Why do teams lie down for the rags.

[feedthegreek]

article here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... guson.html

This is an abridged version of the full Sunday Times article.

i know but you cannot get times on line can you?

[Plain Speaking]

Slightly off topic but can we please update the Site's City fixture table?
It is a really useful feature to see all upcoming matches in one place, but it has not been updated for quite a number of weeks.
We have an incredibly busy period coming up with all competitions!
Thanks :-))

[feedthegreek]

click on mcfc.co.uk youll find em all on there.

[spiny]

article here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... guson.html

This is an abridged version of the full Sunday Times article.

i know but you cannot get times on line can you?

No.

It is a two page spread so a lot of content. Easy to miss points and to cherry pick. Keane also says he preferred Clough to Ferguson "I think I identified with Cloughie more because of the way he was". "Nothing against Ferguson". "I think you can be a great manager and a good man. I think that is allowed".

[feedthegreek]

article here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... guson.html

This is an abridged version of the full Sunday Times article.

i know but you cannot get times on line can you?

No.

It is a two page spread so a lot of content. Easy to miss points and to cherry pick. Keane also says he preferred Clough to Ferguson "I think I identified with Cloughie more because of the way he was". "Nothing against Ferguson". "I think you can be a great manager and a good man. I think that is allowed".

just wait till ferguson retires there will be loads ofshit written about him,
andno man united solicitors involved then, would like to have read the full version of that 2 page spread.
thanks for posting that deserves its own thread imo.

[Hazy2]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

[feedthegreek]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

[Beefymcfc]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

Don't forget Pulis doing the same.

[feedthegreek]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

Don't forget Pulis doing the same.

not with you there beefy ? enlighten me.

[Hazy2]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

Robson, said as much in the dispatches docu, In fact I cannot understand how the FA, Premier League have not sought clarity to the comments which basically confirmed Alex looks after his own".

[Beefymcfc]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

Don't forget Pulis doing the same.

not with you there beefy ? enlighten me.

Pulis also had a couple of players on loan to Preston at the same time, withdrawn on the sacking of Taggart underling.

[feedthegreek]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

Don't forget Pulis doing the same.

not with you there beefy ? enlighten me.

Pulis also had a couple of players on loan to Preston at the same time, withdrawn on the sacking of Taggart underling.

pullis acting under orders?

[Beefymcfc]

pullis acting under orders?

Makes you wonder.

[spiny]

the loan system has always been kind to the teams that oblige !

your right never thought about that one, everton ex players, bruce ex players, boltons of this world.
cracking point.just thought about when darren ferguson got sacked at preston, purple nose
recalled all his loanees back. the more you think about it the worse it gets.
you can imagine the phone calls, well purple one how about loaning us suchabody
ok but i wouldnt want it to backfire on us wink wink.

I remember talking to a Preston fan when it was announced Ferguson Jnr was to take over as manager of Preston. Creaming themselves at the prospect of new young Beckams and Butts on loan to take them to the top of the Championship - at no cost. It proved a disaster. In reality, few of Fergusons players, either loaned or sold, live up to the hype. Same with acolyte managers he endorses.

How does the saying go? Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Preston should've learnt their lesson about United after Sir Bobby Charlton was appointed manager and immediately steered them into relegation and the third division.

Keane got it spot on when he said Ferguson puts his own interests before all else.

[Hazy2]

funny one on Preston, the Owner has stables, Ferguson's best horses are looked after royally, he called Red nose to advise him his horses were no longer housed he has arranged and left the 6 of them tethered in a field close to the M6 and to get his effing arse down there and collect them.

[feedthegreek]

that was funny lol.
going back to mates, if i had been taking over at villa with young and downing still on the books,
i would not have been to keen on letting them go, especially since the villa fans
could,nt stand the thought of mc,cleish getting the job.
so not an ideal way to make friends with the villa faithful.
but downing to scouse 1 20 mill, young to the swamp for 18 mill.
and three yankee owners.

[spiny]

For those interested
Roy Keane Sunday Times article by David Walsh, Chief Sports writer Part 1

THIS meeting is no accident. He wanted it. Things on his mind.

Seven days earlier, he was working for ITV at Manchester United’s Champions League tie against Basel in Switzerland.

Before the game he watched a pre-recorded interview with United’s 19-year-old England international Phil Jones and sensed Jones didn’t quite grasp the seriousness of United’s predicament. “Too relaxed,” Keane thought, “maybe they’re thinking they’re going to get through because they are Man United.” He sees it like this because he still is Man United.

In Basel, United couldn’t get the draw they needed. What had seemed a simple qualifying group had undone them. Keane felt 38-year-old Ryan Giggs was United’s best player and that the younger players hadn’t heeded the warnings of disappointing draws against Basel and Benfica in earlier matches at Old Trafford.

