Source: Telegraph
Sir Alex Ferguson will be worried by flat uninspired Manchester United
After any defeat, particularly one as emphatic as that at Old Trafford against Liverpool nine days ago, you have to respond quickly – and while I don't think United started edgy or panicky, they were flat.
When a response is called for, the reaction has to be to go out and give it your best shot, to make sure that you are on fire, as you are trying to put a bad result behind you. You need to bounce back in the next game really quickly, so United should have played the way they did at Fulham in the FA Cup two weeks earlier and hammered them into submission, giving the opposition no way back.
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If anyone thought United had been poor against Liverpool then that would pale into insignificance in light of how bad they were against Fulham.
This would be the biggest concern for Sir Alex Ferguson. Chelsea's defeat went in his favour, but the concern for Ferguson would not be United's rivals, it would be the performance.
Even though Fulham's tactics were spot on, the other area of concern would be United's ill-discipline. Both Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney got frustrated, they let everything affect them, and if you are going for a championship then you cannot afford to be like that. One defeat is a blip, but after two you start to worry, and there is no doubt Ferguson will be worried.
The team have not got a game for a fortnight, his players away on international duty, so it will be hard for them although they are still in pole position in the title challenge. But the way they played in that first half would not augur well.
When you are as bad as United were on Saturday, there is sometimes nowhere for you to go in remonstrating with anybody – which is why Ferguson pulled Edwin van der Sar away from referee Phil Dowd at the final whistle. If you are looking for any attributes in a side who are going to win the championship then in those 45 minutes United had none of them. That is so unlike them.
Yet before the Liverpool game they had been as solid and reliable as anyone you have ever seen.
You could not believe how much time and space Fulham had in running at Ferguson's centre-backs, and this is so alien for anyone watching United.
This second defeat was a worse result than that against Liverpool. The result against Liverpool you could half-accept, half-understand, but to go and play badly again a week after being annihilated by Liverpool reflects an individual and collective failure.
Whether it was a lack of fight or cohesion is unimportant, it was a result that gave Liverpool hope. And the worst thing you can do in a title race is to start giving people hope. As soon as you start doing that, you never know what is going to happen when the teams come back.
I have spoken frequently about United's tremendous strength in depth, but this was the first time that their rotational policy went against them. Sometimes you simply have to go with the same team again to give individuals who had a hard time a chance to put things right.
The guys who were humiliated last week, if selected again, had a chance to go and amend that. In former times Ferguson would have gone with same XI – perhaps with a different formation.
You would also look to the manager in these circumstances to give a battle cry, a war cry, and Ferguson has been the best ever at that.
He would say at such a moment that anything less than victory is
unacceptable, and he would know that the most important thing is to get right back on track. But there is no doubt that this is more than a setback for Manchester United, it is a major setback.
