If Manchester United really believe it is impossible to win all five trophies on offer this season, as Sir Alex Ferguson has just claimed, they are going a funny way about showing it.
Naturally one takes Ferguson's point about needing a certain amount of luck with injuries to attempt a clean sweep, and once the Champions League resumes in earnest it is never safe to make assumptions about domestic fixtures that might seem straightforward from a distance, though the two facts we do know are that United have the Club World Cup on the sideboard already and face Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup final next month.
Ferguson has promised to keep faith with some of his young reserves at Wembley, and doubtless he will, though he is not about to sully Manchester United traditions by sending out a team to lose a final. It is possible that Danny Welbeck and the Da Silva brothers could prove too much of a handful for Spurs in any case, though rather more probable that Ferguson will leaven his side with the experience of players such as Carlos Tevez and Michael Carrick and name a strong bench as insurance. Whatever team he chooses to put out, few considering the present league table or the evidence of recent games would put much money on Spurs beating United, and if the Carling Cup final goes to form United will find themselves with the two most improbable points of the pentagram (quintuple surely belongs in the maternity ward) in the bag by early March. The greatest is behind, as one of Ferguson's countrymen succinctly put it.
All right, the Club World Cup and the Carling Cup do not represent the absolute heights of real footballing achievement and neither are they as difficult to win as the Premier League or the Champions League. They can be tricky to get your hands on, though. No English club has won the Club World Cup before and only one team from Europe is annually invited to try, while for any number of perfectly valid reasons the Carling Cup is often treated experimentally, if not downright dismissively.
So starting with those two prizes would put United in an enviable position, given that they only missed out on a treble of the three main trophies last season because the referee in their FA Cup quarter-final against Portsmouth was absolutely diabolical. Sorry, because Sulley Muntari scored the only goal of the game at Old Trafford and Portsmouth were left with just West Brom and Cardiff to beat to lift the trophy.
United have been handed an eminently winnable fifth-round tie away to Derby so they could soon be in the FA Cup quarter-finals again, with Liverpool already out of the competition and Everton and Aston Villa drawn against each other. There are still Chelsea and Arsenal to worry about, just as in the league, yet there is no point pretending either of those teams currently poses a threat to United at their best. One supposes Arsenal, at their best, can still match just about anyone on their day, though it is becoming an article of faith rather than a conviction based on available evidence. And on the evidence available from Chelsea's recent performances at Old Trafford and Anfield, it would appear United have much less to fear this season from the team that took them all the way to penalties in Moscow last year.
In short, while a five-trophy clean sweep may still be a tall order, from this position it is not necessarily the mission impossible Ferguson is suggesting. If anyone can do it, United can, and this may be the very season. Indeed, this may be the only season, given Ferguson's age and the uncertainty that is bound to follow when he eventually steps down. A clean sweep may not be a priority for United and one can readily understand the club's reluctance to set themselves publicly such a daunting target, though increasingly it seems only Europe, or maybe the consequences at home of something that happens in Europe, can trip them up. Certainly if United were not in Europe – let's assume for a moment they are banned or have been persuaded to withdraw from the tournament to help promote the 2018 World Cup bid – they would be red-hot favourites to complete a domestic treble. Liverpool are giving them a run for their money in the league, but now Steven Gerrard is injured a huge burden is going to fall on the shoulders of Fernando Torres.
Things are less certain in Europe, that is the Champions League's great attraction. As holders United ought to be favourites, though you can never tell quite what Read Madrid or Barcelona are going to come up with, or even whether José Mourinho is about to stage another Old Trafford coup. Probably, in the end, the amount of games and the increasing weight of expectation will drag United down. That is the only sensible way to look at it. But sensible is what Liverpool do. United usually like to dream a little. Just because something has never been done before does not mean it can never be done. Ask Ferguson, who should know. "I'd be prepared to take this team anywhere at the moment," he says. "The team wants to win every game. Why should we fear playing anyone?"
Sky call time
Even though we all had such low expectations for ITV's FA Cup coverage, to adapt the late Linda Smith's memorable critique of New Labour, we have still ended up disappointed. At least Michael Grade admitted the latest shambles was inexcusable, but as the network has now managed to neutralise all the drama from an eventful third round then ruin the romance provided by a teenager scoring an extra‑time winner in a replay, heaven help them on Cup final day if the Wembley showpiece proves to be another snorefest.
Even so, there is no need for the dedicated sports network to be quite so smug. Amusing as the Sky Sports News presentation of the last day of the transfer window was, with a countdown to the deadline, bongs from Big Ben and reporters dispatched to any ludicrous location where transfer activity might conceivably be happening, the anchorman surely erred when he said: "We are going to close this window in two minutes' time." Did I miss something, or are Sky now running football as well as bringing it to our screens?
Cerebral Becks goes on
If David Beckham cannot contemplate a return to the Premier League because "his legs have gone", what does it say about the nature of Italian football when he can slot straight into Serie A? If the Italian game is not as quick as ours, does it follow that it is slow, or do we still have to say it is more cerebral? If the latter, let me be the first to congratulate Beckham, and to describe him as cerebral.
