Why There’s No Need To Worry When Sir Alex Rotates

Before our game against Benfica yesterday there were not have been too many Manchester United fans who would have believed that Sir Alex Ferguson – even with our big clash at home against Chelsea in his mind – would have made eight changes to our line-up last night.

Whilst we all knew that Rio Ferdinand would not be making the trip to Lisbon, few fans would have imagined that Ashley Young would have been left out of the squad last night. Many would have been surprised by Anders Lindegaard starting ahead of David De Gea last night and I don’t think too many supporters would have picked both Antonio Valencia and Darren Fletcher in their starting line-ups last night.

Fergie, like the wily old silver fox that we’ve come to love knew exactly what he was doing last night. He knew that the team last night was good enough to take at least a point (which was a great result) against a good Benfica side. Some fans may have been worried that there were so many changes for what on paper was arguably our toughest game in the group.

However when you have a squad like we do and a manager who knows (more often than not) when to rotate the squad around ahead of a big game (whether it’s at home or in Europe) then those fans that might have had doubts, needn’t have.

Whilst it’s fair to say Fletcher took time to settle, he looked solid in the second half and is still obviously recovering from the illness that set him back last season. Valencia though looked very sharp and his work-rate last night was exceptional. Aside from having a say in Ryan Giggs’ equaliser for us last night, he tracked back like a true professional and after the way he ended last season, there’s no doubt that if the Ecuadorian can stay injury-free, Sir Alex is going to have some player on his hands this season.

In goal Lindegaard was rock steady and for someone making his debut in the Champions League in the cauldron that’s the Estadio da Luz didn’t look flustered at all and seemed to revel playing in a big-game which had a big-game atmosphere to it. The Dane made several good saves and whilst he couldn’t have done anything about Oscar Cardozo’s goal did everything that was asked of him yesterday, raising his stock as a player for the club.

The Dane’s reaction to being asked whether he plans to challenge for the number one spot with De Gea by ITV’s Kelly Cates (daughter of Liverpool’s manager Kenny Dalglish) was brilliant and showed his real hunger to succeed at the club:

“What do you expect me to say to that?

“As I’ve said 1000 times before, I’m not here to pick my nose.

“I come from a small team in Norway – Aalesund – but I’m here because I want to play, not because I want to sit on the bench.”

It’s refreshing to see a young player say something ‘different’ like that and shows that they want to not just sit around at the club and get trophies and medals without really ‘earning’ them. Anders is certainly somebody who will become more popular with the fans if he continues to play well and back up his ‘talk’ and you get the sense that he wants to play as many games as possible for us.

In a way that will make no.1 De Gea work harder, knowing that if he were to go through a bad patch of form that there’s a hungry 6’4 Dane waiting in the wings eager to stake his place in our starting line-up.

The benefits of having a good squad of players is that when the opportunity comes to make changes it makes players – both regulars and squad players – work harder and clearly whilst the result was important last night, it was great to see players make their claims last night rewarding Sir Alex’s faith in them. Long may it continue!

By Adam Dennehey @ADennehey87