Sir Alex Ferguson is confident his chief goalscorer will not be off to Real Madrid, but knows his team face a much improved Spurs today
Cristiano Ronaldo goes into today's fourth-round FA Cup tie with Tottenham as the Premier League's top scorer on 17, with Manchester United's manager admitting he had no idea he would be getting such an adept finisher when he scouted the Sporting Lisbon winger to fill the vacancy left by David Beckham. 'You could say the goals are a bonus,' Sir Alex Ferguson says. 'I signed him as a winger, pure and simple. I didn't spot his goalscoring potential at all.
Ronaldo has 23 goals in all competitions so far this season, matching his total for the whole of last season, though Ferguson is less surprised about that. 'You could say I'm pleasantly surprised, but after what we have already seen it is not a total surprise,' the manager says. 'He's a good finisher, with all the quickness and bravery a striker needs, and he's at an age where he is still improving. He loves the game and he loves scoring goals. Every kid does. He found out he could score goals - we didn't demand that of him. It was a natural progression. I did set him the challenge of scoring more than he did last season, but I won't be revising the target. He's achieving plenty for us at the moment so we'll just let him carry on.'
Ferguson is unconcerned by the stories emanating from Spain about the amount of money Real Madrid may be about to offer for Ronaldo, or from Portugal where the player's mother seems to have been recruited to plead the Bernabéu club's case. 'We haven't spoken to him about Real Madrid,' Ferguson says. 'There's no need, we know he's happy here. He says his mother never spoke to anyone in any case. That story is nonsense.'
United are top of the table and still in the Cup and the Champions League, so it must be time for thoughts to turn to the Treble. 'It is still achievable,' Ferguson says, declining to bat away the question as expected. 'We could have done it last year with a stronger squad, but we lost Gary Neville, Mikaël Silvestre, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic at bad times. That's the key. In 1999 only Henning Berg was missing through injury. Every other player at the club was fit, incredibly. You can't bank on your luck lasting, but I do think we are stronger this year. December always drains you, but looking at our performances in the last 20 minutes of our last three games I've seen proof that this is a powerful team.'
United managed to watch Spurs' midweek victory over Arsenal during their warm-weather training break in Dubai and Ferguson was impressed. 'Defensively they seem much tighter than they were. Juande Ramos seems to have made them more compact,' he says. 'It was a great win over Arsenal in the Carling Cup, but I thought their performance in the League game they lost at Arsenal just before Christmas was just as good. They were by far the better team that day. They would have won but for the penalty miss.'
That was an assessment many Spurs fans agreed with as their team endured a 20th game without victory against their local rivals. Game 21 was a draw in the first leg of their semi-final, but the win when it came was one to savour. The White Hart Lane scoreboard stayed lit long after full time on Tuesday night, with 'Tottenham 5 Arsenal 1' beaming into the north London night. Earlier that evening the fans had sung of 'Juande Ramos' blue-and-white army'. A new manager had not just won a place in the League Cup final, he was winning over a club.