At times this season, Keane must have felt like a horse pulling a plough. His knees cannot take much more and nor, it seems, can his mind.His stinging attack on his colleagues’ commitment last week only echoed his comments after a particularly passive United display against Panathinaikos in the Champions’ League 18 months ago. How long can you sing the same refrain? There was just a hint that Keane’s influence is on the wane He certainly needs help in the engine room. Mark van Bommel, lined up by Arsenal as a replacement for Patrick Vieira but a former team-mate of Ruud van Nistelrooy’s at PSV Eindhoven, would be a potential candidate.A high-class defender is a more pressing priority, the most persistent rumours centring on Roberto Ayala of Valencia and Alessandro Nesta at Lazio.
Both would come with reservations; Ayala, who was desperately exposed at Milan, now looks good in a defensively minded side; Nesta might find the process of adapting from Serie A to the Premier League as taxing as Veron United do not have time on their side, for once. Signs of weakness early next season would further undermine Ferguson’s decision to stay in office, a judgement roundly applauded at the time, but not so benevolently viewed four months on.Yet exaggerating United’s ills would be as misguided as denying them. In the age of Bosman and the quick fix, maintaining continuity is a delicate art, as Wenger knows well. If Vieira is Madrid bound, Arsenal will have a Keane-sized hole to fill. “Players like Patrick have made the club their own,” says Dixon.
What the majority felt at Old Trafford was a thundering old rivalry given sharp new meaning by the antagonism of the two managers and the reality of football’s new economy. If Liverpool v United is a matter of history, geography and tribe, Arsenal v United is a clash of modern feudal warlords. But it was the smile of a man who has the aces in his hand, for the moment.. Not so much a football match as a flypast. There goes Oleg Luzhny and Igor Stepanovs, and, for the final time, Gilles Grimandi and Lee Dixon. The only problem was that Arsenal were so busy searching the skies, they forgot to look at their feet. Had Everton not run out with holiday brochures tucked under their arms, the visitors could have been so embarrassingly far ahead by half-time that not even Ars? Wenger, the man in the magic hat, as the Arsenal fans sang, could have conjured a revival
Not so much a football match as a flypast.