Saturday 19 September 2009
It was one of those wonderful pieces of theatre which will be so missed when Sir Alex Ferguson has packed up his tracksuit and gone.
Someone had asked him whether Manchester United will ever go into a derby match as underdogs and for 15 seconds or more he eyed his inquisitor, the hint of a glint in those narrow eyes, and you wondered whether that individual or Manchester City would be on the receiving end of the full force of his opinion. "What time is it?" he said, at last. "I think it is time for me to leave." And as he clambered from his seat, an answer to that question... "Not in my lifetime."
It was such a measured and excellent response, a match for all the cool insouciance which has made Mark Hughes the winner of the phoney war which has been raging across Manchester all summer, that a part of you hoped that no-one would remind Ferguson that he couldn't leave the table just yet because there was another round of interviews to get through. They did. Back to the table he came.
Before the smart pay-off line, there was more of the evidence that Ferguson, for all attempts to infer the opposite, really does see City as a threat and really does resent the departure across town of Carlos Tevez, a touchstone for the rivalry which makes tomorrow's arguably the most keenly contested Old Trafford derby of them all. Tevez remains a major doubt, but he bore the full force of Ferguson's ire and was told not to expect a hero's welcome at Old Trafford. "He will get a surprise. It is a different culture nowadays," Ferguson snarled.
There was worse to follow for the Argentine. A suggestion that he was not worth the sum City paid for him - whatever that might have been. Would Ferguson rather Tevez was missing? "It doesn't bother me one bit," he replied. "Their best player is not playing. [Emmanuel] Adebayor has been their star player, no question about that. He has scored in every game and [his suspension on Sunday] is a loss really."
Here was a dig which begged more questions than answers. Why, if Adebayor is so effective, did United turn down his agent's attempt to take the player to Old Trafford this summer and settle for Michael Owen, who is yet to flourish. The two strikers' fortunes offer a paradigm for their respective managers' seasons – City generally impressive; United convincing in a few brief bursts – the second half at Wigan and after going behind at Tottenham.
Ferguson was abruptly up and out of his seat before the Adebayor issue could be put, though there was no lingering doubt about which opposition, Liverpool or Manchester City, he relishes most. "Liverpool will always be the derby game because of the history," he said. "When I came down here they were the king pins of England they had won four European championships. They had won quite a few league titles in that period from Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan to Kenny [Dalglish]. My aim was to do well against them. To try and turn that round. It's hard for me to go against history. The history is there with Liverpool."
It was eloquence of a kind only Ferguson, with his vast footprint over three decades of the English game, can offer among managers. But when Hughes sat down to speak later – his and Ferguson's discussions of the game were each precisely 18 minutes in length – the contrasting outlook was unmistakable. While Ferguson drew on the past, Hughes wanted to talk of future hierarchies. "For too long the top four or six has been set in stone and we're trying to change that," was the cornerstone of his case. "Maybe we should be given a little encouragement in that regard." To the neutral, there is something liberating about the notion.
The two managers also both addressed the Tevez "Welcome to Manchester" poster, devised by City, which continues to niggle away at Ferguson. "Cockiness", "arrogance," "naughty" was Ferguson's vocabulary for it. "They didn't need to do that. It was stupid. But they did it." Again, Hughes' levity was effective, by comparison. "It does seem to have really upset Sir Alex for some reason. We just take it as a bit of flattery."
Hughes communicates as well as he manages and there was perhaps a clue in one of the more curious aspects of Ferguson's commentary yesterday that the Scot sees that now. While the United manager, without Rio Ferdinand today, has been quick to pile the pressure on Hughes in the past ("It will be his decision how to buy. It's a big decision": May 2009) here there was only generosity of spirit towards him. The poster idea, Ferguson insisted, would not have been Hughes's anyway. "Maybe he didn't know anything about it. I'm pretty sure [he didn't]," Ferguson said. "It probably came to his attention when I mentioned it. Some people run away with themselves... whoever decided to do that. Mark was put in a [difficult] position."
Was the pressure on Hughes to succeed immediately? As opportunities to turn the screw go, this was a long hop but this answer came back. "I am sure he realises what is entailed in this game. He did a great job at Blackburn, under limited resources, and he obviously knew the time was right for him to leave. And now that [City] have spent this money, he will have a sense of possible achievement. He is experienced enough to understand all that."
Here was a sea change, indeed; a reflection, surely, that Hughes, with his calm and sure-footed approach and his attractive, worldly, counter-attacking side who play United's type of football, deserves some respect. To return to the beginning – no, there probably will not be a time when Ferguson, as United manager, will enter a derby game as the underdog. But for the first time in 40 years tomorrow, his club have something to fear in Manchester City and he knows it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 89944.html
Just dug this lovely piece up for extra pleasure if we win next Sunday.
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