Ferguson - Loud Mouthed Bully

A word about GPC as a coach.
He had a formula for the formation and style they would play. He rarely deviated from it except in minor details.
The rags had two big advantages: their finances and their magnetic reputation.
The finances allowed Fergusson to buy the best players and their rep meant that he clicked his fingers and they came running. So, for eg, a problem at CF? Don’t worry get Berbatov or van Persie.
His formation and style were very pragmatic; they worked so he stuck to them. He was not an innovative coach but he didn’t need to be, no team could stay with them. But the lack of innovation told in the end in the 2011 CL final where Barcelona destroyed them at Wembley. A certain Mr. Guardiola was responsible for a devastating display, Fergusson admitted afterwards that the gulf in class was so great, the rags had no answer. The rags won the title back from us in 2013 but that was the beginning of the end. An ageing team was about to be broken up and the replacements were not good enough.
Had Taggart been more innovative maybe they might have won a bit less but they would have been better equipped to deal with a changing PL. Now they are utterly lost and The ‘United Way’ looks desperately old fashioned.
 
Fergies biggest advantage was having the bloke who effectively chose the referees in and out of his office on a day to day basis ... No coincidence when David Gill left the big job at the FA the Rags fortunes started to falter , they should have called that stand the Fergurson/Gill stand , the work Gill put in behind the scenes to keep utd in top spot goes largely unrecognised..
 
For me, united and Fergies biggest advantage was having fingers in the pies of other clubs with ex players.
even moyes and BIG fat sam was part of the system where united loan players to clubs for points,

at one stage in the Premier League i think 5 or 6 clubs had links to united, that's a lot of points home and way
 
For me the SAF-Keane fallout says allot about Fergie. A worthy watch. I used to hate Keane when we were their rivals but he really is a man's man.

 
A word about GPC as a coach.
He had a formula for the formation and style they would play. He rarely deviated from it except in minor details.
The rags had two big advantages: their finances and their magnetic reputation.
The finances allowed Fergusson to buy the best players and their rep meant that he clicked his fingers and they came running. So, for eg, a problem at CF? Don’t worry get Berbatov or van Persie.
His formation and style were very pragmatic; they worked so he stuck to them. He was not an innovative coach but he didn’t need to be, no team could stay with them. But the lack of innovation told in the end in the 2011 CL final where Barcelona destroyed them at Wembley. A certain Mr. Guardiola was responsible for a devastating display, Fergusson admitted afterwards that the gulf in class was so great, the rags had no answer. The rags won the title back from us in 2013 but that was the beginning of the end. An ageing team was about to be broken up and the replacements were not good enough.
Had Taggart been more innovative maybe they might have won a bit less but they would have been better equipped to deal with a changing PL. Now they are utterly lost and The ‘United Way’ looks desperately old fashioned.
Van Persie won them the league that season, having been assured by Ferguson that he wasn’t retiring anytime soon
 
For me, united and Fergies biggest advantage was having fingers in the pies of other clubs with ex players.
even moyes and BIG fat sam was part of the system where united loan players to clubs for points,

at one stage in the Premier League i think 5 or 6 clubs had links to united, that's a lot of points home and way

This is pushing conspiracy theories a bit isn’t it?
 
For me the SAF-Keane fallout says allot about Fergie. A worthy watch. I used to hate Keane when we were their rivals but he really is a man's man.



We still hate him. We always will.
The problem with Keane is that even when he tells the truth about someone else, I always feel that it's for the wrong reasons.
And the point he made in the (otherwise excellent) series about him and Vieira and their rivalry, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Ferguson: he pointed up Ferguson's failing as being lack of loyalty. Namely, that he was disloyal. What Keane actually meant by that is that he still bears a seething grudge against Ferguson because he perceived Ferguson as being disloyal, personally, to him.

But that was the whole point about Ferguson! I suspect he would say, and say proudly, that he had no loyalty to specific players — Jim Leighton was devastated when he basically realised that he was getting dumped by Ferguson. Leighton was not a very good keeper, but he was part of the team that had won Ferguson's first trophy, and basically saved his bacon (yes, pun intended). Ferguson's only loyalty was to the institution of Manchester United, and what he saw as being its best interests (which happened to coincide with him being at the helm, but let that go…). That was why he was absolutely ruthless about getting rid of players and replacing them with better ones. He did it with Leighton. Leighton, of course, didn't see it that way.
Not that the footballing quality of the player was the sole consideration. Ferguson got rid of Stam, who was in my view and many others the best or one of the best defenders in Europe at the time, because Stamm was rocking the boat. He was challenging Ferguson's authority, and there was also a rumour about him being a bit of a coke head (I don't know if that was ever substantiated, maybe it was just a convenient charge).
And I'm going to state something that will be challenged here — but that aspect of him is perhaps the only thing he has in common with Pep. The difference is that Pep will have great affection for players, and he will see to it that they go in a dignified manner, and are treated with respect. No one gets simply dumped at the Etihad. But his prime responsibility is to the team, and MCFC. Not individuals.
Pep is not going to play a player from the academy who happens to have been born in Wythenshawe or Burnage, from a family that's been pure blue going back to Hyde Road. He's got no sentimentality about that. He'll play him if he's good enough to play at the very highest level. I disagree with him about some of his calls, sometimes strongly, but that's neither here nor there.
And I'm afraid it's a tough world at the top of football, in the world's toughest league and he's generally right. So was Ferguson. Ferguson only faltered once, and that was right at the end, when his own ego got the better of him, and he maintained a team that was past its sell-by date (something which he well knew) in the name of stability, and brought in a marquee player to win him the league one last time.
 
