Manchester Utd 2 Tottenham 1:THE NEXT time these clubs meet will be in the League Cup final and it would be nice to believe Tottenham Hotspur will not hoist football's equivalent of the white flag as they did here. It was not the tamest surrender at Old Trafford this season but there are different ways of going out of the FA Cup and Tottenham's method was to put on their jacket and politely show themselves to the door.
It was unsatisfactory at all levels and to the irritation of their manager, Harry Redknapp, the television pundits had no intention of sugar-coating it with the usual banalities, with Teddy Sheringham questioning whether the eight-time winners had been “happy to go out” and Andy Townsend recommending that Tom Huddlestone stopped “mooching about” and watched a tape of the indefatigable Carlos Tevez to learn a thing or two.
“Absolute rubbish,” responded Redknapp, citing the fact that his young goalkeeper, Ben Alnwick, was largely untroubled in the second half. “People are just jumping on the bandwagon.”
The truth was somewhere in between. Yet the best defence lawyer in the land would struggle to find a hole in the case that says Redknapp spent so long talking about the tie being secondary to tomorrow’s league relegation battle against Stoke City that, once Roman Pavlyuchenko had headed them into the lead, his players seemed to forget that a) the FA Cup is important to Tottenham and b) Manchester United’s team-sheet was not as intimidating as usual.
A lack of gumption on Tottenham’s part was certainly to blame for the way the game fizzled out once Paul Scholes and Dimitar Berbatov had turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead although, in fairness to Redknapp, we should probably not dwell too much on the fact Alex Ferguson was missing 10 players through injury. That might constitute a crisis at another club; at Old Trafford it is just a chance to show off how many outstanding young players are waiting for their chance. In fact, it might need an epidemic before we can think of United as vulnerable.
Fabio da Silva’s debut at left-back will certainly stay clear and bright in the memory. Likewise another teenager, Daniel Welbeck, excelled on the right wing. Welbeck is 18, yet created more problems for Tottenham than Cristiano Ronaldo on the left. Which is about as good a compliment as it gets.
Ronaldo, in mitigation, was suffering from a bug but it is a fact he is no longer United’s most effective performer as a matter of routine. The accolades are more evenly spread these days and it was heartening on Saturday to hear some overdue recognition for Michael Carrick, a player who has been understated for too long.
The persistent complaint that is made about Carrick, the one that keeps him out of all the lists of Europe’s greatest players, is that he is not always to be found in the fury of the game. But there are different types of courage on a football field and Carrick’s is geared to his special talents, always wanting the ball, even in tight areas, confident enough in his own ability to find a team-mate, his philosophy being that losing possession is a sin. “He’s the one who makes Manchester United tick now,” Redknapp, the manager who gave him his debut at West Ham, volunteered.
The oddity is that Carrick can be strangely under-appreciated among the Old Trafford crowd. His name is never sung and there was even a flicker of anger when he lost control of the ball three minutes from the end. Yet Carrick has caught and overhauled Scholes as the club’s most accomplished passer of the ball and, in the process, he now has genuine credentials to be recognised, in terms of Englishmen, as the most exquisitely gifted exponent of this art since Glenn Hoddle.
Redknapp, for one, is convinced that Carrick has waited long enough for an extended run in the England side and that his inclusion could bring more out of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. “I could see him sitting in that central midfield position, if you played three in the middle, and he would be fantastic. Gerrard and Lampard would give you the energy, running forward, scoring goals. Michael would be supplying the passes – the quarter-back, if you like.”
The vision with which Carrick set up Berbatov for United’s second goal was a case in point, a demonstration of how his accuracy can turn the fortune of a game instantly. It was a goal classy in its creation and clinical in its execution and, coming from two former Tottenham players, it is fair to say the London club’s supporters will not witness many more galling moments this season.
The most disappointing aspect for Tottenham’s fans, however, was that their team was so listless, so utterly vapid, once Scholes, aided by a deflection off Huddlestone, had begun the comeback two minutes earlier. Presumably it will be a more determined Tottenham at Wembley on March 1st. But it was no surprise Redknapp was asked whether he could see United winning an unprecedented quadruple.
