Many believe that Sir Alex Ferguson has to accept some blame for the current malaise afflicting Manchester United. We shall set aside the utter nonsense about him leaving the squad in a bad state – that idea doesn’t even merit discussion, further than to say that Sir Alex joined a comedy club in 1986 and retired from a globally respected empire in 2013.
No, the only thing that Fergie can arguably be culpable for, is picking the wrong successor. Never mind a penny for Sir Alex’s thoughts right now. We would pay a fortune to know what he truly thinks about the season and the performance of the new manager.
Sir Alex isn’t a robot. He did, arguably, make some high profile blunders whilst managing the club – the signings of Veron and Berbatov, plus the decision to leave Rooney out against Real Madrid last season, immediately spring to mind – but, crucially, Ferguson made far more correct calls than he did poor ones. That’s why he was such a success.
In our opinion he’s made a big error in electing Moyes as manager when Mourinho was rumoured to be keen. But when you look at the infrastructure at Manchester United right now you would have to say that the club is exceedingly lucky to still have Ferguson amongst them.
There are obviously a lot of good businessmen at Manchester United – the ever burgeoning revenues tell us that – but precious few football men. If Sir Alex wasn’t there in any capacity you would have a chain of command with The Glazers, Ed WoodWard and David Moyes as the key players.
The first two parties probably wouldn’t even pretend to be pure ‘football men’ – and many would currently argue the toss as to whether the future is in safe hands with Moyes making the big decisions.
So for our money, even though it is still highly unlikely that Fergie would ever return in a managerial capacity, he remains the most important football man at Manchester United. The go-to guy for crucial decisions. Without him the landscape at Manchester United looks pretty bare. Even the senior players like Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra could all be gone come autumn, leaving further holes and deficits of wisdom and experience in the club. Even though he’s all but retired Ferguson’s counsel is more crucial to Manchester United than ever.
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ECHEYA M.C.
Feb 28, 2014 at 4:53 am
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Oran
Feb 28, 2014 at 8:35 am
Leaving Wayne Rooney out against Real Madrid wasn’t a big mistake. United were cruising that tie until nani got sent off.
Incidentally quoting 2 big signings over a 26 year period is quite sad to prove SAF made huge errors and while berbatov was considered a dissapointment he still was top scorer in a season.
Poor stuff.
Roy
Feb 28, 2014 at 3:19 pm
I agree with Oran, Rooney being left out was the right call. If you’re looking for Fergie mistakes, the only major ones I can think of were letting Stam go, waiting way too long to sign van der Sar, and the whole business with the horse which lumbered us with the Glazers. We would not have won the league in 2003 without Veron, or 2009 without Berbatov, so wouldn’t call either an outright mistake.
Junaid
Feb 28, 2014 at 11:32 pm
Fergie was top class: his biggest mistake in hi career was selecting moyes.
I can’t wait for the day to come when I get the news that moyes will be sacked and we getting another manager,
If that should ever happen.