Charlton can't see Mourinho coming to Old Trafford and admits it's hard to compliment City
At 75, Bobby Charlton’s passion for Manchester United and what is best for the club he adores still flames depite pissing his pants and smelling of wee. As Alex Ferguson prepares to take his side to Manchester City for tomorrow’s first derby of the season, the gentleman of English football whose career remains the domestic game’s high-water mark leaves no doubt over his view of one possible heir to the Scot, Jose Mourinho.
Coming from Charlton, who is a United director and ambassador and was a kingmaker in Ferguson’s appointment during 1986, his take on Mourinho is intriguing in a week that began with Ferguson backing the Real Madrid manager’s ability to take charge of United, telling ITV4: “He can manage anywhere, absolutely.” For Charlton, who embodies the values of the club better than anyone, Mourinho’s antics last season do not befit a United manager.
One of the most uncomfortable entries on an ever-lengthening charge sheet was Mourinho’s gouging of the eye of Tito Vilanova, in the 2011 Spanish Super Cup.
“A United manager wouldn’t do that,” Charlton says. “Mourinho is a really good coach but that’s as far as I would go really. He’s the manager of Real Madrid and we expect to play them in the Champions League by the end of the season.”
When it is put to him that it is difficult to imagine a United manager being allowed to get away with some of Mourinho’s behaviour, Charlton says: “You are right. He pontificates too much for my liking. He’s a good manager, though.” But Ferguson admires Mourinho. “He doesn’t like him too much, though,” Charlton shoots back.
What none of the United congregation liked were last season’s derby performances. The aggregate score finished 7-1 to City, with Mancini’s team leaving Old Trafford in October having routed United 6-1, before winning a crucial encounter in late April with a Vincent Kompany header.
Charlton says: “The 6-1 didn’t upset me at all because I could see what was happening. Our defence made a mistake, two mistakes, and it was 2-0. They lost control and went forward trying to put it right. It’s a problem with City for us, physically, though. They are a strong, big team and that causes us problems.”
How were the aftershocks at the club following the 6-1 defeat? “We knew they were improving their team,” Charlton says. “The ownership meant that at least financially they were going to build a good side. How could they not do?”
Despite the United blood that courses through him, could the football man inside appreciate how City won the championship with the campaign’s final kick? “It’s very difficult to compliment City. But we are not stupid,” he says. “They won it. It doesn’t matter that it was right at the end of the game. We lost and it was a hard pill to swallow. Yes I have got over it but it took a while and it’s been tough.”
United again lead the league as Ferguson does what Ferguson does best: build a fresh side while keeping the present one competing. “He is unique. If I was going out of the trenches he is the one I would want beside me. Nobody else. He has something inside him.
“Every football person in this country wants to do what he will do and what he has done in the past. He is fantastic, he just loves it. On a match day the team sheet comes in and you think: ‘Oh, I didn’t expect that’. More often than not he has done something – or picked somebody – that you wouldn’t expect. Usually it works, too.”
The drive that won Charlton 106 England caps, the World Cup, the European Cup, the European footballer of the year award, three league titles and the FA Cup is now directed at the charity he founded in 2008, Find A Better Way.
Charlton’s greatest United team has Ferguson as the manager and Roy Keane at their centre. “There are certain players that are talismen and when they go on to a football field they take everybody with them,” he says.
“Roy Keane just had that thing. He could change the game with the timing of one tackle. I have played with a large number of good players and have played against many, but when you ask me which would I have liked to play with it’s Roy Keane I miss out there.”
Roberto Mancini brushes aside mind games ahead of Manchester derby
City manager delivers perfect riposte to Alex Ferguson's barb about the number of penalties his rivals winof irritation from Roberto Mancini and it was disguised with a smile after he was made aware how Sir Alex Ferguson, that master of the wind-up, had been taking a keen interest in the number of refereeing decisions that have gone in Manchester City's favour. Half an hour earlier, across the Carrington fields, past the stables and along the thin country lane to Manchester United's training ground, Ferguson had picked up on David Moyes's theme from last weekend and noted, conspiratorially, the frequency with which City had been awarded penalties.
