Time for Beckham to shine not sulk

Reports that David Beckham is "spitting blood" over his treatment at the hands of Sir Alex Ferguson are not likely to provoke instant contrition in a man who for several months has watched a sizeable chunk of his life's work turn to rubble.

Quite the contrary. While Beckham's alleged complaints are aired by "a pal," Ferguson may just draw a little comfort from the thought that maybe he has made his point. It was, after all, a dramatic one. Great players tend not to be dropped at the peak of their careers, especially when their clubs are battling for life. Indeed, trawling back over the last 30 years or so it is hard to come up with anything vaguely comparable. George Best tended to drop himself by the device of going missing, one which he found increasingly compelling. Certainly Sir Matt Busby, who grew up with a generation of footballers for whom hard living was never seen as a deterrent to hard performance, was inclined to judge Best on his performance on the field rather than the bar or disco, and right up to almost the end Best tended to deliver his talents with both flair and commitment.

What is a little puzzling about the Beckham situation is his reported suggestion that his current difficulty in getting into the United team is to do with rather more than football. Given the labyrinthine politics of Old Trafford, and Beckham's delicate contract situation, it is obviously dangerous to be too emphatic about anything, but if Beckham did not really anticipate his exclusion from the team he must be in a serious state of denial. Either that or he has believed in the headlines that greeted his election as BBC Sports Personality of the Year and his favouritism in the race for the vote of World Footballer of the Year. Necessarily, Ferguson has to stay considerably closer to reality and his decision to discard Beckham could not be said to have been unflagged.

Twice Beckham was pulled off the field at critical phases of defeats which landed on Old Trafford as psychological versions of the daisy-cutter bomb. At Liverpool, where he scored a goal but performed wretchedly, he reached for an ice pack when he got to the sidelines. Against Chelsea, at a stunned Old Trafford, he merely shook his head when he was told his time was up. One flash of memory is a reminder of the time Bill Shankly called off the England World Cup hero Roger Hunt, who was then nearing the end of his days in the top flight. Hunt angrily threw his shirt to the ground, Shankly was severely unamused and the crowd booed. Times change, certainly, but perhaps not to the point where the kind of dichotomy between Beckham's performances for England and Manchester United can go unnoticed, certainly not by Ferguson, the chief victim of it.

What he does with Beckham today against Middlesbrough, managed by his former coach Steve McClaren, is not the least intriguing aspect of a collision which should say quite a bit about the depth of United's recovery in the 5-0 thrashing of Derby County in midweek.

Clearly, a Beckham on something like his best form must be an element of any Ferguson hope of rescuing a season which has shown signs of going terminally bad. But, just as plainly, that was not the player the manager had been sending out for most of the season, a fact which we know now became intolerable two weeks ago when Beckham's contribution to United's losing effort against Chelsea was slight to the point of scandal.

Much depends on Fergie's reading of the "story of a friend" splashed across the front page of The Sun. Was it a coded message saying that Beckham was ready to display again for United the kind of passion he has regularly brought to the England cause? Or was it an ultimatum? If Ferguson reads it as the latter, hell could well freeze before Beckham reappears in a United shirt. My suspicion is that the ball could be returned to the England captain today, and with the certainty that the performance of a leading player will rarely have been so closely scrutinised.

The manager's position has been significantly strengthened by the facility with which Juan Sebastian Veron has occupied Beckham's old ground along the right. At his first attempt there, against the Portuguese champions Boavista, the Argentinian produced a sharply improved performance, playing with bite and at times wonderfully effective delicacy. Nor does the fact that Veron is one of the game's best dead-ball kickers deepen pressure on Ferguson for a recall of Beckham. No doubt both players could be accommodated in the starting line today if the manager is convinced that the noises from the Beckham camp are (a) authentic and (b) come from a desire to play again for Manchester United rather than the expression of a giant sulk.

Whatever happens on the team-sheet, United should know that there will no place for passengers against a team which, having looked so under-manned and under-motivated at the start of the season, are beginning to put some substantial flesh on the bones of McClaren's reputation. Boro lost at Anfield last week, but not before displaying a massive improvement on their showing when they last visited Merseyside, which produced a bewilderingly limp performance against Everton back in August. Since then McClaren's men have stiffened their resolve considerably, and Liverpool had to produce all of their work ethic to win the match.

Ferguson, no doubt, will be demanding similar levels of energy today. In the victories over Boavista and Derby, United showed that at any anywhere near full strength they remain a prodigiously gifted football team. The big question now concerns precisely what constitutes a full-strength United? Dropping Beckham once was a gesture. Three times was a statement. Four times could be the beginning of a verdict. One thing is certain. There is only one place for Beckham to resolve it and, despite his knack of generating positive publicity, it is not the front page of The Sun.