• Ferguson believes midfielder can have major influence on team
• ‘He denies it but he has always had slow starts to a season’

Sir Alex Ferguson believes Michael Carrick holds the key to Manchester United’s forthcoming season.

Although the Manchester United manager confirmed an interest in Robin van Persie after arriving in Cape Town on Friday, most United supporters believe their midfield is most in need of strengthening.

Ferguson does not disagree with that. However, the Scot believes that in Carrick he has one of the most effective players in the Premier League.

Japan’s Shinji Kagawa has arrived from Borussia Dortmund and more signings are expected to follow before the season starts, but Ferguson is hopeful that the 30-year-old former West Ham and Tottenham midfielder can be influential.

“Carrick is the key to it,” he said. “He denies it but he has always had slow starts [to a season]. By the time he gets to December he starts playing consistently well and he had a really good end to the season last year.

“If you look at the central midfielders in the Premier League – [Luka] Modric, Yaya Touré and [Steven] Gerrard, depending on where you play him – he can match up against any of them in terms of quality.

“He can read the game and also play in front of the back four. In the modern game you don’t need tacklers the way you used to. It’s about anticipation and reading the game.”

Undoubtedly deadly, inventive strikers, the pair have matching styles and what Manchester United need above all next season is a driving force in midfield

For a lethal cocktail of terrified defenders, sublime football and deadly finishing a Robin van Persie-Wayne Rooney combination would appear difficult to trump. But Sir Alex Ferguson’s proposed acquisition of the Arsenal striker throws up a reservation: with the pair’s similar styles, and Manchester United’s need for a dominant midfielder, should a sizeable slice of the budget go on a player who is nearly 29, with no sell-on value and who has just one injury-free, prolific goalscoring season behind him?

As United enter the bidding for Van Persie the word from the Emirates is that Ferguson’s initial offer for him falls well short of Arsène Wenger’s £20m-plus valuation of a player with one year left on his contract. Now we will see how serious the Scot is in his pursuit of the Dutchman.

In the manager’s perfect scenario Van Persie would help sweep United beyond Manchester City and Chelsea to a 20th championship while also offering variation in the Champions League, where the 2008 and 1999 victors failed to progress beyond Christmas last season.

Ferguson often lined United up in a 4-4-1-1 formation in the last domestic campaign, with Rooney in the hole. In Europe the England striker was usually played at the head of the manager’s preferred 4-5-1.

The temptation to link RVP, the Professional Footballers’ Association and Football Writers’ player of the year, with Rooney and watch defences shredded and the goals pile up can be understood.

The Dutchman’s transfer would also allow Ferguson to harness Rooney, who turns 27 in October and ought to be entering the honeyed years of his career. Having Van Persie, who scored 37 goals last season, would allow United to rest the Liverpudlian more and help take the weight off the forward who managed 27 Premier League goals in that previous campaign, while Javier Hernández scored 10, Danny Welbeck nine.

The question some United supporters may ask, though, is if the acquisition of Van Persie should be the priority. Especially as the Old Trafford war chest is reduced in these days before the Glazers’ cash-raising flotation of the club on the New York Stock Exchange.

United require a general who can rule midfield, a driving force who is as comfortable repelling incoming artillery as he is plotting and leading the charge at the opposition. There is a case to be made that Van Persie is the closest clone to Rooney there is. Not an exact replica, by any means. But the Arsenal man has proved he can score as heavily as his proposed new team-mate. And Van Persie possesses the schemer’s brain and vision that has made Rooney the main man for United and England. Each can play alone in attack, each likes to drop off: so, would they work together?

The joke on Twitter was that Ferguson’s proposed formation should be called “the polo”, because of the vacuum in central midfield. Where Roy Keane used to rule, Paul Scholes is a denuded force and Anderson is yet to convince, there is now a gaping hole surrounded by talent out wide – Nani, Ashley Young, and Antonio Valencia – and in attack: Rooney, Van Persie (if he arrives), Shinji Kagawa, Welbeck, Hernández and Dimitar Berbatov.

A slight exaggeration maybe, but you can see the United fans’ concern. However, a prevailing caveat with Ferguson is that he is a master of disinformation, a required ability in the transfer silly season. Despite hinting there may be one only more signing this summer, he has targets for midfield. São Paulo’s Lucas Moura is thought to be one. Yet after the Brazilian club’s claim that United’s offer of €35m (£27.2m) is too low, an improved bid of more than £30m from Ferguson for an unproven 19-year-old appears unlikely.

