Foul Play: Fergie the Great

When the end came, it was swift and brutal, the fiery Scot’s 26-year reign of Red terror collapsing in a heap of crass defensive incompetence as mighty Manchester United haemorrhaged three goals in the last ten minutes to West Bromwich Albion, turning a 5-2 stroll into a 5-5 stalemate, and illustrating the dictum that all careers end in failure, Fergie’s included.

He did his best to put a brave face on it, but you could tell a dressing-room inquest of terrifying ferocity was about to be unleashed. Okay, I exaggerate. This season has been arguably Fergie’s most admirable triumph of a career littered with them. Love him or hate him — an equation which largely depends on how you feel towards his club, my intense dislike of whom predates Fergie’s 1986 appointment as their manager — nobody can dispute that the 71-year-old Govan streetfighter’s place in history as the greatest of them all is permanently secure. His retirement was something of a JFK moment for those of us of a certain age, who cannot recall a time when the man didn’t tower over the footballing landscape like a giant colossus. My footballing cradle was rocked primarily in Scotland in the early ‘80s, and even then, in his early forties, he was a figure of immense substance. His Aberdeen teams were invariably more than a match for the gigantic financial might of the Old Firm, a fact which surely serves to highlight the stupidity of those who claim that his successes at United were a by-product of pure financial advantage.
It is certainly true that Fergie’s tenure coincided with United’s transformation into a global merchandising behemoth of Coca-Cola/McDonalds proportions, and that he was never exactly short of a few quid with which to strengthen his squad whenever the perceived need arose, but it doesn’t logically follow that ‘anyone else could have done it’. An avalanche of tributes over the past couple of weeks have hailed his extraordinary ability to regenerate, rebuild and revitalise, to judge exactly when was the right time to cash in on talents no-one else would have dared to sell, to wield absolute authority over a dressing-room full of brash young millionaires, to terrorise opposing managers into tactical deference and referees into the occasional dodgy 96th-minute decision. And – this should never be forgotten – his teams more often than not had a swashbuckling, adventurous panache about them, in stark contrast to the safety-first approach favoured by far too many top-level managers. Fergie never really seemed comfortable with the ‘what we have we hold’ mentality, and on the occasions he attempted it (last year’s Mancunian title decider, and several Champions League showdowns) didn’t quite get it right. His teams were at their most blood-curdlingly fearsome when they went out all guns blazing or when they had nothing left to lose, a phenomenon most unforgettably demonstrated in those final few minutes of stoppage time in 1999’s epic Champions League final, a spine-tingling occasion which will never fade from the memory of anyone who witnessed it, irrespective of whether or not you wanted them to win. The winning goal was practically a footnote: at 1-1, immediately after Teddy Sheringham’s equaliser, the phrase ‘there’s only one winner’ had never seemed more apposite. Had it gone to extra time, you sensed their blood was up and they may well have gone on to win 4-1.
Perfectionists might point out that United never really did go on to lord it over Europe, two Champions League triumphs arguably being a fairly modest return for two decades of perennial presence in the tournament. But those two (1999 and 2008) were epic achievements, hardly to be sniffed at, and the sheer extent of United’s dominance on the domestic front has been staggering when you look at the figures. Blackburn Rovers (very briefly), Wenger’s Arsenal, Mourinho’s Chelsea and Mancini’s Man City all managed to overthrow the empire for a while, but all were relatively short-lived interludes: on every occasion, Fergie had the last laugh, bouncing back stronger than ever. His departure leaves a vast, immense void to be filled, which surely has to be good news for everybody else.
As you might have expected from a man who apparently loved nothing more in his spare time than to unwind by devouring biographies of the great dictators, Fergie has clearly hand-picked his successor. David Moyes certainly appears to be cut from the same cloth, a bullet-hard Glaswegian with a piercing Blade O’Mahony stare that could curdle milk, and his record at Everton has been in the main a hugely impressive one, reservations over his mixed record in the transfer market notwithstanding. The naysayers point out that he has no experience of the Champions League or of working with a massive budget, but surely these are moot points: neither had Fergie when he arrived. Nothing in Moyes’ record to date suggests that he is ill-equipped for the task. There is the minor matter of an unpleasant legal dispute with Wayne Rooney a few years ago, though it appears the pair have buried the hatchet, and it can be doubted whether Rooney is part of the plan at Old Trafford anyway, having requested a transfer twice now.