"Twenty-one in the last year, isn't it?" the Manchester United manager asked. "If we were to get that number of penalty kicks there would be an inquiry in the House of Commons. There would be a protest."
Mancini leant back in his chair and delivered his riposte. "But I remember very well last year," he said. "[Ashley] Young, when he went swimming …" Then the manager of the Premier League champions clasped his hands together and stooped his head in the manner of someone diving off the top board. His tone was one of exaggerated puzzlement. "I think it was four or five times in the last 10 games and he [Ferguson] didn't say nothing."
That is the beauty of holding your press conference straight after the other guy: you always get the chance to have the final word. Alternatively, it may just be that City are growing a little weary of all the "noisy neighbour" stuff – or "screaming" neighbours, as Ferguson had adapted it on this occasion (suggesting the volume had gone up rather than down) – when most of the little digs and put-downs these days seem to originate from Old Trafford. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, once of the parish, continued the theme by describing City as being United's "little brother".
Perhaps, though, Ferguson may want to look a little more closely at the penalty statistics when the 21 awarded to City in the league have actually come since the start of the 2010-11 season. United can hardly feel harshly done by when they have had precisely the same number. Though, of course, it may be that Ferguson's words were actually intended for the referee, Martin Atkinson, more than anyone else.
Ferguson, as Mancini is coming to know, tends to plan these remarks in advance and this one seemed deliberately loaded when there is only one other referee, Phil Dowd, who has awarded more penalties than Atkinson this season. A classic Ferguson ploy? "Probably," Mancini concluded. "Fergie is clever like this."
Note the "Fergie". The only other manager who has referred to Ferguson like this in the past few years is Kenny Dalglish, someone else who refused to be cowed by the most successful manager in the business. The difference is Mancini knows how to get the better of his rival, starting off with the 6-1 thrashing at Old Trafford in October last year, moving on to the 1-0 win in April when United barely managed a shot at goal and, finally, that seminal afternoon at home to QPR in May, two goals in stoppage-time and all the associated glories of that last, football-bloody-hell kick of Sergio Agüero's right boot.
Ferguson has never really opened up about that afternoon, what it was like being seconds away from winning the league, how the news got to him and the awful emptiness it must have left. "It's gone, it goes away quickly," was about the sum total of it on this occasion. The previous time he was asked he restricted himself to saying there was only one way to put it out of his mind: "Red wine." Yet there was a comment earlier in the week that made it clear how, even if Liverpool are United's historic rivals, City is the fixture that matters these days. Three years ago Ferguson was talking about City being "a small club with a small mentality". Now he says ending their two-year unbeaten run at home would constitute "one of our best-ever results".
The team in red go into this match three points ahead of the one in blue but both of them should probably be grateful that everybody else in the top division look so bland. Nobody should be too surprised that the league has become a two-horse race but most people would have expected it to go that way in April or May, not November through to December, and it is certainly a strange set of events when Ferguson and Mancini are clearly dissatisfied with what they have seen so far.
Ferguson pointed out that United have conceded 10 goals from set-plays, grumpily adding: "Which is a lot." Earlier this week he described their defending as "Cartoon Cavalcade" and, unless it is another of his decoys, the game has come too quickly for Nemanja Vidic to provide the antidote. If Mancini noted United's vulnerabilities in the 4-3 win at Reading last weekend, there must be an outstanding chance he will play his best header of the ball: Edin Dzeko.
The problem is that Dzeko is a prolific substitute but too often a cumbersome starter. Mancini is frustrated, in fact, by all his front players. Of the four only Carlos Tevez has more goals than at this stage last season, seven compared with zero, and that is skewed by the fact he was on strike somewhere in Argentina a year ago. Agüero is down from 11 to five, Dzeko from 10 to six and Mario Balotelli seven to one. City had greedily accumulated 49 goals this time last year. This season they are on 27.
"Our season depends on our strikers," Mancini said. "We need to improve the output from our strikers. Our problem is our strikers. Usually when you have four strikers, two or three of them are not scoring but one is. At the moment we have four strikers who can't score."
