In wake of Ferguson revealing his transfer dealings are over for the summer, my initial reaction was one of disappointment – a view which I think its fair to say was shared by a few others. I have been one of the people campaigning for us to bring in the world’s best talent, to fill the talent void left by recent exits to the club. But when having a closer look at the current squad, an air of optimism filled me once more. I started thinking about the individuals in the team, and what particularly pleases me about going into the year with the current squad is that everybody has a point to prove:

- Rooney has to prove he can be the center of the team and the main goalscorer.
- Berbatov has to prove he is worth his price tag and can be the creative force in the team.
- The likes of Nani, Welbeck, Macheda, Gibson, Fabio, Rafael etc and other youngsters have to prove they are ready to make the step up for Manchester United and will be desperate to grab this opportunity.
- Scholes, Giggs, Van Der Sar and Neville have to prove they can still play at the top.
- Owen has to fight his way into the England squad.
- Foster has to prove he is ready to be the next number 1.
- Carrick has to prove he IS a big game player.
- Valencia has to prove his is a ‘top 4′ player.
- Fletcher has to win over his doubters and show that he can be the main man in our midfield.
- Park has to prove Ferguson is right to trust him even though many have strong doubts about his technical ability.

it goes on, everybody has something massive to play for on top of just playing for Manchester United, so I envisage a hungry team in this coming season. They will also all be fighting to prove that Ferguson was right to put his faith in them. This season the stropping and tantrums will be far gone and their will be a renewed collective focus and determination.

This does not however necessarily mean having a successful team straight away though, historically after loosing the star players we have taken a season or two too step back up and we have always come back stronger than ever. For instance, after loosing Cantona, the next season was very much transitional and the season after that we won the treble.

So it would seem more or less certain we are going to enter into a transitional stage come the start of the season. A transition in more than one way as well. A transition in terms of style and system, and transition in terms of individual ability and performance. And later, but eventually, the biggest transition of all – the transition from Alex Ferguson to his successor.

A member of the forum, I think it was Versa, questioned to me how long the transitional phase could be, but I don’t think there is a danger of a long and painful era of the squad finding it’s feet. The idea of not signing anyone is not the be all and end all. What I mean by that is that I think this coming season will separate the men from the boys. If all goes to plan, everybody will step up as expected and naturally develop into an every-body-has-an-equal-part kind of 4-4-2 system ala ’99.

But suppose things go wrong, suppose Nani and Anderson continue to not impress or a situation similar, Ferguson will not think ‘well I decided not to buy anyone so I’ll just have to live with it’. If he sees that they are not progressing as they should THEN he will open the big cheque book and restore the squad to the world class level it should be. But there’s no point doing that now before they’ve even had the chance to prove themselves, as the whole reason they are brought here is to fill their potential when somebody above them in the food chain leaves the club.

So I don’t think the length of the transition is in question, if the likes of Nani and Anderson do not step up this season, Ferguson will say ‘I gave you your chance and you didn’t take it, I’m bring in a replacement.’ – so do you see where I’m coming from here? I predict that one way or another, two – or at most three – we will be back at the summit of football.

And in terms of the transition, not in terms of just individual quality of players, but of the team’s system as a whole, I think it will come naturally but it will take a good season or so to happen. The natural thing the team will do currently is look to feed the ball to Ronaldo, because we had almost become ‘the Ronaldo Show’ and with him being our stand out match winner it obviously would seem the natural thing to do. But no I think the other players will feel more important and feel more part of a unit, and unconsciously that will lead them to move off the ball better as a unit, and look to play clever short passes rather than just get the ball to Ronaldo.

I feel that the more we tried to look for Ronaldo, the less flow we had as a team. Because their is no natural movement of the ball and the team when you’re constantly looking for one person, and you will see a definite correlation between our reliance on Ronaldo going up and the flow of our team football going down.

So with this in mind, once the players have got used to the Ronaldo-free system, I feel that the transition back into a free flowing team will come naturally.

And linking back to the hunger thing, it is almost like when a champion boxer retires and leaves his titles free, and suddenly all around the team players will be desperate to step up their game to fill his boots as the king of Manchester United.

Regarding the point about Ferguson, and it is a very big point. Ferguson can’t continue to mold and re-mold the team forever because its not just physically possible. I think he has 2 years left in him, and that is part of what makes me think that, if after this season certain players have not made that step up in class, he will overhaul things because he will want to leave his successor with a squad that will compete with anybody.

But if all goes to plan, an overhaul will not be needed and only minor tweaks, so we can build a great squad once more to make the transition from Ferguson to his successor as smooth as possible.

This article was written by fans forum member Richie