The control freak had lost control of the narrative. Sir Alex Ferguson had retired as Manchester United manager. He no longer had the platform to project his views every week.
An idea took hold: that United’s subsequent struggles were partly his fault. That David Moyes’s and Louis van Gaal’s inheritance was worse than it should have been because of their illustrious predecessor’s lack of forward planning.
Ferguson was fulminating. “That’s an insult,” he said last year. “We left young players. Good players.”
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His successors seemed to disagree. Van Gaal dispensed with Danny Welbeck, Tom Cleverley, Shinji Kagawa, Jonny Evans and Rafael da Silva, men Ferguson seemed to think were part of his legacy.
The Dutchman almost lost David de Gea, the most evident success of the Scot’s long-term thinking.
And yet, amid the ruins of a dismantled, perhaps even discredited, team, Ferguson may sense he has been vindicated. The Scot long used to say: “Jonny Evans is a future Manchester United centre-half.”
It turned out he was wrong. But the future has arrived: for Chris Smalling, definitely, and Phil Jones, possibly.
Men who were Ferguson’s fourth- and fifth-choice centre-backs, players who were signed for their potential at 20 and 19 respectively, now look Van Gaal’s first-choice duo.
“We have been here for five years,” reflected Jones this week.
Progress has taken time. But he and Smalling were paired at the back for the spring victories over Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Manchester City that in effect secured an Uefa Champions League place.
They were reunited for the last two league games, keeping clean sheets against Everton and City.
The idealist in Van Gaal savoured the idea of using Daley Blind as a footballing centre-back with the passing range to open up a game.
The pragmatist saw the size of Everton striker Romelu Lukaku and Manchester City forward Wilfried Bony, probably rationalised that opponents had been targeting Blind and opted for the more sizeable, more physical Jones instead.
Smalling’s status was already guaranteed. A fringe figure, branded “stupid” by Van Gaal for his derby dismissal a year ago, is now what the Dutchman calls his “third captain,” wearing the armband when Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick are absent.
Perhaps only he and De Gea are automatic choices in their preferred position. “I do think it is clicking,” said Smalling, which ranked as a considerable understatement.
Rooney went to the other extreme, exaggerating by calling the former Fulham defender one of the world’s top three centre-backs, but comparatively recently he did not rank in the three best at Old Trafford.
Vacancies opened up. He has helped fill them. Jones and Smalling were always deemed the junior duo until the 2014 departures of the old firm of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic.
They seemed to be passing time until United signed a defensive leader, but interest in Mats Hummels was put on hold and a bid for Sergio Ramos rejected.
One understudy became essential. Another is aiming to follow suit. “Hopefully we can cement a partnership together,” said Jones.
The accident-prone utility man missed the start of the season with thrombosis, the strangest in a list of injuries and illnesses to sideline him.
Like Smalling, he is more of a stopper than a stylist but the Premier League compels defenders to actually defend.
If Smalling and Blind were a partnership of opposites, Jones feels the two Englishmen dovetail naturally.
“Every time I play with Chris, he’s comfortable,” he said. “He is a great leader, a great talker. We complement each other well. When we have played together, we have done well.”
By most standards, they have. Yet Jones has spent the last two-and-a-half years burdened with the pressure to outperform everyone else, not just among his fellow United centre-backs, but in their storied history.
Before retiring, Ferguson made the extraordinary suggestion Jones could be United’s greatest ever player.
While the Scot is being proved right in other respects, that is one prediction that will never be realised.
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