There have been many versions of precisely what Roy Keane said
in his infamous and never-broadcast interview with Manchester United's in-house
television station that went under the name of Play the Pundit.
Recorded four years ago after a 4-1 defeat at Middlesbrough, the
Irishman is said to have lambasted Rio Ferdinand's repeated
defensive errors and questioned the ability of men such as Alan
Smith, Kieran Richardson and Liam Miller, not that it prevented him
signing the last two when manager of Sunderland. He is also
supposed to have said: "I don't know why people in Scotland rave
about Darren Fletcher."
If this were true, the unforgiving Irishman displayed a rare
lack of perception. A few days after the broadcast was pulled by
MUTV and Keane's fate at Old Trafford was settled, United faced a
Chelsea side that under José Mourinho had taken 31 points from 33
and almost wrapped up the championship by the beginning of
November. United won 1-0, a victory sealed by a header from
Fletcher and, as he walked off, Sir Alex Ferguson gave a bow to the
Stretford End, a signal that even in the deepest adversity he could
still conjure a few tricks, that his regime was not dying.
Ferguson remarked that now he rarely looks at Scotland for
potential talent. The boy from Dalkeith, on the road south from
Edinburgh, was an exception. In 2005 Fletcher's inclusion was seen
as stopgap; now his selection for this afternoon's encounter at
Stamford Bridge is almost automatic, despite a chipped ankle bone
that means he cannot kick a ball without discomfort.
"There are two or three of this squad who would always expect to
play in a big game and Darren is one of them," Ferguson said this
week. "He is a big-game player and has proved that time and time
again. It took a long time for the public and the press to
acknowledge that but we knew what his impact was going to be."
It took Ferguson a while. Fletcher admitted he spent the summer
of 2008 wondering why he had started only five
Premier League games and asking himself whether he would
be joining Miller and Richardson on the road out of Old Trafford.
This morning he appears a certainty in a midfield full of question
marks.
"You would have to have played the game or played alongside him
to realise how good Darren Fletcher is. He is not a footballer who
grabs headlines just as Denis Irwin wasn't," said Paddy Crerand,
who formed part of the Manchester United midfield that swept to the
1968 European Cup. "But they were both indispensable.
"I first came across Darren when he was playing for United at
under-15 level and it was obvious how good he was going to be. But
whether it was because of injury or because he was never a glamour
player, the recognition was slow to come. But in the last couple of
years I have lost count of the number of Manchester United fans who
have come up to me and said that Fletcher is the most important
midfielder at the club.
"You look at the big matches he has turned. It is not just the
Chelsea game, it was the Manchester derby [in which Fletcher scored
twice] and the 4-0 win over Arsenal in the FA Cup. He is a very
intelligent player, as clever as Paul Scholes, but that cleverness
is not so obvious from the stands. United will need him at Stamford
Bridge because to me that Chelsea midfield is formidable and I said
back in August that anyone who finishes above them will win the
title."
As he prepared for a journey to a ground where he has not won
since April 2002, Ferguson talked almost nostalgically of the days
when he would roll out Keane, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Scholes
and maybe Nicky Butt and have in front of him the best midfield in
the country and perhaps the world – for game after game.
"We can't do that now, we have to rotate the team," said
Ferguson. "Every Manchester United game is harder than anyone
else's. Everyone lifts their performance against us and the pace is
incredible, so you cannot play the same players all the time and
you have to think of the make-up of these footballers as well.
"Ten years ago Keane, Beckham, Giggs were young, fresh and
determined and they could run all day. Scholes was a different type
of player of course. They were blessed with these abilities but we
don't have those players any more."
Replacing that quintet has been one of Ferguson's most
persistent stumbling blocks, encompassing the expensive failed
experiment with Juan Sebastián Verón to the duds that were
Kleberson and Eric Djemba-Djemba. Ferguson has an array of players
– Nani, Anderson, Antonio Valencia, Michael Carrick and Owen
Hargreaves – who cost £16m-£18m each and who collectively have made
little decisive contribution to United's three successive
championships that were won by Cristiano Ronaldo's brilliance,
Wayne Rooney's work-rate and a beautifully-drilled defence that now
is showing signs of fatigue.
Fifteen years after Scholes and Giggs first played together they
are still vital cogs in Ferguson's machine. It is like going to
Newlands and seeing Graham Gooch and Michael Atherton open the
batting for England in Cape Town this winter – wonderful but
slightly worrying.