It is to respond to the needs and the demands of the man in charge

It is to respond to the needs and the demands of the man in charge.Yesterday Ferguson's mood was of a trainer ready to take the action from the gallops and on to the course. There are many degrees of defeat, and this one scarcely registered on United -- a reaction which was no doubt underpinned by a second-half performance that more than anything reminded us of Roy Keane's extreme distaste for the concept of losing.Ferguson, at least, was plainly reassured. Some silver, the man who has acquired unprecedented amounts of it these last 10 years seemed to be saying, is just not worth crying over. The Charity Shield, he would tell you, has about as much intrinsic value as the Vice-Presidency of the United States, which one holder of that office rated on a par with a "pitcher of cold spit." All available evidence confirms the Ferguson view. United have now lost the last four Charity Shield games but, by way of compensation, they win the Premiership All of English football would kill for such a trade-off.

Whether Ferguson would have displayed quite such equanimity if his £19m signing Ruud van Nistelrooy had not snapped out of his impersonation of a shire horse and scored a goal of easy skill and chilling authority is, however, a rather different matter.From the United perspective, this was a less than overwhelming dress rehearsal, of course, but then United and Ferguson do not really do rehearsals. They do winning, and in this you have to believe the big Dutchman will emerge soon enough as a significant asset. His goal was taken with such natural assurance and power that it was easy to assign his earlier fumblings to the pressure of his first showpiece occasion in his new arena. Buoyed by the return of the midfield master Juan Sebastian Veron, away on international duty with Argentina this weekend, United can be counted to provide Fulham with a fiery welcome to the top flight next Sunday.For Ferguson, the stakes have of course never been higher. Veron and Nistelrooy represent so much more than standard team-strengthening. They are vital elements in the manager's last push for glory, one that he believes, as romantically as any schoolboy behind the professional front, can finish in the most extraordinary career validation at Hampden Park in the European Cup final at Hampden Park next spring. The United manager has already made it clear that he will avoid discussion of the implications of his last year in charge of the side that he has pushed so relentlessly for so long.But the drama is implicit and will be so until the end of his last campaign.

Here in Cardiff yesterday there were points of strong reassurance. Keane, stimulated no doubt by the arrival of the master-pro Veron, remains a tidal force of resolution and, as so often is the case, it was by his insistence that the game began to run away from Liverpool in the second half. Ryan Giggs ran with bite and confidence at times, and when Yorke came on in the second half he showed an appetite for the action that suggested Ferguson's summer lecturing had had some impact.It means that the coming season provides any number of challenges within the Old Trafford dressing-room, and not the least of them resides in the silver boots of the England captain, David Beckham. His impact was marginal in a game watched by the England coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, and when Veron returns, presumably at the expense of Nicky Butt, Beckham's response needs to be considerably more intense than the one he brought to yesterday's affair.