If Van Persie does arrive the finances left available to Ferguson mean he may have to conjure a rabbit to solve his conundrum in central midfield. As with Laurent Blanc, Henrik Larsson and Michael Owen, Ferguson has shown over the years his liking for the counter-instinctive, left-field signing and he may well have another incoming before 1 September.

Otherwise the hope for United fans is that if Van Persie proves the end of United’s business in this window, his acquisition proves to be more of a Larsson than a Juan Verón.

Real Madrid legends vs Manchester United legends

Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 The annual Corazon charity match got off to a flyer with Fernando Morientes scoring on 9, Lee Sharpe equalising before Luis Figo rolled back the years with a golazo for 2-1.
3-1 Fernando Redondo
3-2 Teddy Sheringham

• Manchester United manager suffered minor health scare
• Whelan says Ferguson is ‘best manager ever’

Sir Alex Ferguson will retire “after next season” due to health concerns, according to Dave Whelan, the Wigan Athletic chairman.

Whelan, who is a close friend of the Manchester United manager, told ESPN: “After next season, Sir Alex will call it a day. The pressure is telling, especially when you are at the top for so long. The older you get the harder it is to cope with all that pressure, and eventually it will affect you. Sir Alex is resilient and I know he will want to carry on until he drops, and I respect what he has achieved as everyone does.”

Last Friday Ferguson suffered a minor health scare when he was taken to a Glasgow hospital after suffering a nosebleed that would not stop. Whelan added: “I am sure his intention was to carry on for two or three, maybe even more years, but he has had a little scare in the last week or so and that tells me he will think very hard, and realise there is no point trying to carry on for another five years and take the risk.”

Whelan also paid tribute to Ferguson’s legacy. “I would say he is the best manager that there has ever been, and if and when he does pack it in, he will be an enormous loss to the game, that’s for sure,” said Whelan. “The way he has had such unparalleled success, the way he knows how to choose the right players and then get even more out of them, that makes him the best manager ever, the best we have ever seen.”

• Lille playmaker to make final decision after England friendly
• ‘We are no longer in the negotiation stage,’ says agent

Eden Hazard’s agent claims an agreement has been reached with all parties interested in the Belgium international and said the player will make a final decision on his future after the forthcoming international friendlies.

The 21-year-old Lille playmaker is one of Europe’s hottest properties and he has been closely linked with a summer transfer to Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea.

The Lille managing director, Fréderic Paquet, said this week that he believed there were four clubs leading the chase for Hazard but he did not know where the player would be moving to.

Hazard’s agent, John Bico, says terms have already been agreed with all suitors. “We are no longer in the negotiations stage,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “We have reached agreement with all parties. There will be no higher bid.

“Eden has already said he wants it to be fixed before 2 June. He will decide after the games against Montenegro and England, then go on holiday with peace of mind.”

Belgium play Montenegro in Brussels on Friday and then take on England at Wembley on 2 June.

Today’s bunkum’s name is its name

South of the border, west of the Sun, there is a little log cabin made of Norwegian wood. Here lived the Mill’s beloved aunt, Madame Sosostris. It was to this beloved aunt that the Mill would be sent when the beloved parents would spend their beloved summers swanning around their beloved eastern shores of Lake Teletskoye, chinwagging with the beloved Altay people about the mating sounds of the local brand of beloved wild goat. It was in those annual thermogenic three months, under the great glazzballs of Madame Sosostris, that the Mill perchanced upon its powers of precognition, power that it now focuses fully on football and transfers to which, dear reader, we shall now turn.

Sir Alex Ferguson is going to continue with his stated on-the-record policy of only ever investing in youth by sending £12m spondulicks to Everton’s current account in exchange for the 27-year-old fresh and fledgling full-back that is Leighton Baines. Kids these days are so nice and polite and shy and reserved and respectful and Baines is no different, which means he won’t have the temerity to hand in a transfer request but will instead stand patiently in the corner, hands behind his back, while the Toffees’ No1 suit slugs it out with his Manchester United equivalent over the deal. That £12m will then soon be squandered by Everton manager David Moyes on The Andrea True Connection’s biggest fans, Landon Donovan and Steven Pienaar while Ferguson will balance the books and bench by ridding Old Trafford of Anderson.

