Mention Sir Alex Ferguson’s final season in football
management to any Manchester United fan and the first player that will come to
mind is Robin van Persie. Of all the signings Ferguson brought to Old Trafford
over his 26 years in charge, it is hard to think of anyone who put their name
to their debut season in quite the way the Dutchman did in 2013
It was perhaps always meant to be for Van Persie at United.
On arrival he would be handed the No.20 shirt, and within nine months the club
were celebrating their 20th English league title. In May 2013 they celebrate
their own 20/13 – 20 championships, 13 under Ferguson in the Premier League
era.
At United, Van Persie finally got his hands on the
silverware that had eluded him at Arsenal. Since coming on as a substitute in
the 2005 FA Cup win on penalties over the Red Devils, he had seen countless
injuries punctuate a barren spell in north London. Only in his final season at
the Emirates in 2011-12 did the former Feyenoord man start more than 24 league
games in a single campaign. As chance would have it, he appeared on every one
of Arsene Wenger’s teamsheets in his final season, encouraging Fergie to make a
move.
Ferguson looked at Van Persie’s injury record, then
considered his age. Van Persie was 29, and had had so much difficulty keeping
fit for much of the past eight years, making him a risky signing in many ways.
Yet still the Scotsman decided he was worth the shot. At £24 million Ferguson
saw it as a calculated gamble at a time when he needed a high-leverage player
following the loss of their Premier League title to Manchester City.
Thirty goals later, United had coasted to the championship
and Van Persie was the clear talisman having once more appeared in every single
league game. Of course that wasn’t going to last, but Ferguson had arguably
already got his money’s worth in just one season
It is open to interpretation quite what the storied manager
saw for Van Persie in the longer-term, especially since Ferguson’s subsequent
retirement was a moved he only cooked up during that 2012-13.
But while the
striker was always going to be of greater value in the short term, Ferguson can
surely not have foreseen quite how far the player would fall under his
successor David Moyes.
The former Everton boss proved to be completely incapable of
managing Van Persie’s workload when ailments started to creep in following
back-to-back seasons of heavy workload. From the moment Moyes arrived at the
club he looked ill-equipped for some of the decision-making necessary at the
very top of the game, and Van Persie’s downturn was thanks in large part to the
manager’s inability to foresee and manage issues.
Having worked the Dutchman hard during the autumn of
2013-14, a muscle strain robbed Moyes of Van Persie’s services for four games
following the 1-0 win over Arsenal in November. But it was a combination of
Moyes’ character and United’s struggles on the field that would make things
worse for Van Persie.
When Newcastle came to Old Trafford in December with United
sat ninth, Moyes had sat down with the club’s medical staff and decided that
Van Persie should play no more than 70 minutes on his return. But after Yohan
Cabaye had given the visitors a lead on the hour, Moyes panicked about what
might be said about him if he took off United’s key goal threat.
“I think if I’d brought him off against Newcastle some
people would have said ‘What are you doing? You are 1-0 down and you’re taking
off your top goalscorer.’,” Moyes explained in a candid moment later than
season.
“I think that answers why I left him on. Robin had a sore
groin and, after he played really well against Arsenal, we gave him a week’s
holiday to recover. When he came back he hasn’t really been right since then.
“He played against Newcastle and then in the next game he
pulled his thigh taking a corner. But I think we have looked to do things
correctly.”
In truth, Moyes had thought too much about the reaction of
fans and pundits and too little about what was best for Van Persie. Over the
remainder of that season, the Dutchman only ever looked close to his best in
netting the hat-trick which ensured a U-turn in fortunes against Olympiakos in
the Champions League.
There were suggestions that even when Van Persie was fit and
playing, the manager’s decision to have him play so closely to Wayne Rooney in
the attack effectively nullified both players’ games, and the Dutchman himself
was rumoured to have shared such a concern. It seemed that whether he was
playing or not, Van Persie was far from enjoying Moyes' way of working.
By April, Moyes was gone as he failed to secure the return
to the top table that might have seen him afforded some extra rope, but Van
Persie’s situation was somewhat irretrievable. By the following season he was a
31-year-old more than 12 months removed from his best form and struggling to
cope with the return of the kind of physical difficulties which had dogged him
for a large part of his career.
After failing to resurrect his best form in a season under
Louis van Gaal, his Manchester United days were over.
But on Thursday he gets
one last shot at impressing the Old Trafford crowd with Fenerbahce in the
Europa League.
United fans never forget their greats, and Van Persie is
arguably one of them for the way he was able to lead Sir Alex to a
career-ending high. But there will always be some who will wonder what might
have been possible had he enjoyed another season under the record-breaking boss
rather than being let down by David Moyes.
source: goal.com