“People have talked about the young players,” he said in his post-match analysis, “you’ve had Jones, [Chris] Smalling, [Ashley] Young coming in, everybody building them up, but they’ve got a lot to do. It’s a reality check for some. I’d be getting hold of some of those lads, saying, ‘You’d better buck up your ideas’.”

Minutes later a journalist asked Sir Alex Ferguson what he thought of Keane’s criticism.

“I don’t know why you are bringing this up from a television critic,” Ferguson said. “That’s nothing to do with it. Roy had an opportunity to prove himself as a manager and it’s a hard job.” Ferguson’s response betrayed annoyance at the question but it also spoke of a strained relationship with his former skipper.

In his programme notes for the game against Wolverhampton Wanderers three days later, Ferguson returned to the criticism prompted by the failure in Basel. “We will take a lot of stick from critics and even from people we thought were perhaps on our side but we mustn’t dwell on that either,” he wrote.

Keane saw this as an attempt to portray him as the enemy and decided that was it. Enough was enough.

He comes to this hotel room knowing exactly what he wants to say. “Believe it or not, the [Wednesday evening] comments didn’t really upset me. I know what he’s capable of and Man United have just been knocked out of a group they should have coasted through.

“I remember him doing punditry before for the BBC and ITV, but all of a sudden this idea of being a TV critic or pundit is not good. That didn’t bother me. And if you want to question my managerial record, listen, you could question every pundit’s managerial skill in relation to his and we’re all going to come up short. But I would also say that without players like myself, maybe he wouldn’t have such a good managerial record because players who go down the punditry road, it’s soon forgotten that we put bodies on the line for him.”

Though mildly irritated, Keane would have let Ferguson’s Wednesday evening comments pass. Saturday’s dig was a different matter. “There was an angle there of trying to get the fans to look differently at me and I thought, ‘I can’t have that’. I thought it was ridiculous.

“I can hardly do the TV wearing the United scarf and if me telling the young players to pull their socks up is such a hard thing to accept, I ask myself what kind of world are we living in. I also said the other night that the senior players have to lead the way, set the tone, whether it’s training, how you prepare for a match, how you behave around the hotel.

“But that doesn’t mean you shield the young players who are international players, who are in around Manchester doing whatever they’re doing, but there seems to be this thing, ‘How can you criticise a young player?’ These same young players are going to try to win the European championship for England this summer. Do we wrap them up in cotton wool?”

He reaches for a jug of water on the table, fills the two glasses and moves easily back to the subject of Ferguson and why he believes his ex-manager wished to portray him as a traitor. “I know how this works,” he says, “absolutely. When I spoke to Alex about management before I left United, the two words he always used were power and control. I understand power and control over people inside the football club, understand that 100%. But not power and control of the people who have left the club. He’s trying to have power and control over me but I left Man United six years ago. So I just thought, ‘You didn’t need to go there’, but having said that, it didn’t surprise me.”

ON NOVEMBER 18, 2005, he left Manchester United after a falling out with Ferguson over an interview given to MUTV about the team’s performance in a 4-1 loss at Middlesbrough. Keane was critical of teammates and at a subsequent meeting he took offence to assistant coach Carlos Queiroz lecturing him on loyalty, reminding the Portuguese he was the one who had run off to Real Madrid when the chance came.

United’s statement on Keane’s departure talked of a parting “by mutual consent”, a bow to PR that fooled no-one. He was being shown the door. The statement prepared by the club thanked him for “11½ years at the club” when he had in fact been 12 years at Old Trafford. United paid up his contract but couldn’t buy his silence.

In an interview almost two-and-a-half years later with Tom Humphries of the Irish Times, Keane spoke for the first time about his leaving of Manchester United. His hurt at the manner of the exit was still apparent. “The day I left United, in hindsight, I should have stopped playing. I lost the love of the game that Friday morning. I thought football is cruel, life is cruel.” He accused people at United of not being honest with him.

That interview was published on April 5, 2008. Ten days later Keane received a letter from solicitors acting on behalf of Manchester United. It was a standard legal threat: unless there was a full retraction and apology, in terms approved by Manchester United, and an undertaking not to make any further criticisms, the club would consider all of its legal rights and remedies. United threatening to sue him: Keane was furious.

“I count my blessings to have played for Manchester United. All of my family are United fans and I don’t have any bitterness towards Man United, please let’s make that clear. But when you get a letter from lawyers representing the club through your letter box, you wonder what it was all about.

“I rang David Gill [United’s chief executive], ‘What’s this all about, David?’ I did an interview to promote Guide Dogs for the Blind, I touched upon my leaving United. ‘What’s it all about’, I asked David.”

