At some time over the last couple of days it is not too difficult to imagine Sir Alex Ferguson reminding Cristiano Ronaldo there is only one man whose voice truly counts at Manchester United. Whether Ronaldo would be humble enough to listen is another matter but, when it comes to the practice of rotating players, Ferguson's policy should be vindicated by the team's league position without having to resort to the computer data that tells him after every game how far each player has run, how many sprints they have made and how the figures relate to previous performances.
Ronaldo's fit of pique after being substituted against Manchester City on Sunday not only left him open to allegations of showing a lack of respect towards his manager but also an apparent inability to comprehend what is uppermost in Ferguson's mind, namely that United are going into unexplored territory over the next few weeks in terms of the side's powers of endurance.
Tonight, when Ferguson's team play at Wigan Athletic, it will be their 63rd game of the season, and by the time an already epic campaign reaches its conclusion in Rome in a fortnight's time they will have played more games (66 in 290 days) than any other season in their 131-year history. Not since 1983-84, when Liverpool got through 67 games, featuring 13 League Cup ties, has an English top-flight team shoehorned more matches into a single season.
On the cusp of retaining the Premier League title and the European Cup, as well as winning the World Club Cup and the Carling Cup and reaching the FA Cup semi-final, it is already shaping up as a remarkable feat of longevity but it is also a demonstration of how the oldest manager in the business has mastered the art of rotation and the importance of keeping his team "fresh" for the business end of the season. To put it into context, Ferguson has not named the same team for successive matches once this season and, with more changes planned tonight, it will be 65 games since he last resisted the temptation to stick with his starting XI, going back to the beginning of May last year.
"Not everyone agrees and there are some fans who want me to play my best team every game," says Ferguson. "But if I could sit down with them and explain the number of miles the players are running in every match, the intensity, the speed, the number of times they have to sprint, they would maybe realise how difficult it is."
Other managers have tried to beat Ferguson at his own game but merely found their work under scrutiny and, in some cases, mocked. Claudio Ranieri was dubbed "Tinkerman" during his time at Chelsea and Rafael Benítez, the Liverpool manager, changed his team in 99 successive games only to be criticised for the frequency with which he omitted Steven Gerrard.
Ferguson, instead, has made rotation his forte, using a combination of computer analysis and his judgment. He has used 34 players this season, with Ronaldo, Patrice Evra, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic the only outfield players to have started 40 or more games. Veterans such as Ryan Giggs, with 14 league starts, and Paul Scholes, with 13, have been deployed with strategic care, as has Edwin van der Sar, routinely left out of domestic cup ties.
Wayne Rooney, who has played in 10 different countries this season, did not even travel to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final against Everton, and Ferguson has made sure long-distance travellers on international duty have all been given extra time off. Park Ji-sung, for example, was given a fortnight's break after South Korea's last World Cup qualifiers. "That was the best thing we could have done," says Ferguson. "Since then he has hardly stopped running."
The exceptions to the rule are Ferdinand and Vidic who, by and large, play when fit, the thinking being that centre-halves do not have to cover the same yardage as other members of the team. That apart, Ferguson's squad, including 25 full internationals, is asked to share the load and, by repeating the process every week, a culture has developed whereby the players have come to expect it and, apart from the recent protests of Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez, accept it is the best strategy.
"They want to play every game, of course, but it's impossible," explains Ferguson. "Rotation is a part of the modern game. It's got to be. Look at how fast the Premier League is and the intensity of the matches. The speed of the game has changed and somewhere along the line I have to make changes." Ronaldo, one imagines, has been told much the same.
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