Ronaldo: Does He Really Need Replacing?

Cantona, Beckham, Keane, Solksjaer, v.Nistelrooy... and now Ronaldo. What do all these players have in common?

Well apart from the obvious fact that they all played for Manchester United, the key fact remains that none of them were ever replaced.

When each of these players left United, they all left a proverbial 'hole in the wall'.

But one thing that Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United have consistently done over the years is reshape the hole to fit the peg.

Looking at the most recent example would be the case of Ruud Van Nistelrooy. When Ruud was sold to Madrid, everyone posed the same question, “where are all the goals going to come from?”

Well the answer came in Cristiano Ronaldo. That was the year that he proved he had a goal scoring touch no one suspected he possessed. It was also the beginning of two fruitful seasons where Manchester United played some of the most exhilarating football ever seen in England.

The fluid interchanging of the forward players was truly something to behold. It enabled a winger like Ronaldo to rack up 42 goals in a season.

Now, moving to the present. Cristiano Ronaldo has been sold to Real Madrid for a world record £80 million, and the questions have arisen.

“Where are all those 30 goals a season going to come from?”

Sound familiar?

Well, the answer is quite simple; they're not going to replace Ronaldo, just like they didn’t replace Ruud. They're just going to change the system... yet again!

This past season  gave us several clues as to the way Sir Alex plans to put out his team next year. Just look back to the last few months of the season: the 4-5-1 formation became more and more prominent, with United playing with two traditional wingers.

The way Berba tried to dictate play—a fact highlighted by his number of assists—gave us a glimpse of what fans can hope to see from the Bulgarian next year. The purchase of two wingers in Valencia and Obertan, as well as a poacher in Michael Owen, shows that the pieces are finally in place to change the system yet again.

All these facts indicate a switch back to the pre-Ronaldo era when width was the key and front men played as front men and wingers as wingers. The system in place was specifically designed so that the strikers would get the goals and the wingers the assists, not the other way around.

So while Ronaldo took his goals—and hopefully his fan base—with him to Madrid, what many fail to realize is that Ronaldo’s scoring feat was a result of the system that he played in, not solely his individual brilliance. With United now focusing on more traditional wing play, along with Berba pulling the creative strings, this new United team will resemble nothing of the team that won the double.

However, that does not necessarily mean they won’t be as effective.