The tall figure at the heart of Manchester United's defence caught the eye through his unhurried composure. On a day when Sir Alex Ferguson was forced to resort to extraordinary measures in order to shore up his depleted rearguard, a product of West Ham's academy came to his rescue with an hour of cool, calm and collected defending that would have put a smile on the face of Bobby Moore himself.
Michael Carrick had never played at centre-back before. It was as a 17-year-old centre-forward that he left his home in Wallsend in 1998 and arrived at Upton Park, where Harry Redknapp's coaches converted him to a deep-lying, long-passing midfield player with such success that he moved to White Hart Lane for £2.75m in 2004 and to Old Trafford for an initial fee of £14m two years later. With just over half an hour of Saturday's play gone, however, Ferguson was desperate.
On the eve of the match Nemanja Vidic had reported sick with flu, joining Edwin van der Sar, Rio Ferdinand, Jonny Evans, John O'Shea and the twins Rafael and Fabio da Silva on the list of unavailable defenders. In front of Tomasz Kuszczak, Van der Sar's understudy, the manager deployed Patrice Evra in his normal left-back position, Wes Brown and Gary Neville at centre-back, and Darren Fletcher as an emergency right-back. But with only 34 minutes gone, and the match still scoreless, Neville – a centre-back in his days as United's youth team captain – pulled up while shepherding a ball back to his goalkeeper and limped off with a strained groin muscle.
With Ritchie de Laet, the 21-year-old Belgian, as the only defender among the seven substitutes, Ferguson went for the bold option and invited Carrick to take Neville's place. But this was not a spur of the moment decision. Carrick had been forewarned. "The gaffer said before the game that's why I was there," the player said, "in case there was an injury to one of the back four, because we didn't have anyone else to play centre-half. Thankfully the lads in front of me didn't give me a lot to do."
He was referring to Paul Scholes and Anderson, who spent much of the afternoon rigorously patrolling the area in front of the United defence, but he could easily have been talking about West Ham's attack, which suffered badly from the absence of the power and penetration recently offered by Carlton Cole. The industry of Guillermo Franco was inadequately supported by the youngsters Zavon Hines and Junior Stanislas, and Kuszcak was seriously tested only by a 25-yard free-kick from Alessandro Diamanti, a second-half substitute for Hines.
So Carrick was able to learn a new skill in relative peace, positioning himself shrewdly and making relevant interventions. Ferguson had already made his available substitutions when Brown was forced to go off in the 90th minute. As Evra moved to the middle, with Ryan Giggs dropping into the left-back role, Carrick spent the three minutes of stoppage time as his side's senior central defender.
On Tuesday United travel to Wolfsburg for their final Champions League group match. "We're down to the bare bones," the manager said, "but I'm hoping that Vidic will be back." Brown, however, will almost certainly be out, and Ferguson intimated that Carrick will get another chance to polish his Franco Baresi impersonation.
On Saturday he had the pleasure of watching his team-mates click into gear once Scholes had slipped around the lunging Radoslav Kovac and scored his 99th Premier League goal with an explosive left-footed half-volley in the extra minute added on to the first half. Just past the hour Darron Gibson confirmed his growing reputation with a swerving drive from outside the area after a lovely build-up by Giggs and Wayne Rooney, prefacing further slick build-ups which climaxed in tap-ins for Antonio Valencia and Rooney – who claimed to have slept through Friday night's World Cup draw but was wide awake on Saturday afternoon.
When Ferguson's second-string players are injured, the depth of his squad allows him to improvise. Poor Gianfranco Zola has no such luxury. Lacking Cole, Matthew Upson, Mark Noble, Valon Behrami and Dean Ashton, the West Ham manager was unable to muster a line-up capable of responding effectively once United had pulled ahead. Spirited but callow and disjointed, West Ham now face a pre-Christmas schedule comprising trips to Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers before entertaining Chelsea, who could expose their limitations even more damagingly than a patched-up United managed on Saturday.
