NO PACE, NO HUNGER

Oliver Kay in the Times quotes Roy Keane.

‘UNACCEPTABLE. That was the word Roy Keane used last week when asked about the prospect of a second successive season without silverware. The last thing he or Manchester United needed yesterday was for two of the remaining three trophies to disappear in less than four hours. If, courtesy of events at Highbury, the Barclaycard Premiership title was already vanishing into the distance by the time they took the field in Cardiff, the failure to win the Worthington Cup, a trophy they had contested every bit as eagerly, may realistically have left them with only — only — the European Cup left to chase.

As they travelled back up the M4 yesterday afternoon, gaining an hour’s start on their jubilant Merseyside counterparts, United’s supporters will no doubt have tried to console themselves with the thought that Liverpool were welcome to the "Worthless" Cup. It did not look that way to Keane and his team-mates, though. As they sat collecting divots from the Millennium Stadium turf, barely able to look while Sami Hyypia lifted the trophy for which they once had such disdain, United’s players appeared to be reflecting that their need had been no less great than that of Gérard Houllier, the Liverpool manager.

That realisation came far too late. To say that United played badly would be to do an injustice to the victors, whose execution of their battle plan was excellent, but it would be no less insulting than Ferguson’s hurried assertion that Jerzy Dudek had "won the cup on his own". There was far too much missing from United’s performance for them to suggest that this latest setback was caused by the Liverpool goalkeeper. Dudek’s catastrophic performance in the sides’ Premiership meeting at Anfield in December was not cited as the only reason for United’s victory.

United were poor. They may reflect that they created as many chances as in their thrilling Champions League victory away to Juventus five days earlier, but the similarities between the two performances end there. Where, in Turin, they were dogged in defence, tigerish in midfield and clinical in attack, they were by turn sloppy, toothless and wasteful yesterday.

Man for man, United are as superior to Liverpool as the Premiership table would suggest. Collectively yesterday, though, something was badly missing.’