When Wigan RL club were winning everything one of their players commented "We always look a bit sluggish at the start of the season, that's because we've been training harder than everyone else. But it means we lose a touch of pace. Our training is aimed at making sure we're at our sharpest in the second half of the season, nobody will be able to touch us from January"
I'm sure it's been said many times by people in football as well. Clubs always arrive in different states of physical preparation for the earliest games of the season. If you're a strong team then that should keep you in the mix until Christmas. Everything is geared up towards the second half of the season. Teams often sacrifice a bit of sharpness during that early period in order to maximise performance levels later in the year, when the trophies/qualifications/promotions/relegations are decided.
Ferguson is recognised as one of the masters of this. So I figured he was basically letting Mancini know that he wasn't getting carried away by the relative performances and wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating us when we meet in competition.
It was the same story last year with Tottenham; they ran rings around us in the first game of the season. I said at the time that I'd never seen a team moving around so quickly, looking so sharp, on the first day of the season. I was sure this meant they'd forgone some core fitness training in order to hit the ground running, because they had crucial games in the Champions League right from the get-go. And waddya know, they fell away around Christmas. I'm not saying Utd have done the same but people need to relax.
