"All empires crumble from within." So began a piece in these pages just over a year ago, speculating on the imminent end of Sir Alex Ferguson's reign. Manchester United had just been knocked out of the European Cup by Benfica, they trailed Chelsea by 10 points in the Premiership and were less than a month away from being taken to a replay in the third round of the FA Cup by Burton Albion of the Nationwide Conference. Even United's own fans were beginning to agitate for change at the top. So I was not the only person to have got it utterly, absolutely, laughably wrong.
Last Saturday night, on the eve of his 65th birthday, Sir Alex was reflecting on the victory over Reading that had taken United six points clear of Chelsea in this season's title race. Some newspapers, he recalled, had been "suggesting I was past my sell-by date and presiding over a crumbling empire". Apparently there was a festive smile on his lips.
Being taken to task by the master of Old Trafford is not always a pleasant sensation, but this time it was almost a privilege. For if Manchester United win the Premiership this season, for the ninth time in Ferguson's 20 years at the club, it will represent the finest of all his achievements, a feat even more remarkable than that amazing period of 11 days in May 1999 when his players secured the treble.
No task in football management is harder than stripping down and rebuilding a successful team. Ferguson did it once, when he replaced the generation of Eric Cantona, Mark Hughes, Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis, Gary Pallister and Steve Bruce - his first set of title-winners - with the group based around the stars of United's successful youth team of the early 1990s. But when the time came to discard the likes of David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Phil Neville, it looked as though he would be unable to repeat the trick.
By this time last year enough cracks had appeared in United's facade to suggest that their accustomed pre-eminence was a thing of the past. As well as paving the way for the controversial takeover by the Glazer family, Ferguson's tawdry feud with the Coolmore Mafia seemed to have sapped his strength and undermined his judgment.
The untidy departures of Jaap Stam and Roy Keane suggested that pillars were being removed without being replaced. An apparently endless succession of dodgy goalkeepers had destroyed the side's defensive stability. In attack, a protracted experiment with an alien formation made it seem as though the talents of Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo were being stifled. When Gabriel Heinze missed almost an entire season through injury and Paul Scholes succumbed to an eye problem, Ferguson even seemed to have run out of his usual luck.
Now we can see that Ferguson has survived it all, and perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly the persistence of his ability to confront his rivals on at least equal terms than the fortunes of Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra, his two big purchases in last year's January sales. Neither man impressed in his first season. Evra looked a shadow of the quick-witted full-back who had reached the 2004 European Cup final with Monaco and Vidic was a ragbag of nerves and clumsiness. But Ferguson gave them time to acclimatise to the English game, and now they are making a significant contribution.
Last week Evra paid tribute to the manager's patience and to the way he encourages self-expression. "A few months ago," he said, "after a match in which I didn't take any risks in attack, Ferguson said to me, 'Pat, what did I buy you for?' I replied, 'To attack.' He said, 'So what are you doing?'" The fruit of that attitude could be seen in the Frenchman's lovely goal against Everton in November.
Once again, too, United's forwards are playing the sort of flowing football that links them to earlier generations. Prompted by the resurgent Scholes and the ageless Ryan Giggs, the young front three of Ronaldo, Rooney and Louis Saha are performing like a collective reincarnation of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, their high-speed artistry ensuring that there are no empty spaces among the 76,000 seats in the expanded Old Trafford.
People who see a lot of Ferguson report that he has never looked more relaxed. Maybe he has finally reached the sunlit uplands where experience and wisdom rule and there is no sell-by date. Perhaps, too, the Glazers and their advisers should be congratulated for their refusal to be swayed by the mood of a year ago. And those of us who are more interested in the triumph of good football than in the fulfilment of our own predictions had better shut up and join the applause.
