Source: Telegraph
Carlos Tevez to take centre stage for Manchester United
No other club possesses a squad player (a great football euphemism, that) of such talent. When Rafael Benitez looks to his bench for the player to grab that crucial goal, he sees David Ngog and Nabir El Zhar; when Ferguson wants an alternative he can call on one of the best strikers in the world.
Yet now, with Manchester United's season delicately poised, Tevez is being summoned from the periphery and charged with ensuring that the run-in does not become a cave-in. This is a fortnight of great intensity for United.
Related ArticlesPires has point to proveUnited rubbish £75m Ronaldo 'bid'Ferguson gives a positive spinBerbatov out for two weeksWayne Rooney escapes further sanction for Fulham red cardManchester United looking over their shoulder as Sir Alex Ferguson rues costly dayAfter being humiliated by Liverpool and then losing to Fulham, they must beat Aston Villa at Old Trafford today. A trip to Sunderland next weekend is sandwiched by both legs of their Champions League quarter-final with Porto, and then it is Everton in the FA Cup semi-final.
Psychologically, Sunday's game is hugely important in setting up this series of games, but United will take to the field depleted. Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes and Nemanja Vidic are suspended and Dimitar Berbatov is out for two weeks with an ankle injury. That means Tevez is the only experienced striker available.
Yet it runs deeper than that: United need someone to grab the run-in by the scruff. Cristiano Ronaldo did that last season, but he has been only sporadically brilliant in a campaign blemished by petulance towards opponents, officials and, most worryingly, towards team-mates.
Perhaps his failure to secure that move to Real Madrid still gnaws at him – fresh reports suggested that a £75 million deal was being negotiated for this summer – and there has certainly been a cooling in the ardour of United's support for the winger. Compare that with the furious cries of "Ar-gen-tina" that echo round Old Trafford whenever Tevez begins his touchline warm-up.
The United support love the way Tevez blends off-the-ball industry with on-the-ball subtlety. Despite his excellence last season he has been forced to drop behind Rooney and Berbatov in the selection order. No complaints. There has been no resolution to his status beyond the summer, when his contract expires. No agitation, just the wholehearted commitment that has made him such a favourite at United.
It is that kind of attitude that will help United realign themselves after their Liverpool rattling. When talk was rife of United taking all five major titles, Ferguson tried to dampen the corrosive speculation but United became first sloppy, against Inter, and then nervy, against Liverpool.
"We've had a couple of discussions with the players while that nonsense was going on. You hope it doesn't make an impact but the best thing is the realisation that all of a sudden you're losing that nice, comfortable lead and you have to get your finger out."
No problems in that respect for Tevez, even though he goes into this afternoon's game with far from ideal preparation. He arrived in the country on Friday afternoon, jet-lagged and not a little sheepish after Argentina's astonishing 6-1 capitulation to Bolivia at high altitude. From thin oxygen and five hours out of sync, straight into the intensity of a Premier League contest.
"He's used to that," Ferguson said. "The thing I'm confident about is that he's done it many, many times. He did it for us last season actually, came back on the Friday and played on the Saturday and he was outstanding."
Ferguson knows he can rely on Tevez – trickier will be deciding on his best partner this afternoon.
"Berbatov and Rooney missing is a bad blow to us, but there's nothing we can do about it. I've got options, of course. I could play Ronaldo through the middle, I could be playing [Danny] Welbeck, I could play [Federico] Macheda, the young Italian boy, or I could play Giggs.
"I've got options and flexibility of players. We've got Giggs and Ronaldo, those types of players. The boy Macheda is developing at a great rate of speed now. He's a natural finisher and he will definitely be on the bench at least, with Welbeck."
Reaching so deep into his resources – Macheda is only 17 – will be a one-off for Ferguson. Rooney, Scholes and Vidic return for the Porto match, and while a fit Berbatov gives United a different style of play, their best attacking performance recently has been with Rooney and Tevez in tandem, when Fulham were destroyed 4-0 in the FA Cup. While it might not seem it to Ferguson, Berbatov's injury, and Tevez's subsequent elevation might have come just at the right time.
