Fergie and the long walk
That’s as close as I’ll go to identifying him since he’s already ‘in the mire’.
At Old Trafford on Saturday he told me that Alex Ferguson had banned him from his press conferences. It isn’t the first time. I asked him what he’d done to upset the Manchester United manager.
“Oh… I disagreed with a point Alex made.” Yeah, bad as that! I haven’t attended Fergie press conferences for as long as I can remember. I’m not banned: I’m just not into bullying and propaganda. Nor do I wish to let that gentleman’s hostility towards me personally make life difficult for my media colleagues.
But I burst out laughing when I read the quotes from his Friday pronouncements. I could easily imagine the scene beforehand: everyone gathered together trying to decide who’d put their neck on the line by daring to ask the question of the week. Are the rumours true? Will you be leaving the job at the end of next season? Just as easily, I would have foreseen the old curmudgeon’s response. “Absolutely not true… rubbish… absolute rubbish.”
Look, Alex doesn’t make that many mistakes but, almost nine years on, one of them was to say publicly that he’d be leaving Manchester United at the end of the 2001/02 season. He may have meant the words at the time yet he quickly realised that he was wrong and that, inadvertently, he’d helped hand the title to Arsenal such was the disruption he’d inflicted on his own players.
Once bitten, twice shy. Whatever really is in his mind regarding retirement, he sure as hell isn’t going to tell anyone in the media about it; not the truth anyway.
So, take this with a pinch of salt. “The only thing that determines my staying here is my health. Unfortunately for you lot, I’m in rude health. You’ll be gone before I’m gone. Don’t worry. The way you write, you’ll all be banned anyway.” They already know that Alex.
I suspect he’ll spring it on us when it’s least expected: perhaps, in the aftermath of some great win. I thought that, if United had retained the Champions League by beating Barcelona in Rome in 2009 , it would have been a most opportune moment to say farewell. It wasn’t tested.
However, I can’t conceive of him carrying on into his 70s – he’s 68 now. And he’ll leave the most enormous hole to fill so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to speculate as to who might follow him into Old Trafford.
I’d say, as things stand, there are three candidates. And none of them is Martin O’Neill. No, David Moyes is the only ‘local’ runner. With scarce resources, he’s done a fantastic job at Everton and shares many of the personality traits that his fellow Scot has. The only question really is whether it might be too big a job for him.
Jose Mourinho certainly wouldn’t be fazed by the position. He has said that the next stage of his career would involve the long term, staying at a club for maybe a decade – “only in England can you do this”, ie, come and get me.
And I’d put Pep Guardiola in the frame too. The Barcelona coach is a known anglophile and has said he’d love to work at Old Trafford (if Arsenal don’t get him first?).
Just one thing Alex: don’t take a job upstairs; that’s what Matt Busby did and remember the troubles that arose then. The biggest compliment I can pay Ferguson is that I put him on the same mantle as Busby.
