THE INDEPENDENT - HUGHES THE PRODIGAL SON SLAMS DOOR ON MENTOR FERGUSON
Mark Hughes was just the sort of footballer Sir Alex Ferguson appreciates most. Strong and brave, he spearheaded the Manchester United attack for 472 matches, winning two championships, three FA Cups and the European Cup-Winners' Cup. Then he came along as a manager yesterday and effectively ended his former club's chances of winning the title this season.
And how Ferguson needed a player just like him. The United attack, in which Ruud van Nistelrooy was spectacularly ineffective, roared at the start but by the end had been reduced to barely a whimper, and like Michael Owen in midweek you suspected they could have played for 24 hours and not have scored.
Blackburn rode their luck - United hit the post twice and had another effort cleared off the line in the first half - but the longer the game went on the more secure they looked and it would have been a harsh critic that denied them a point that pushes them nearer to Premiership safety. United, now in third place, will not have to look far to find their harshest critic.
"Forget about Chelsea, that's for sure," Ferguson said. "You don't win the championship with performances like that. We now have to concentrate on getting second place. That's what matters."
In the programme he was equally dismissive. "We simply can't afford to feel that we're in some kind of comfort zone, or, with the championship looking out of reach and Europe gone for another year, that there is nothing left really worth striving for."
His team hardly answered his call for a bravura performance, none less than Van Nistelrooy, whose first touch is a lottery at the moment and who is going through an unprecedented fallow period. A striker who has a record of 122 goals in his 156 starts for United, he has not scored in the Premiership since 27 November. Not for nothing were the home supporters chanting for Alan Smith before the Dutch striker was substituted after 63 minutes.
THE OBSERVER - ROONEY AND VAN NISTELROOY CANNOT GEL
With the sort of timing one has come to expect from football plc boards, Manchester United's chose the occasion of another disappointing Old Trafford afternoon in an increasingly sub-par season to announce a substantial increase in ticket prices for next season.
Certainly those supporters disgruntled at the prospect of a rise in prices would have been looking for a vast improvement on United's last home display, a moribund 1-0 victory over Fulham. Sir Alex Ferguson used his programme notes to reiterate the need for his players to raise their performance level at the end of what is in danger of becoming the most disappointing season in recent times.
More urgency there may have been in United's early endeavours, but they could, should, have still found themselves a goal behind inside the opening quarter-hour.
Barely 50 seconds into the game, Jonathan Stead had more time, and space, than he realised on the edge of the area, producing a feeble shot easily covered by Tim Howard. Far more profligate, after Howard made a good reflex stop to keep out David Thompson's deflected 13th- minute shot, defender Andy Todd somehow managed to scoop the rebound over the bar from all of three yards.
If United lived dangerously in such moments, there were clear indications at the other end of the field that the necessary improvement was in hand with Wayne Rooney, inevitably enough, integral to his side's brighter moments.
In the second minute, one of Rooney's battering-ram runs down the left-hand by-line took him through on goal where a deflected shot came back to him and his goal-bound header was saved spectacularly by Brad Friedel.
The loss of Ryan Giggs, who appeared to injure his calf while passing to Ruud van Nistelrooy after only four minutes, momentarily put United out of their stride, but Friedel was required to make an even more spectacular block when he flung himself to keep out John O'Shea's header from Paul Scholes's 19th-minute free-kick.
Closer still, five minutes later Rooney found the space to unleash an outrageous 25-yard shot that flew past Friedel but rebounded to safety off the left-hand post.
It was a fate that Roy Keane, Giggs's replacement, also suffered before the interval. After Rooney's shot had struck his own man, Van Nistelrooy, the Irishman collected the loose ball, surged forward and struck the woodwork from 20 yards.
Despite the lack of a goal, the contest was becoming thoroughly engaging and, before the half-time whistle, might have produced one. Cristiano Ronaldo drew another good stop from Friedel and Paul Scholes stabbed the ball wide from six yards after O'Shea had neatly back-heeled the ball into his path. But United failed to carry that momentum into the second half. Indeed, a Gary Neville error presented Stead with a shot on the hour that the target man placed just wide, by which stage those natives unhappy about price rises were distinctly restless. The name of Alan Smith, so curiously relegated to a bit-part by Ferguson, rang around the stadium and his introduction in place of Van Nistelrooy was greeted with mass approval.
THE SUNDAY TIMES - UNITED IN NEED OF RUUD HEALTH
If this was the day Manchester United finally relinquished hope of catching Chelsea and their challenge became all about Arsenal and securing second place, it was also the one when their failings were most clearly revealed.
Whenever Sir Alex Ferguson has missed out on honours, particularly in Europe, it has usually been because of his team’s defending. This year, United simply can’t score. Wayne Rooney is their leading striker in the Premiership with nine goals, the kind of moderate total three or four of Ferguson’s midfielders used to chip in with over a season. The top scorers from Crystal Palace, West Brom and Portsmouth have been more deadly than that.
Some pundits and supporters blame Ferguson’s abandoning of 4-4-2, but greybeards will tell you football is more about players than it is about tactics and systems and yesterday, as they have done in most games, United created more than enough chances to win. Setting aside some vintage goalkeeping from Brad Friedel as United besieged him in the first half, it was poor work in front of goal by individuals that killed Ferguson’s team.
Given that United kept their 29th clean sheet in all competitions, it wasn’t his defenders Ferguson was getting at. Perhaps the biggest single factor for United’s decline as an attacking force has been Ruud van Nistlrooy’s shrunken contribution.
The Dutchman could not be accused of missing chances yesterday. His, for a striker, was a much greater crime: he did not once get in a chance- taking position. Van Nistelrooy, who averaged 37 goals per season over his first three campaigns for United, has scored on just 12 occasions in 2004-05, and in only eight of the games he has played.
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - HUGHES RETURNS TO DENY TOILING UNITED
The forlorn retreat of Ruud van Nistelrooy, substituted in the second half in another match of unfulfilled promise, captured the angst that has engulfed Manchester United.
Van Nistelrooy's seventh consecutive appearance without a goal for United was symptomatic of the malaise that has left United toiling to secure second place in the Premiership, let alone put pressure on champions-elect Chelsea.
United attacked Blackburn with characteristic verve in the first half to no avail. Wayne Rooney and Roy Keane struck posts, Brad Friedel demonstrated his unfading agility and judgment in goal and Morten Gamst Pedersen made an extraordinary goal-line clearance.
Blackburn, too, had their threatening moments, but the manager, Mark Hughes, for so long a cult hero as a player in this arena, will be more than content with the magnificent resistance that earned his team a point.
United's policy of rotating players has back-fired on both domestic and European assignments this season and they are aware that the points dropped yesterday could cost them heavily. They must beat Arsenal in the contest for runner-up position to ensure automatic qualification to next season's Champions League group stage.
Alan Smith, who has attempted to play down any suggestion that he could seek a way out of Old Trafford in the summer if he sees no prospect of regular first-team football here, was brought on for Van Nistelrooy, yet all his endeavours were still not enough to salvage a winner.