Manchester United’s manager David Moyes (left) walks past Ryan Giggs during a training session at the club’s Carrington training complex in Manchester. (Reuters)
The display Ryan Giggs turned in against Olympiakos proved the old truism about the finest players having more time than the rest. How else to explain a 40-year-old running the show for Manchester United on an evening when the team’s season and, possibly, David Moyes’s job was on the line?
To be instrumental in both of Robin van Persie’s goals before the break illustrated the class of Giggs and had his inquisitors lining up to ask Moyes the burning question: why had the Welshman been allowed only 12 starts, the last of which came on 28 January, in a 2-0 win over Cardiff City?
Moyes’s reply was: “We have to look to see what we do, Ryan Giggs can’t go on forever, we know that. We have to be looking to find the new Ryan Giggs and the new players. I thought that he is 40 years old and I needed to look to the future, to give people opportunities to play.”
A jam-tomorrow selection policy is no good if by mid-March it has the defending champions 18 points off the leaders, Chelsea, and 12 from qualifying for next season’s Champions League. When trying to replace Sir Alex Ferguson, the domestic game’s most successful manager, an approach of choosing the best players now to win each and every game seems wiser.
Moyes’s admission sounds as if he is using his first campaign as a glorified trial for some far-off point in the future where tomorrow never comes. In football’s 24-hour news-cycle all that matters is the previous, the latest, and the next result.
For Moyes to understand how best to use Giggs a hint may have been gained by studying Ferguson’s deployment of the midfielder as the years began advancing. To take the 12-13 season, Ferguson’s last, Giggs was named in the XI for United’s biggest match, the last-16 return against Real Madrid at Old Trafford, with the tie poised at 1-1.
To trust Giggs when the club and manager need him most appears a strategy Moyes adopted by default for the Olympiakos outing: there are only so many times his 27mn headline summer buy, Marouane Fellaini, could be witnessed stumbling through matches before the Belgian had to be dropped for a night that might have ended the 50-year-old’s tenure.
The next poser is when will Moyes next include Giggs in the lineup. The smart money says West Ham United on Saturday will come too soon for a player now in a fifth decade, with Tuesday evening’s derby against Manchester City at Old Trafford the more likely.
Yet there would be no surprise, given Moyes’s constant tinkering and the season-long policy regarding Giggs, if he was stood down for United’s 167th squabble with their neighbours.
After the game Giggs against Olympiakos said: “We’ve had good results and then not followed them up so we won’t get carried away we just need to keep producing performances like tonight. There was pressure on us, especially after Sunday [the 3-0 defeat to Liverpool]. That was a disappointing performance and result. We owed the fans because they’ve been unbelievable.”
There was no mention of Moyes also deserving a performance. A coincidence, a slip of the memory? Maybe. There are at least 11 matches left this term, nine of the beleaguered title defence and a minimum further two in the Champions League. Perhaps if Giggs is used more he will remember to mention the manager in future dispatches.
The display against the Greek champions certainly gave Moyes every reason to do so. “Sometimes you might be thinking, he’ll need to come off after 60 minutes but he’s a freak he really is,” was his post-match verdict on the Salford-raised phenomenon. “He’s something different.”
Giggs could yet prove the telling factor in a change of United’s fortunes before the season’s end. And, those of Moyes.