Ferguson hailed as the new Tinkerman of football
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man utd vs leeds or man utd vs liverpool or man utd vs man city???which is bigger??
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In Sg, probably Utd vs Pool.
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yea
even bigger than mlysia vs sg
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man utd vs liverpool, this one is much bigger for me.
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under current form, how can playing against pool be even considered big??
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which is the biggest derbies in the whole world? RM vs barcelona I suppose?
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tt is not a derby my fren. barcelona in catalonia , madrid is well madrid..
u trying to say manchester united and chelsea is derby?
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Man United versus Man City. Both are Manchester loggerheads. Somemore, the woe has been deepened since Tevez joined Man City from Man U after his loan contract in Man U had ended.
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OT: How about Celtic and Rangers.
Both Scottish and Spanish League seem to be boring for the past years, always see Celtic and Rangers, Barcelona and RM fighting for the domestic glories. This is not good anyway.
For Serie A, one-sided competition set up by Inter Milan. No team can match with Inter Milan currently.
But for Ligue A, Lyon performance is from bad from worse after claiming 7th concentive title 2 seasons ago. Furthermore, Beneza, Coupet and Juninho left the club. In the past, it was one sided for Lyon. But now, Bordeux which is new defending champions. It is currently in UCL last 16 and elads the 2nd placed team by more than 5 points.
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Manchester United's manager is ready to field a different side for the 99th consecutive game – with rather more success than Ranieri or Benítez
Sir Alex Ferguson will not be able to resist fielding a different Manchester United side for a century of successive matches. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters
When Sir Alex Ferguson was asked recently about the team he was planning to play in the next match he leant back in his chair and announced to the assembled journalists that if anyone predicted his side accurately he would pay for them to have a weekend in Loch Lomond before adding, Fergie being Fergie, that he would make sure "the midges were out". The prize, as you can imagine, went unclaimed. It has become football's equivalent of nailing a jelly to the wall and tomorrow, when Wigan Athletic visit Old Trafford, we can expect it to be the 99th consecutive game in which the Manchester United manager has not kept the same side.
Another manager would have been rumbled by now but Ferguson has managed to put together one of the more remarkable runs of modern-day football almost under the radar and without any of the scrutiny that plagued Rafael Benítez when he did the same thing three years ago or, before that, the misgivings that surrounded Claudio Ranieri's judgment during his time at Chelsea.
The critique of Ranieri's methods often bordered on derision and when Benítez finally sent out an unchanged team it was tempting to conclude that the decision owed partly to him trying to appease a hostile media. Ferguson, in stark contrast, is not facing any calls to abandon the habit and revert to something more orthodox and on Sunday, when Leeds United are the opponents in the FA Cup, we can safely assume the run will reach 100 and counting. As the man himself says: "The days when Liverpool won the league only using 14 players are no longer possible – nobody even thinks about that now."
It has become a demonstration in how the oldest manager in the business has not only moved with the times but managed to stay in front of his contemporaries. Ferguson learned from the Champions League in 1993-94 that the same players could not be used in all competitions and it was from that point onwards that he started introducing the younger members of his squad in the League Cup and some European matches, gathering momentum to a point now when he has not named the same starting XI since the final weeks of the 2007-08 season.
Yes, Ferguson is helped by having a bloated squad after some hard and sustained spending but he is also, undeniably, the doyen of rotation and, in another sense, a trend-setter when you consider the number of managers who have tried to copy the same methods.
At the halfway point of their season, the United manager has already used 30 players, acting on a combination of computer analysis as well as his own judgment to work out when players need to be rested and look for the first tell-tale signs of fatigue.
A decade ago, the concept of playing, and sticking to, a regular team was so ingrained on the football world that the critics would have solemnly dismissed such methods as a recipe for disaster. Now it can be described as flexibility, or ingenuity, or simply being one step ahead of the rest. "The idea is to get everyone making a contribution," is Ferguson's take. "You might get some players who you would not say are automatic to play but they know that, come the end of the season, they can look back and say they contributed. The modern-day game is all about a squad."
Ferguson spent long parts of his press conference today praising his squad for the way, in his opinion, they had managed to cope since Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Real Madrid. The team, he felt, had become too reliant on Ronaldo's goals and at the start of the season he made a point of informing his players that, without their star performer, it would be more of a squad responsibility now than it had ever been.
United have had to contend with considerable injury problems but, even so, Ferguson has manufactured it so that only eight players – Ryan Giggs, Dimitar Berbatov, Michael Carrick, John O'Shea, Antonio Valencia, Wayne Rooney, Darren Fletcher and Patrice Evra – have started 10 or more of their 19 league games.
Giggs might be on that list but, a month into his 37th year, the club's longest‑serving player is increasingly being used with strategic care. The same applies to United's oldest player, Edwin van der Sar, and the club's other thirty-somethings, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and, newly, Rio Ferdinand. Van der Sar, to cite one example, has sat out every League Cup tie since the final against Wigan in February 2006. In the last international break, he and Giggs were both given time off to take their families on holiday to Dubai.
The idea, according to Ferguson, is that his players are "fresh" for the business end of the season and, by asking them to share the load and repeating the process every week, a culture has developed in the dressing room whereby they have come to expect it, and accept it is the best strategy.
Last season United played more games (66 in 290 days) than any other campaign in their history. Only once, when Liverpool got through 67 in 1983-84, has an English team shoehorned more matches into a single season. Another successful campaign for United would mean playing a similar amount this season and that is why Ferguson will continue to rotate more than a fairground ride.
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Alex got players to tinker.
Ah Ben realised that he bought too many lousy players and kicked away good utility players.
When he fielded his lousy players, he get defeats and undevoted display.
Now, he is more or less "enjoying" the effect of his player selection.
More players will clear house next week for chances to play in world cup.
Even Torres is awaken to act from his blind loyalty to Ah Ben.