FOR Manchester United another successful season beckons, for Newcastle United the defence rests. Yesterday's overture offered Old Trafford strong reminders of how the championship was regained, and St James' Park uncomfortable memories of how it was lost.
More than 45,000 Newcastle supporters thronged Wembley in eager anticipation of seeing Alan Shearer throw down a £15 million gauntlet that would leave Manchester United numbed with self-doubt, Double or no Double. In the event Newcastle were, for the most part, all fingers and thumbs and Alex Ferguson's team won the most passionate FA Charity Shield match in living memory by the second-biggest margin since the occasion moved to the stadium 22 years ago.
Afterwards Kevin Keegan offered no excuses for a Newcastle performance which fell way below last season's high standards. "Manchester United's 4-0 win was about right," he confessed. "There was an enormous gulf between the two sides today. Surely we can't be that bad again.
"We only came here by invitation because Manchester United had won everything. Now I wish they'd invited somebody else."
While Shearer, closely watched by May and poorly supplied with passes and crosses throughout, struggled to make an impact, Manchester United consistently punished the gaps left by inept Newcastle defending. The command of Eric Cantona, apart from one dark descent into the Frenchman's recent past, was imperious and David Beckham's influence on the match can only have impressed the watching England coach, Glenn Hoddle.
Two goals in six minutes left Keegan's side chasing the match by half-time. Two more, scored in the space of three minutes towards the end, left Newcastle to ponder the uncomfortable truth that it will take more than the magpie's eye of Sir John Hall to bring the league title to Tyneside for the first time in 70 years. Only Nottingham Forest, who beat Ipswich 5-0 in 1978, have won the Shield more emphatically at Wembley.
At least yesterday's events will have reminded Newcastle that the championship is seldom won when goals are given away so freely. Keegan's defence played more in the spirit of Green Shield than Charity Shield.
Fortunately for Cantona the referee, Paul Durkin, was charity personified. Otherwise the man who has taken over from Steve Bruce as Manchester United's captain might have been sent off in the 65th minute.
Since completing the eight-month ban imposed by the FA for the assault on an Crystal Palace fan Cantona has been a model of self-control. Last season, having returned to the United side at the beginning of October, he was only cautioned once.
All the more surprising, therefore, that he should suddenly seize Phillipe Albert, Newcastle's Belgian defender, by the scruff of the neck and throw him to the ground like a sack of pommes de terre. Albert had begun to remonstrate with Gary Neville, who had just fouled him, when Cantona intervened.
Given the spirit of the occasion Durkin was probably correct to show Cantona yellow rather than red. But the Frenchman was lucky all the same. Keegan, when playing for Liverpool, had been dismissed for less, and banned for six weeks, after a spat with Leeds United's Billy Bremner during Wembley's first Charity Shield game in 1974.
Otherwise Cantona was quite superb, orchestrating Newcastle's destruction as Lee, Batty, and Beardsley were out-manoeuvred to the point of dizziness by their opponents' kaleidoscopic patterns of passing and movement.
Beckham, so much more effective when moving inside from the right wing, sent in Cantona to slide the ball past Srnicek after 24 minutes. On the half-hour, Beckham gathered a back-heeled flick from Cantona before cent ring for Butt to head in the second. Butt later went off with a concussion apparently shared by the opposing defence.
At least Newcastle established an attacking presence in the second half once Ginola began to roam and Asprilla had replaced a labouring Beardsley to give Shearer and Ferdinand more immediate support. But Schmeichel was seldom troubled and with two of Ferguson's summer signings, Karel Poborsky and Jordi Cruyff, now augmenting their attack the champions simply mopped up.
In the 85th minute, Cantona's pass found Beckham striding into the Newcastle half alone and onside. A lob over the advancing Srnicek added a third for Manchester United. Two minutes later Giggs rolled a free kick square for Keane to score an emphatic fourth.
"We've got to defend as well as score goals," said Shearer, who had failed to hit the target, "and we didn't even do that today."
"Poborsky and Cruyff showed that you don't have to pay exorbitant prices to get brilliant value," said Ferguson, a little mischievously.
