Sir Alex Ferguson is confident his
chief goalscorer will not be off to Real Madrid, but knows his team
face a much improved Spurs today
Cristiano Ronaldo goes into today's fourth-round FA Cup tie with
Tottenham as the Premier League's top scorer on 17, with Manchester
United's manager admitting he had no idea he would be getting such
an adept finisher when he scouted the Sporting Lisbon winger to
fill the vacancy left by David Beckham. 'You could say the goals
are a bonus,' Sir Alex Ferguson says. 'I signed him as a winger,
pure and simple. I didn't spot his goalscoring potential at
all.
Ronaldo has 23 goals in all competitions so far this season,
matching his total for the whole of last season, though Ferguson is
less surprised about that. 'You could say I'm pleasantly surprised,
but after what we have already seen it is not a total surprise,'
the manager says. 'He's a good finisher, with all the quickness and
bravery a striker needs, and he's at an age where he is still
improving. He loves the game and he loves scoring goals. Every kid
does. He found out he could score goals - we didn't demand that of
him. It was a natural progression. I did set him the challenge of
scoring more than he did last season, but I won't be revising the
target. He's achieving plenty for us at the moment so we'll just
let him carry on.'
Ferguson is unconcerned by the stories emanating from Spain about
the amount of money Real Madrid may be about to offer for Ronaldo,
or from Portugal where the player's mother seems to have been
recruited to plead the Bernabéu club's case. 'We haven't spoken to
him about Real Madrid,' Ferguson says. 'There's no need, we know
he's happy here. He says his mother never spoke to anyone in any
case. That story is nonsense.'
United are top of the table and still in the Cup and the Champions
League, so it must be time for thoughts to turn to the Treble. 'It
is still achievable,' Ferguson says, declining to bat away the
question as expected. 'We could have done it last year with a
stronger squad, but we lost Gary Neville, Mikaël Silvestre, Rio
Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic at bad times. That's the key. In 1999
only Henning Berg was missing through injury. Every other player at
the club was fit, incredibly. You can't bank on your luck lasting,
but I do think we are stronger this year. December always drains
you, but looking at our performances in the last 20 minutes of our
last three games I've seen proof that this is a powerful
team.'
United managed to watch Spurs' midweek victory over Arsenal during
their warm-weather training break in Dubai and Ferguson was
impressed. 'Defensively they seem much tighter than they were.
Juande Ramos seems to have made them more compact,' he says. 'It
was a great win over Arsenal in the Carling Cup, but I thought
their performance in the League game they lost at Arsenal just
before Christmas was just as good. They were by far the better team
that day. They would have won but for the penalty miss.'
That was an assessment many Spurs fans agreed with as their team
endured a 20th game without victory against their local rivals.
Game 21 was a draw in the first leg of their semi-final, but the
win when it came was one to savour. The White Hart Lane scoreboard
stayed lit long after full time on Tuesday night, with 'Tottenham 5
Arsenal 1' beaming into the north London night. Earlier that
evening the fans had sung of 'Juande Ramos' blue-and-white army'. A
new manager had not just won a place in the League Cup final, he
was winning over a club.