ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Manchester Utd 1 Birmingham City 0: AS HE prepared for life without Cristiano Ronaldo, Alex Ferguson would have been comforted by one great certainty. Manchester United's inspiration may have gone, but they still boasted probably the best defence in the world.

Their third successive Premier League title was based as much on 1-0 results as it was by anything achieved by the boy from Madeira.

The pre-season mantra was that Manchester United would be “hard to beat”. Burnley will still find them hard to beat at Turf Moor on Wednesday night but they will face a defence stripped of Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and probably Jonny Evans.

It will be October before Edwin van der Sar is fit again. Ferdinand suffered a strained thigh in training that will keep him out until the end of the month, while Evans, his more-than-capable deputy, came off midway through the second half with a suspected recurrence of a groin injury.

“We have been having a hard time with defensive injuries over the last two years, but people are capable of coming in for us,”

Ferguson reflected, naming Wes Brown, Irish international John O’Shea and Ritchie de Laet as possible replacements. Those three may come through against Burnley and Wigan, United’s next two opponents, but Ferguson would want as many first-choice players available when Arsenal come calling on August 29th.

Life after Ronaldo began much as Manchester United would have expected.

A dusting of magic had gone and whenever the champions were awarded a free-kick there was not that same frisson of anticipation around Old Trafford. And yet Wayne Rooney suggested the task of taking up the slack of Ronaldo’s goals is not beyond him.

Although he played slightly in his shadow, Rooney would have missed Ronaldo, not least in the minutes before kick-off when the pair would juggle footballs in the dressingroom. They were naturals, men who played the game instinctively.

“You have natural footballers, the Zidanes and the Platinis,” said the Birmingham manager, Alex McLeish, who had been given the task of marking the latter some 25 years before.

“You don’t need to coach them, you just need to guide them in certain areas. Rooney drops into the little pockets where it’s hard to pin him down. We told the defenders not to be concerned when he drops deeper. It’s when he comes forward that you have to watch him because he has a vicious shot.”

It is a long time since Ronaldo could be called a flat-track bully, but he excelled against middling teams at Old Trafford. Of the 66 goals he scored in his last three seasons, only three came against the big four clubs. Here, it was Rooney who provided the constant, sapping threat against a wonderfully disciplined Birmingham side who carried out their instructions to harry, frustrate and menace on the break almost to the letter.

But for the tips of Joe Hart’s gloves, he might have broken through when the contest was a dozen minutes old and it was his touch that gave Michael Owen his one opportunity, denied by a more substantial part of the Birmingham goalkeeper’s anatomy.

The goal, when it came, carried some fortune in that Rooney’s header struck the foot of the post and ricocheted straight back to his boots. It was the same kind of fortune the champions enjoyed when Patrice Evra, Ferguson’s one remaining first-choice defender, leapt with supreme athleticism to clear on the line from Franck Queudrue.

“I will take eight 1-0s every season,” Ferguson said. “Everybody lives on their nerves here – the staff, myself, the fans and the players, nobody gets an easy ride. We are capable of taking any game right to the wire and leaving supporters on a knife-edge.”

However, aside from a 5-1 destruction of Fulham three years ago, in which Ronaldo and Rooney shared three goals, Manchester United rarely begin with a flourish at home.

McLeish may have considered his side deserved a point but he could console himself with the thought that in the past two seasons Newcastle and Reading both drew the opening fixture at Old Trafford and found themselves relegated nine months later. Beginnings are not everything.

Guardian Service