I’ve heard of the Group of Death said McCoist but we’ve drawn the Group of Certain Death

“I’ve heard of the Group of Death,” said McCoist, “but we’ve drawn the Group of Certain Death.”Had Eriksson been transported to Old Trafford and seen the performance of his captain on Saturday, he might have been gripped with a similar conviction. It was, frankly, a dismal statement of the player’s capacity to inflict himself on difficult circumstances outside of the set-pieces at which his skills can be more easily applied.At the high noon kick-off his embattled manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, not for the first time, began to assess the gap between Beckham’s celebrity – which in the next few days could be marked by his election as both Europe’s leading player and the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year – and his performance in key games for the club who pay his wages.The verdict was crushing. Beckham, for the second time in a month, was yanked off the field as the champions fought despairingly to restate their credentials as reigning champions.After an insipid showing at Anfield, Beckham quickly called for an ice-pack. At Old Trafford he shook his head in apparent mystification when the hook was applied soon after Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s brilliantly struck goal had condemned United to at least another week of suffering the effects of competitive meltdown. The possibility must be that he believes his own glibly offered headlines.

Instead of praying for the chance of atonement against Argentina, he would have been better remembering the old message that God tends to help those who help themselves. Against Chelsea, whose sharpness and unity of purpose was a majestic credit to the powers of organisation of the often ridiculed coach, Claudio Ranieri, Beckham was a help to neither himself nor his team.His cheerleaders – and has any individual footballer ever had quite so many? – may say that at this point in United’s season singling out Beckham for special criticism is a bit like blaming a booking clerk for railway chaos. But if the endlessly publicised and f?d captain of England, the man who mythically took England’s World Cup qualification by “the scruff of the neck”, could not rally the most talented squad in English football, who could?Ferguson had no doubt. Again it was Roy Keane, who is played when half-fit and is never withdrawn from critical action, carrying the manager’s deepest hopes.

This time, though, the job was beyond even his extraordinary resilience. He performed, in the circumstances, quite brilliantly while filling in at the centre of the defence, and then returned to midfield after Beckham, Juan Sebastian Veron and Paul Scholes all failed to exert any kind of prolonged influence.Ferguson, as is his practice now, would pass comment only to the club’s television channel. He said that United, with five Premiership defeats and an apparent crisis of confidence, were now unlikely to win the title. But his face was more eloquent, and so, again, was his decision to withdraw Beckham. What they expressed was the disbelief of English football’s most successful manager at the sight of such rank under-achievement.The reasons for the dishevellment have been documented exhaustively enough.

If Fabien Barthez had not recently given a striking impersonation of a nervous breakdown, if Laurent Blanc had retained more strength in his legs, if Ryan Giggs had not suffered injury at such a critical time, if Ferguson had not flagged his intention of putting down the baton, perhaps the inherent superiority of United’s squad might have suffered no more than a squall of doubt. But the reality in which Ferguson now lives is that he has never known a football crisis of such scale. The solution, he suggested after the irresolute performance at Anfield, no doubt lies in the spirit rather than the bodies of his players, and if the performance at Liverpool was disturbing, the one on Saturday came as a confirmation of all his fears.Beckham’s desperately ineffective performance thus became central to the problem of a club which for so long carried a huge aura into every game. The celebration of the player has simply gone beyond rationality. In one Sunday newspaper yesterday Beckham commanded three separate headlines. One screamed: “REVENGE: I prayed we’d get Argentina.” Another said: “Becks out for revenge.” And the third: “Koreans crown our Becks king of the world.” Such was Beckham’s profile the day after a performance which could provoke only one critical reaction: a shudder.It is a world of illusion into which United now find themselves drawn with ever increasing trepidation.