Moyes takes over a team in generally healthy shape, but one which also clearly requires substantial refurbishment if they intend to keep pace with the Bayerns and Barcelonas. Hanging onto supremacy at home will be no easy task either, with both Chelsea and Man City currently on the verge of making changes in the hot-seat which one suspects will be for the better. At the time of writing, it would appear that we are just waiting for the respective appointments of Messrs. Mourinho and Pellegrini to be formally finalized, as Rafa Benitez and Roberto Mancini wave goodbye. Benitez was loathed from the start by Chelsea fans and will not be lamented; by contrast, Mancini leaves behind many a broken heart among the City faithful, who by and large are wholly uninclined to dwell on his shortcomings, and still view him in quasi-Messianic terms as the man who finally led them to the promised land after decades of unimaginable torment.
Certainly, it will go down as a matter of historical fact that Mancini was indeed the man who ended City’s 44-year wait for the title in a manner so dramatic as to defy belief, a triumph which has granted him eternal absolution for all his other sins and ensured that, at least as far as the fans are concerned, his halo will never be tarnished. By all accounts, the fans’ warmth towards Mancini is not shared inside the City dressing-room, where it appears the players were practically popping champagne corks to celebrate the Italian’s departure. Attempts by various news outlets to locate a player who had a good word to say about Mancini came to naught, and in the days immediately following his departure, a steady drip-feed of stories emanated from insiders that painted a less-than-flattering picture of a thoroughly despised leader, with the words ‘arrogant’ ‘vain’ and ‘ignorant’ recurring repeatedly.
In any workplace, employees are wholly unlikely to warm to a leader who has zero insight into his own shortcomings and plenty to say about those of others, especially if he appears to pay no attention to accurately monitoring who works hard and who doesn’t. This resentment will be heightened further if the man in charge shows signs of getting fixed ideas into his head about certain employees which will remain impervious to any amount of evidence, while indulging the bad apples on the grounds that they’re worth the hassle. Obviously we can only speculate on the nature of relationships within the inner sanctum, but from a distance it would seem that Mancini’s habit of bending over backwards to accommodate Mario Balotelli and Carlos Tevez seriously undermined his authority. At various junctures, and not without justification, he pronounced as fact that neither man would ever play for his team again. All very well, but it then makes you look weak and devoid of principle when you turn around and pick them a few weeks later. The likes of Joe Hart and Vincent Kompany, excellent professionals whose work ethic is reputed to be exemplary, both found themselves singled out for crass public criticism by Mancini on fairly sketchy grounds: a worker would not need to be all that much of a prima-donna to feel that this sort of behaviour is well out of order. Fergie may have flung the occasional boot across the dressing-room in fury and smashed the odd teacup when he saw fit, but any criticism of his players was generally kept in-house, and if he commanded loyalty, you can be sure he gave it in return.
Obviously, Mancini was employed to win silverware rather than a dressing-room popularity contest, and he delivered after a fashion, winning the FA Cup (2011) and the title (a year later). But in truth, he was working with a mouth-watering array of talents far more lavishly gifted than those under Ferguson’s charge across the city, and success of some sort was almost inevitable in view of the expenditure involved. What stands out about last year’s triumph was how close City came to pissing it all away on the last day, and although deliverance of the most dramatic kind eventually arrived with two goals in stoppage-time, it remains open to question how much Mancini had to do with it. His demeanour during the second half of that final-day QPR fixture was not one of a man who was in control of events.
It would be wholly remiss not to point out that Mancini did a fine job of steering the ship during that unforgettable run-in when City’s margin for error had evaporated, outwitted Fergie twice that season in comprehensive fashion, fashioned a team who on their better days could cut opponents to shreds at will, and – most importantly – won the big one, goal difference or no goal difference. He was the right man for City at the right time, at a pivotal point in the club’s history, and this season illustrates that he is probably no longer the right man to take City forward. A certain degree of distance between players and manager may be desirable, but no team can hope to prosper in the long term if the man in the hot-seat has become a hate figure.
Bizarrely, after only a week or so, I think I miss Fergie already. If we got the entire population of Ireland to sign a petition pleading with him to replace Signor Trapattoni, would that work? It has to be worth a try...