Without Gill needing to tell him, Keane knew. The letter wouldn’t have been sent unless Alex Ferguson wanted it sent. United’s lawyers followed up the original correspondence with repeated requests for the apology but were told by Keane’s representative, Michael Kennedy, that there would be no apology.

Kennedy had not been instructed to acknowledge the original letter.

Eventually, the solicitors went away.

“I look back at the relationship and I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t about me being good for him and good for the club. People say he stood by me in difficult times. But not when I was 34, not when I was towards the end and had a few differences with Carlos Queiroz. All of a sudden then, ‘Off you go, Roy, and here’s the statement we’ve done, and here this and here’s that’.”

“Do you believe the comments that led to your exit wouldn’t have led to your departure if you’d uttered them at 27?”

“Absolutely. I had disagreements with the manager over many years. I remember one really bad one, I might have been 26 or 27, something happened at a Christmas do, it was a proper row, but he dealt with it.

“Clever management, you recognise when players are really important to you.

“I go back to the two words, power and control. ‘Say this, Roy, do this, pull this in a little bit’, what I did or said was always for the good of the club. I suffered for that towards the end, then it was unacceptable. The difference was that I was 34.”

[spiny]

Roy Keane Sunday Times article by David Walsh, Chief Sports writer Part 2

Quote:
On the day before the interview, he watched a television re-run of a 1996 Champions League tie in Vienna. A must-win game that United won 2-0.

Ferguson asked Keane to man-mark Rapid’s most creative player. Late in the game Kuhbauer broke forward, Keane pursued, there was a chance of a goal and a late fightback but the United midfielder made the tackle, snuffed out the danger but got stood on by the player, suffering a cut that would need 19 stitches.

“Watching that old game, I was reminded of the time when not just me but all the players put their bodies on the line. Then the manager is being interviewed afterwards. ‘But Roy got injured?’ says the TV guy, ‘We’ve moved on’, he says and I understand that. It’s about the team, I’m not daft, but there is that question now, ‘What was it all about?’”

In his mind the perceived truths about the United manager are not absolute truths. “People say Ferguson always does what’s right for Man United. I don’t think he does. I think he does what’s right for him. The Irish thing [Ferguson’s aborted legal action against John Magnier over the breeding rights to Coolmore Stud stallion Rock Of Gibraltar], I was speaking to the manager about it. This didn’t help the club, the manager going to law against its leading shareholder.

“How could it be of benefit to Man United? It wasn’t and we know what happened [in the end]. What was that all about? Power and control. ‘They’ve used me, they’ve treated me badly’, Ferguson told me in his office. I said, ‘You’re not going to win’, and he said, ‘I don’t care, no-one does that to me’, and I go, ‘Okay, off you go, I’m not going to change your mind’. Amazing what happens.”

He understands by publicly talking about his broken relationship with Ferguson that he will worsen an already difficult situation. This, he can accept because the alternative meant not standing up for himself; that is to say not being Roy Keane.

“[Roberto] Martinez [Wigan’s manager] made a point about it a year or two ago, suggesting certain managers were in Ferguson’s pocket, although he then claimed what he said was misrepresented. But you see it. Ex-players and even managers, like lapdogs around him, nodding their heads.

“My attitude is that like everyone else, I’m entitled to my opinion but it’s as if you can’t have a go at certain people, you can’t defend yourself [against them].”

The spirit that made him Manchester United’s most successful skipper still burns but at 40 Keane has mellowed. He is enjoying life. His work with ITV has allowed him to spend time with Martin O’Neill, Gareth Southgate and Andy Townsend and he’s enjoyed that. He spent two great days with Marcel Desailly on a work trip to Nigeria recently and last Saturday evening at the Bernabeu stadium he watched the Real Madrid v Barcelona game in the company of Davor Suker.

In Basel for United’s game he met Gary Pallister on the street and ended up going for coffee with Pallister, Bryan Robson and Andy Cole. Nicky Butt, he met last week. “I always enjoy the chat with Butty, we met by accident but I keep in touch with him anyway. He lives around the corner, bought my old house off me, I gave him a hell of a deal on that. I bloody did. He says I ripped him off.”

Perhaps, you suggest, that in the end the differences with Ferguson were natural, two strong personalities colliding. That when you compare his relationships with the two great managers of his professional career, Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson, he simply had more affection for the former?

“Yeah, I think that would be right. I think I liked his personality probably a bit more. And that’s nothing against Ferguson or anything like that. I think I identified with Cloughie a bit more because of the way he was.

“He was a bit different, a bit strange, but I liked the way he spoke about the game. I will always hold him in high esteem because he brought me to England, let’s not get away from that and he put me in the team pretty quickly.

“I think you can be a great manager but you can also be a good man. I think it’s allowed.”

If there is a sadness in the fall-out from his Manchester United exit and the breakdown of his relationship with the manager, it is that he no longer feels comfortable at Old Trafford.

