SIR ALEX FERGUSON RISKS ALL
AT MAN UNITED BY BECOMING A
2011 VERSION OF CHELSEA’S
2004 TINKERMAN CLAUDIO RANIERI
The Weekly Sport's top soccer man FRANK WORRALL reports.
FROM September 2000 to May 2004, Chelsea FC were managed by Claudio Ranieri. The Italian was not a bad boss – he did, after all, take Chelsea into the Champions League semi-finals and finished runners-up to Arsenal in the Premier League, bought Frank Lampard and brought John Terry on through the ranks.
But the likeable Ranieri would ultimately not be remembered for those achievements when Roman Abramovich sacked him in 2004. Instead, he would for ever be dismissed in critical terms for his habit of over-rotating his squad and tactics – a failing which, in turn, earned him the well deserved sobriquet of ‘The Tinkerman’.
You just didn’t know from one week to the next what team he would pick – and neither did his squad. That led, inevitably, to problems of continuity and, unfortunately for the club, form.
Each week different players were forced to try to adapt to each other’s game. The climax, or end game, of it all, and in truth the final straw for Ranieri as far as Abramovich was concerned, came in the botched job the Italian carried out in Monaco in April 2004.
Chelsea were drawing 1-1 in the first leg of their Champions League semi final when Ranieri indulged himself in a series of substitutions and tactical changes – including playing midfielder Scott Parker at full back and midfielder Juan Veron in attack – with the result that the Blues crashed 3-1.
The Tinkerman had tinkered and lost when he should have stuck with his hand and won – especially as the French team had been struggling after having a man sent off.
Two weeks later his misery was completed when Chelsea could only draw 2-2 with Monaco at the Bridge – they were out of the Champions League when they should have been celebrating having made the final. Not long after the Tinkerman was also gone, to be replaced by Jose Mourinho and what would become an unprecedented period of success for the club.
So what is the moral of this story? Simple – learn from history, don’t make the same mistakes again. Which, to his credit, new boss Andre Villas-Boas seems to be doing. He makes minor changes, sure, but not wholesale ones – a blueprint from which Chelsea, with the nucleus of a settled side, now appear to be flourishing.
Yet 200 miles up the M1, a new Tinkerman has emerged…and in perhaps the most unlikely of forms. An old dog who seems keen to learn old tricks – yes, Sir Alex Ferguson cannot prevent himself from tinkering with his Manchester United side – just as original Tinkerman Ranieri tinkered when he was at Chelsea.
Will it end in tears for Fergie, like it did for Ranieri? Well, history has a habit of repeating itself and you can’t tell me that it is easy, even for the best players, to create new partnerships with different faces, match after match.
Look at Barcelona, the best club side in the world at the moment, and arguably the best ever. Boss Pep Guardiola rarely enforces major changes; he may rest the odd player here and there, but the spine of the team - Valdes, Pique, Iniesta and Xavi, and, of course, Messi - play week in week out, game in game out.
The continuity means they thrive: they know each other’s game inside out and they keep on winning their own Spanish League and the European Champions League.
United, on the other hand, appear to be struggling to find that continuity as Sir Alex, like Ranieri did once, indulges himself in shuffling his cards. At Liverpool last weekend, United should have been well beaten. I am sure that when Kenny Dalglish saw the team Fergie had picked – no Rooney, no Nani, no Hernandez…arguably their best three players left on the bench…he rubbed his hands in joy and pinned the team up on the dressing room wall.
‘This is how much Ferguson thinks of you,’ I can imagine him saying to wind up his men. ‘He thinks you’re that bad he can send out a team half full of reserves!’ No doubt he would also silently thank Fergie for doing his team talk for him! United were down and out at 1-0 until Fergie realised he had dropped an almighty clanger and, belatedly, brought on his big guns, with Hernandez coming to the rescue with a headed equaliser.
But then, a few days later, he makes nine changes – and sends out a much stronger team against a much weaker opposition!
But look how much-changed United struggled to gel against Otelul Galati, the Romanians who would probably end up mid-table in the Championship in
England, and needed two Rooney penalties to grind out a really tough
2-0 victory.
If United are ever going to catch up with the wonderful Barca, they need to emulate them rather than Ranieri’s confused Chelsea of 2004. At the moment Fergie can’t beat Barca, so he should join ‘em.
That means stopping the tinkering and allowing his first eleven to play together for a run of games – like Guardiola does at Barca.
Yes, even an old dog can surely learn new tricks, Sir Alex…
