RealMancsAreBlue
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 24 Jan 2009
- Messages
- 1,241
Excellent article about bacon face and his snubbing of the media
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/article5926790.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 926790.ece</a>
Sir Alex Ferguson has carried out so many boycotts down the years we should stop calling him Alex and start calling him Geoffrey instead. Sky Sports was the latest organisation to feel the frostiness of the Ferguson cold shoulder, the Manchester United manager refusing to take part in the customary post-match interview after Saturday's game against Liverpool, thus depriving more than a million subscribers a valued part of their viewing experience.
Why was Ferguson so miffed with the company that has bankrolled football (and helped to pay his salary) for the better part of two decades? Because Sky had scheduled the match on Saturday lunchtime, giving United less time to recover from their Wednesday-night exertions (Liverpool played the second leg of their Champions League first knockout round tie on Tuesday).
Never mind that the match was scheduled almost two months ago or that the timing had been requested by the police. Rational arguments (facts, as Rafael BenÃtez might call them) mean little to a man in a state of such advanced paranoia that he alleged in January that the entire Barclays Premier League fixture list had been part of an elaborate conspiracy against United.
The great mistake was in not confronting Ferguson earlier. By indulging his tendency to petulance and megalomania, the Premier League has only itself to blame for the shameful situation in which its most high-profile manager flouts his responsibilities to broadcasters and fans as a matter of course.
Related Links
It is not just Sky - News Corporation, parent company of The Times has a 39.1 per cent stake in BSkyB - of course. The BBC, which pays almost £60 million a year on behalf of licence-fee payers for Premier League highlights, has not had access to Ferguson since 2004, ever since it aired a BBC Three documentary about his dealings with his son Jason, a football agent at the time. It is understood that Ferguson's boycott of our national broadcaster will never be rescinded.
This is nothing less than scandalous, not least when you consider that United have a contractual obligation to put up a senior management figure for interview, as well as a moral responsibility to the millions of fans who tune in on Saturday and Sunday evenings hoping to hear the views of the single most important and knowledgeable person in English football.
In the absence of any noticeable condemnation from the very organisations that exist to rein in errant behaviour - not least the United board - is it any wonder that Ferguson is so dangerously out of control? That he runs United like his own personal fiefdom? That he has routinely snubbed post-match press conferences (another part of a manager's duties) for more than seven years? That he bawls out journalists who ask awkward questions as a matter of course? That he has banned so many scribes that his own press office finds it difficult to keep track of who's in and who's out?
Give it time and Ferguson will think nothing of banning opposition managers from Old Trafford on the ground that they dared suggest they might beat United.
Most sensible Manchester United fans agree that Ferguson's behaviour is less than reasonable, but they do so with a shrug of the shoulders and with the sentiment that this is a price English football must pay for having such a rare talent in its midst. But this simply will not do.
That Ferguson is one of the football's most brilliant managers does not excuse him from the duties that the majority of his counterparts discharge with such diligence and, quite often, humour and aplomb. If anything, his unique status gives him an elevated responsibility to the millions of fans whose cash is the lifeblood of our national sport.
Ferguson will change only if confronted. That is why Sky Sports should give him a taste of his own medicine by “boycotting†payment of United's share of the television rights income, estimated at a total of about £50 million. That is the only thing that might persuade the United board to bring into line a manager whose behaviour - and I choose my words carefully - shames English football.