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For me the SAF-Keane fallout says allot about Fergie. A worthy watch. I used to hate Keane when we were their rivals but he really is a man's man.


He's a walker. If you saw live what he did to Alfie you would think the same.
Have never heard of him apologising publicly
 
Incidentally, this is in no way to exonerate what Keane did to Alf-Inge — and anyway, his son's going to extract full revenge, don't you worry — but what Schumacher did to Patrick Battiston in Spain in 1982 was basically assault and battery. Battiston was carried off the pitch a broken man. He lost three teeth, with a damaged vertebra. Decades later, he still suffers devastating headaches. For anyone who doesn't know about it, it's worth looking up.
 
We still hate him. We always will.
The problem with Keane is that even when he tells the truth about someone else, I always feel that it's for the wrong reasons.
And the point he made in the (otherwise excellent) series about him and Vieira and their rivalry, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Ferguson: he pointed up Ferguson's failing as being lack of loyalty. Namely, that he was disloyal. What Keane actually meant by that is that he still bears a seething grudge against Ferguson because he perceived Ferguson as being disloyal, personally, to him.

But that was the whole point about Ferguson! I suspect he would say, and say proudly, that he had no loyalty to specific players — Jim Leighton was devastated when he basically realised that he was getting dumped by Ferguson. Leighton was not a very good keeper, but he was part of the team that had won Ferguson's first trophy, and basically saved his bacon (yes, pun intended). Ferguson's only loyalty was to the institution of Manchester United, and what he saw as being its best interests (which happened to coincide with him being at the helm, but let that go…). That was why he was absolutely ruthless about getting rid of players and replacing them with better ones. He did it with Leighton. Leighton, of course, didn't see it that way.
Not that the footballing quality of the player was the sole consideration. Ferguson got rid of Stam, who was in my view and many others the best or one of the best defenders in Europe at the time, because Stamm was rocking the boat. He was challenging Ferguson's authority, and there was also a rumour about him being a bit of a coke head (I don't know if that was ever substantiated, maybe it was just a convenient charge).
And I'm going to state something that will be challenged here — but that aspect of him is perhaps the only thing he has in common with Pep. The difference is that Pep will have great affection for players, and he will see to it that they go in a dignified manner, and are treated with respect. No one gets simply dumped at the Etihad. But his prime responsibility is to the team, and MCFC. Not individuals.
Pep is not going to play a player from the academy who happens to have been born in Wythenshawe or Burnage, from a family that's been pure blue going back to Hyde Road. He's got no sentimentality about that. He'll play him if he's good enough to play at the very highest level. I disagree with him about some of his calls, sometimes strongly, but that's neither here nor there.
And I'm afraid it's a tough world at the top of football, in the world's toughest league and he's generally right. So was Ferguson. Ferguson only faltered once, and that was right at the end, when his own ego got the better of him, and he maintained a team that was past its sell-by date (something which he well knew) in the name of stability, and brought in a marquee player to win him the league one last time.
If you read some of the posts on here, they are better argued and better written than most of the National press. I’m not sure I agree with this post, but that is beside the point.
If you want to understand football read Bluemoon.
 
Incidentally, this is in no way to exonerate what Keane did to Alf-Inge — and anyway, his son's going to extract full revenge, don't you worry — but what Schumacher did to Patrick Battiston in Spain in 1982 was basically assault and battery. Battiston was carried off the pitch a broken man. He lost three teeth, with a damaged vertebra. Decades later, he still suffers devastating headaches. For anyone who doesn't know about it, it's worth looking up.

Didn’t even get a free kick for his trouble either.
 
If you read some of the posts on here, they are better argued and better written than most of the National press. I’m not sure I agree with this post, but that is beside the point.
If you want to understand football read Bluemoon.

I appreciate the fact that you can ‘like’ a post while disagreeing with it mate. I'm the same. We could do with a bit more of that around here. It's all about opinions, and as someone who was semi-drunk once said to me solemnly at a party, “The thing is… nobody knows fuck all”.
 
?? Has your autocorrect changed a word about self-abuse to the joys of being a rambler?
I’m both.
Talking of which, why does the dictionary define masturbation as ’self abuse’? Must be Victorian sensibility. I never abuse myself but……And ‘self’ is not necessarily accurate. Time the definition was changed to ‘manual sex’!
 
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