James Lawton: Ferguson gears up for end of phoney war

By the time European action resumes Manchester United could have found both their form and a renewed hunger for glory

Quite soon the post-game demeanour of Sir Alex Ferguson will revert to that of a prickly sergeant-major rather than some amiable old don whose students have been briefly distracted from their studies. Emboldened interviewers will confront not a puckish smile but a more familiar maw of rage. We will then know that European football's phoney war is over.

In the meantime it would be wrong to assume that just because the last round of the first phase of Champions' League qualifying mostly had little more competitive edge than a bombing run over Afghanistan, a format born out of political and financial compromise is in any kind of real trouble. In fact, the more you look at the way the European football's ruling authority, Uefa, repelled the threat of a breakaway league, managing to preserve the basis of domestic competition, while at the same time so dramatically extending the earning power of the mega-clubs, the more you have to say that both fierce practicality and some vision was at work.

Consider the line-up of the last 16 in the world's leading competition. It is a superb roll-call which contains both representatives of old money, and power, like Real Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona, Manchester United, and the reigning champions, Bayern Munich, and an arresting new contender like Deportivo La Coruña. Here indeed is a Super League work in progress, and if inevitably there are pressures on manpower, if English clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal are obliged to ever-deepen their squad resources, this is merely an invitation to rationalise the sheer weight of the domestic programme.

Traditionalists will no doubt say that the Champions' League is above all the League of Greed, but they will get no prizes for originality – or any understanding of the fact that the world, and football, has changed so irrevocably.

The case for reducing the Premiership to 16 clubs, for jettisoning the Worthington Cup and even looking at the FA Cup for what it has become rather than for what it was, has become overwhelming. That the case will not be prosecuted with proper vigour, given the desperation of so many clubs trying to hang on at the fringes of the Premiership, of course almost goes without saying. But this is England's problem, as it has been since the architect of Arsenal's 1971 double triumph, the late Bertie Mee, complained that the sheer physical pressure on leading English players prevented a proper development of skills befitting the highest level of the international game.

One of the Premiership's promises, indeed it was laughably argued at one point that it was its raison d'être, was that the top league would indeed be slimmed down in the interests of success on the international field. What we had, predictably enough, was the tokenism of a reduction of two clubs, with the inevitable consequence that for the big outfits the importance of the FA Cup dwindled right down to the point where United were allowed to defect from it in favour of the shoddy adventure of the Club World Championship in Brazil.

It means that English football lives in a competitive half-world in which two of its three major competitions, the FA Cup and the Worthington Cup, are as integral to the needs of Manchester United or Arsenal as loose change in the pocket of Bill Gates. But, again, this is England's problem in general and one most pressing for the majority of clubs who operate in the shadow of the financial heavyweights.

What Uefa has managed to do is produce a competitive system which satisfies the big-club hunger for increased revenue and the average fan's developing taste for the quality of football now regularly beamed into his living room. After the tumult of Parkhead and the emotion-charged but ultimately unavailing victory over Juventus, the Celtic fan now faces severe anticlimax. The goal of participation in the later stages of the Champions' League, you could see in the Glasgow fury, has come to hugely overshadow all other targets even in a football society which for so long has had to learn to settle for the consolations of strictly localised glory.

Scepticism about the chances of the Premiership contenders going all the way, expressed by, among others, Alan Hansen this week, seems a little premature. Arsenal's chronic frailty away from home, plus the virtually wholesale collapse of their defence, almost certainly make their current odds of 16-1 realistic enough, but, at 6-1 and 10-1 respectively, Manchester United and Liverpool surely represent decent value.

Despite the disruption of Gérard Houllier's illness, it is plain enough that the Frenchman's emphasis on the value of defensive solidity, and sheer hardness to beat, has become deeply ingrained in the approach of his Liverpool team, and, of course, any side in possession of the pace and firepower of a Michael Owen has reason enough for optimism.

Because of the weight of the European programme, there is a sense that it is not too soon to evaluate properly the impact of United's signings of Ruud van Nistelrooy, Juan Sebastian Veron and Laurent Blanc. This is surely a mistake. Ferguson's profusion of options have plainly brought their own problems, but the fact is that at the start of November the team could still be reasonably said to be shaking itself down.

Certainly the defence is a worry, but one that is not exactly bereft of possible solutions, one of which may have presented itself with the impressive performance of Mickaël Silvestre as a central defender against Lille this week. His powerful presence was at the very least a reminder of the depth of United's resources, and if Ferguson's famously stubborn streak makes him resistant to arguments that Van Nistelrooy's already dynamic impact would be heightened in the company of an out-and-out striking partner like Dwight Yorke or Andy Cole, he can surely argue that he has earned the right to take his own sweet time in deciding on his most potent force come the second qualifying phase of the tournament.

By the resumption of European action, United could well be playing like fiends. It is a possibility overlooked at everybody's peril, and not least Liverpool's when they seek to extend their winning record against the champions at Anfield on Sunday. The phoney war is certainly over in Europe, and soon enough this may be the case nearer home.