“I’ve got a family, I’ve got a son and I always thought I’d go back and watch some games with him. Apart from two testimonials, he’s not been in the stadium since I’ve left. I’ve been back maybe three times, Gary’s and Scholesy’s testimonial games and I think I did one game for Sky, United v Arsenal.”

“On a free Saturday, wouldn’t you take your son to Old Trafford?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must know?”

“I really don’t because, to be fair, United would look after me. It’s not as if they don’t want me there.”

“You must regret this?”

“Nah, I don’t. That’s the way I am. I can be funny like that. It’s not just United, I wouldn’t feel comfortable going back to Sunderland, nor would I be comfortable going back to Ipswich. Forest, I’ve not felt too bad about. Went back to watch them at the City Ground a couple of months ago when Steve McClaren was there. I left Forest and it was okay, the ending was okay and I think that’s the difference.”

He laughs as he says this, like a kid who has unravelled a knot more easily than he thought he could. Other knots are more difficult. He was invited to last month’s banquet celebrating Ferguson’s 25 years at Manchester United. “Anne Wiley, the club secretary, got in touch, but I didn’t go. Everyone to their own. Martin [O’Neill] said to me, ‘You’ve got to move on’, but I wouldn’t have felt comfortable. ‘No, not for me’, I said. I did get in touch with Anne, didn’t just not turn up. The way it ended, the legal letter, I couldn’t have gone and sat there like everything was great, he would come in and we all stand up and clap. I couldn’t do that.”

He speaks earnestly but without malevolence, everything delivered with matter-of-fact neutrality.

You ask him how long he believes Ferguson will keep going? “It will be the manager’s choice when he decides to go. I don’t think it will be anytime soon. I think he looks well, he doesn’t look in any way jaded and even that defeat in Basel, as much as you might say it was a massive setback, it will probably spur him on to see these young players improve. Everyone thinks they [the young ones] are going to be top players, they are going to do well even if some of them are taking longer to adapt to the Champions League than they probably should.”

You suggest that United, unprepared to pay the astronomical wages demanded by the very best players, could find themselves behind City and Chelsea in the English hierarchy, the old aristocrat unable to compete with the nouveaux riches.

This is the theory that animates Keane’s loyalty to his old club.

“No, that won’t happen. Dismiss that straightaway. Just won’t happen. The manager won’t let it happen, the supporters wouldn’t let it happen. City still have a lot to do and you never dismiss United.”

He returns to the moment of his departure from United, that notorious interview with MUTV, and how it might so easily not have happened. “I swapped games with Gary Neville, I was meant to do Tottenham at home, Tottenham never win at Old Trafford, that would have been easy.

“But MUTV is dangerous, United get beaten 10-nil and let’s look on the bright side, let’s take the positive, it wasn’t 11. So I swap with Gary, I get the away game at Boro and it’s like, ‘Go easy on the lads here’.

“They were beaten 4-1 and I’ve got to say it was great that it wasn’t five.” That would have been easy, but it wouldn’t have been Keane.

In a memorable episode towards the end of the 1995-96 Premier League campaign, Kevin Keegan gave a passionate interview to Sky Sports in which he accused rival manager Alex Ferguson of unacceptable gamesmanship. That was the season Newcastle led the Premier League by 12 points on February 4 before it all went wrong.

He concluded his interview by saying: "I’ve kept really quiet but he [Ferguson] went down in my estimation when he said that. We have not resorted to that but you can tell him we’re still fighting for this title and he’s still got to go to Middlesbrough and get something and I will tell you honestly, I will love it if we beat them, love it."

The consensus view at the time was that by raising questions about how other teams would approach games against Newcastle, Ferguson unsettled Keegan and the emotional reaction of the Magpies’ manager demonstrated the cleverness of the Scot’s mind games. Then a central figure in United’s midfield, Keane did not see it that way. ‘I admired Kevin because he’s got to fight his corner and I thought he was spot-on. Everyone was looking at that famous clip and laughing but the reason they were laughing was because we won. While people might think Kevin lost out on that, I don’t think he did. I thought, "You’ve done right there, Kevin, defending your team".

"We won the league and everyone went on about the mind games and how brilliant they were. It helps when you’ve got good players winning you matches."

Keane believes not all managers were as brave as Keegan when it came to dealing with Ferguson. ‘You see managers interviewed after their team has beaten Chelsea or Arsenal, "We’ve won and Fergie will be delighted, maybe a bottle of wine will be on the way to me now". You work that one out."

[Hazy2]

I come from a Red family, even my brother thinks after the problem with the Irish boys and the horse ownership Fergie was shown up for what he is "Me 100%" only he was out of his depth", One day the myth that is Fergie might just like "Giggs" come a crashing down, not that the press and his mates do no know.

[feedthegreek]

thanks for posting.