Sooner or later, it is assumed, Manchester United will get their act together, but on the evidence of Saturday's scrappy scoreless draw with Birmingham City this will happen later rather than sooner.
At the moment, in the Premiership, United do not have much of an act. All they came up with at St Andrews were some half-hearted turns which did little to suggest that Arsenal's 49-match unbeaten league record will be in jeopardy at Old Trafford next Sunday.
The fact that the United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has already begun cranking up the atmosphere by raking over the coals of last season's bust-up with Arsenal suggests a bunker mentality. Mind games look pretty mindless when, with only nine games played, you are 11 points behind the leaders.
Of course Ferguson's team could suddenly click and sweep Arsenal from the field; they have the players to do it. Yet if this failure to beat a weakened, limited Birmingham team is any guide Arsenal's present level of performance will have to drop alarmingly if they are to be denied an unbeaten half-century.
Before this draw Birmingham had not taken a point off United in the Premiership but with sharper finishing from Emile Heskey they might have beaten them. Injuries deprived Steve Bruce's team of five regulars yet they still matched their opponents in midfield while their defence dominated Ferguson's expensive attack.
The longer the match wore on the more the United manager shuffled and reshuffled his team like a card player who could not remember what were trumps. United went into the game with five changes and though there were only two substitutions Ferguson's frequent positional switches added to the confusion.
To emphasise the importance to the side of Ryan Giggs, missing with a virus infection, Louis Saha, Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes were all employed on the left flank at one time or other without much success. Alan Smith flitted around busily but Ruud van Nistelrooy still lacked support up front.
Had Cristiano Ronaldo been able to turn Birmingham's defence on the right with any regularity it might have been different but the young Portuguese was frequently thwarted by Julian Gray's ability to match his pace and track him down.
Another reason why United never really got going was the parity in central midfield achieved by Robbie Savage and Damien Johnson. Roy Keane prowled and growled, an Irish wolfhound whose wolf-hunting days are surely numbered, and Kleberson kept losing possession.
Yet having built themselves a platform from which to attack United, Birmingham's movements were too pedestrian to cause the opposing centre-backs, Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown, serious problems. Roy Carroll was seldom summoned into urgent action, the principal exceptions being the two saves the United goalkeeper made from Heskey after first Kleberson and later Quinton Fortune gave the ball away.
With more confidence Heskey would surely have taken one of these opportunities. The former England striker has failed to fulfil his potential for so long now that there must be serious doubts about its initial valuation.
Maik Taylor was equally underemployed in Birmingham's goal although he did make the save that shaped the outcome of the match, blocking a point-blank shot from Van Nistelrooy late in the first half after the Dutchman had made a typically well timed run to the far post to meet Fortune's low centre. Smith's 30-yard volley in stoppage-time, which flew just past a post, would have been a worthy winner in a match United did not deserve to win.
"We are capable of winning the league," said Ferguson, "but we need to show the form which is capable of doing that and we are not doing so at the moment."
Birmingham were pleased with their draw but they have won only once in the league this season and remain uneasily placed only two points off a relegation position, and this result represented further home points dropped. Four of their next six Premiership fixtures are against teams below them.
Man of the match: Julian Gray (Birmingham)