Good news for Arsenal fans. The significant improvements in Arsène Wenger’s side without Nicklas Bendtner are set to continue apace now that the so-called striker is definitely, positively, absolutely, categorically, youcanbelieveusonthisone, 173% certain not to return to the Emirates once his holidays in Poland and Ukraine are done. The Danish Under-17 player of the Year for 2004 will instead be operating his jewellery business from the city of Dortmund, where he will no doubt be attending the Sparkassen chess meeting which has been held in the city since 1973.

Also receiving a tin of Roses, a hastily scribbled card and a finger pointing in the direction of the Arsenal exit sign are the Carling Cup goalscoring sensation duo of Marouane Chamakh and Carlos Vela, the comedy goalkeeping pair Manuel Almunia and Lukasz Fabianski, and Denílson. With all those lads decamped elsewhere, there will be plenty of locker space in the Arsenal dressing room and on the substitute bench, and Wenger plans to fill the gaps with Blackburn’s serial seven-goal-assister Junior Hoilett and Toulouse’s Etienne Capoue.

After West Ham were kind enough to offer Ricardo Vaz Tê a route out of Yorkshire and back to civilization in the south, the striker-come-winger-come-haircut will do the honourable thing and shove two giant fingers under the noses of the east London club and stalk off in the direction of Portugal but only “if something came up”. Other than that he wouldn’t even dare to dream of such a move because, you know, he is “happy at West Ham.” Happy like the way the Mill is when people shove their sour sock-smelling armpits in its face first thing in the morning on an overflowing Tube. Big Sam will replace Vaz Tê with Granada’s Dani Benítez – “Dani would love to join a Premier League club,” yodelled his Mr 15% – but the Hammers face stiff competition from Southampton and West Bromwich Albion.

And finally, Gareth Bale is not … zzzzzzz. Eden Hazard might … zzzzzzz. Edin Dzeko wants to … zzzzzzz. Oh, and Matt Jarvis is off to Udinese. No really. Matt. Jarvis.

• ‘I also made mistakes,’ says Manchester United legend
• De Gea should ignore comparisons and ‘play his own game’

Edwin van der Sar hopes the repeated comparisons to his own Manchester United career do not become too much of a burden for David de Gea.

After a difficult start at United, De Gea just about ended on the positive side of the ledger, even though he was not able to crown his debut campaign with a Premier League title.

Sir Alex Ferguson is optimistic the 21-year-old will benefit from last season’s experiences. He is clearly on the radar of Spain’s coach, Vicente del Bosque, who has called De Gea into the national squad for the first time for the Euro 2012 warm-up matches against Serbia and South Korea.

That selection may be more due to the absence of Victor Valdés, whose Barcelona side take on Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey this weekend, and De Gea is far more likely to spend his summer on Olympic duty. Whether that affects his availability for United’s Premier League opening game in August remains to be seen.

Van der Sar is hoping De Gea can hit the ground running and not be too bothered by talk of those who have gone before.

“Maybe it was hard to follow in my footsteps,” Van der Sar said. “It can happen. People got compared to Peter Schmeichel, now maybe it’s me. De Gea has to ignore that and just play his own game.

“Eric Steele, the goalkeeping coach, and the manager will both help him and hopefully next season he will be ready from the start.”

Van der Sar does not view De Gea’s individual mistakes as being a significant problem and he assumes United did all the background checks on De Gea before spending £18m to sign him from Atlético Madrid last summer so the physical aspect should not be a problem.

“He did get criticism last season but I made mistakes at Ajax when I was young, and also at Juventus and United,” Van der Sar said. “The main thing is how you recover in the next game, or the game itself. He did that. He became more important as the season went on and made good saves. I am sure United knew all [about him] when they signed him, so would have been aware of what to expect.”

Van der Sar, who won four league titles during his spell at Old Trafford, watched the dramatic final day of the season unfold at home. Like most observers of a United persuasion, he was left shattered by Manchester City’s injury-time triumph.

“While I don’t think they anticipated becoming champions, the disappointment at those final two or three minutes would have been great,” he said.

“If you look at it, they did quite well. They got more points than last year and kept a lot of clean sheets, even with Nemanja Vidic out for so long. To lose it in the last seconds must have hurt so much. I remember a couple of years ago we seemed to have a run of games where we beat them in the last minute. They just got a very big one back.”

Manchester City Vs Manchester United 30 April 2012 l Etihad Stadium

Manchester City Vs Manchester United 30 April 2012 l Etihad Stadium