Having sent out a weakened team for Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final, Alex Ferguson blamed whoever is responsible for the new Wembley pitch which Arsene Wenger had also attributed – coincidentally of course – to Arsenal’s defeat by Chelsea the day before.
The surface was “soft” and “dead” the Man U manager moaned. Well the softest thing I could see out there was Dimitar Berbatov, whose attempt at a penalty kick was typical of a player who puts the ‘lack’ into lackadaisical and makes Cristiano Ronaldo look like an unreconstructed workaholic hardman.
Everton deserve their May day in the sun, especially David Moyes who (as Dungarvan United clubman Michael ‘Dixie’ Deegan will attest) has worked miracles with meagre resources at Goodison Park. Imagine what he would do with the £30m United paid Spurs for ‘the Bulgarian Cantona’? The French version was slightly better value at a million.
