE THING about Manchester United, to regurgitate an old quote from Roy Keane, is that this is a club where "a one-game losing run is a crisis".
That is the mindset when a team of serial winners is put together and Keane summed it up in his inimitable style when he reminisced about the United team he joined in 1993: “If you lost, nobody would speak to each other on Monday morning. Doom and gloom on the training ground, people kicking each other, rows bursting out, the manager effing and blinding, tension building up until you had the chance to go out and put it right.”
If that same sense of raw competitive spirit still exists, the only semblance of relief for Alex Ferguson’s men after Wednesday’s 1-0 defeat at Burnley is that they do not have to wait too long to get it out of their systems.
Wigan Athletic are United’s next opponents tomorrow when it would be almost inconceivable to imagine the champions being so laboured, flat and devoid of imagination as they were in midweek. The defeat smacked of a side that is awkwardly negotiating the process of reinventing itself now Cristiano Ronaldo is a bittersweet memory. The players assigned the task of filling that void, most notably Michael Owen, played in a manner that made you want to watch through your fingers.
A protector of his own such as Ferguson will cite mitigating circumstances. Brian Jensen, the Burnley goalkeeper, had one of those inspired evenings when someone could have thrown a handful of rice at him and he would have kept out every grain.
The winning goal, from the boot of Robbie Blake, was the sort of strike that makes you wonder why he has not flourished at this level on a more regular basis. And Burnley were roared on by a crowd that can do for Owen Coyle’s side what the Britannia Stadium supporters did for Stoke City last season. Jensen would later talk of shouting to the centre-half, Andre Bikey, but not being heard.
All the same, United are supposed to be beyond the stage where they can be intimidated by a loud, aggressive, partisan crowd.
Playing in front of 20,000 people in Burnley should not have disrupted them so badly that, late in the game, Ryan Giggs and Antonio Valencia could not even manage a short corner without giving away an embarrassing throw-in.
It is not often that you see a United player lack so much in confidence that he is incapable of executing a straightforward 10-yard pass, as happened to Owen shortly before he was put out of his misery by a hook from the bench in the 63rd minute. It is always telling when a player does not cleanly put his foot through the ball and Owen’s body language was reminiscent of his most trying days at Newcastle United.
Later, the stands at Turf Moor shook, literally, with schadenfreude when Giggs slipped a clever pass in behind the Burnley defence and Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov both went for the ball. They hesitated, left it to one another and suddenly realised they had made a pig’s ear of it. These two have been playing together for nearly a year now and in that time they have created how many goals directly for one another? Two.
Finding a solution to that issue could be as difficult for Ferguson as the task of bringing out some of the old Owen. “I think he’s probably in need of two or three games,” the manager said of his summer signing.
Sadly, this sounds like Fergie-speak for admitting that Owen is struggling. Ferguson does not openly criticise his players; you have to read between the lines. A goal might retrieve some of Owen’s lost confidence but, then again, the next miss might just shatter it. United’s season could depend on which comes first.