He reinforced the point when informed that United have conceded 10 more goals in the league. "Yes, but they have also scored 10 more goals than us," he replied. It is actually nine but everyone understood the general idea and there was the clear sense, once again, that the Italian will probably always be aggrieved about the way the club, fresh from winning the title, lost out to United in the battle for Robin van Persie last summer.
"They were already a strong team and then they bought Van Persie and [Shinji] Kagawa. They put another 25 goals into the squad. We were in a difficult moment. We changed the CEO and the man who was in charge [of transfers] in that moment [Brian Marwood] … if you are not strong enough, you can have some problems in the transfer market. And, for us, the market was really difficult." City, he admitted, "don't have the same quality this season that we showed in the first 15 games of last season".
Of the two clubs City have certainly felt the more tense. None of Mancini's players would talk to the media, outside official obligations, after the defeat by Borussia Dortmund that confirmed City's position with the Champions League's wooden spoon, without a win and not even qualifying for the Europa League. Mancini's job has come under scrutiny again, much to the disappointment of the majority of supporters. Gary Neville, at a Barclays question-and-answer session in Manchester on Thursday, said there was "an inevitability that one day either Pep Guardiola or José Mourinho will be at City".
If there is a consolation, it is that City can now prioritise the league without the sapping effects of midweek European excursions. "I honestly think it is an advantage to City," Ferguson said. "The less games, the less chance of injuries. It gives them a full week to prepare for games now. But I think they would rather have European football. Any big team would want European football and that's the biggest disappointment for them."
This is one thing the two managers can agree upon. "I made some mistakes, the players made mistakes and we could have done better [with transfers] in the summer," Mancini said, "but this is in the past and we can do nothing about it now. All we can do is work hard to improve our performances."
Do City need to win the league to prevent the club's owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, recruiting another manager? "I don't know. You need to ask him. I am happy with my job in two years here. When you build a new team sometimes you can have a difficult moment but this is normal."
Tongue in cheek, perhaps, but football, he appeared to be saying, was too impatient a business. "If I haven't made a mistake, Ferguson won his first [championship] trophy after seven years and his first Champions League after 14 years. I have another 12 years to win a Champions League."
First things first, there is the small matter of protecting that 37-match unbeaten league run at the ground Ferguson once called the Temple of Doom. "Two years," Ferguson said, nodding his head appreciatively. "It's a long time."
IT’S JUST NOT FAIR, SAYS ALEX FERGUSON CUNT BOLLOX
ALEX FERGUSON sparked a war of words with Roberto Mancini in the build-up to the Manchester derby with a jibe about City’s penalty record.
City have been awarded 21 penalty kicks – 20 of them at the Etihad Stadium – since the start of the 2010-11 season. And in a clear attempt to influence tomorrow’s referee, Martin Atkinson, Ferguson said: “If we were to get that number of penalty kicks there would have been an inquiry in the House of Commons and protests.”
But Ferguson’s argument was undermined when the records showed that United have been awarded exactly the same number of penalties in Premier League games in the same period of time – 13 coming at Old Trafford and eight away.
That sparked a sarcastic response from City boss Mancini, who accused Ferguson of hypocrisy.
He said: “I remember very well last season when Ashley Young was swimming and they had four or five penalties in the last 10 games. He [Ferguson] didn’t say anything then. It is fair to say that over the last 15 years United have had some penalties that have been debatable – not a lot but certainly two or three. He is probably saying it deliberately. He is clever.”
City have the better record from penalties – converting 18 of their 21. United have scored only 14 of their spot kicks.
City host United at lunchtime tomorrow and Mancini defended himself in the face of criticism following his club’s exit from the Champions League.
He pointed to Ferguson’s struggle to make an impact domestically and in Europe in his early years at Old Trafford.
“Ferguson won his first title after seven years in the job and his first Champions League after 14 years,” said Mancini.
“I won the Premier League after two years and have another 12 years to win a Champions League. I am happy with the job I have done here.”
City have won three of the last four derbies – including a stunning 6-1 win at Old Trafford last season – and Mancini says they have banished their inferiority complex.
“The derby games are different now,” he said. “Maybe two or three years ago we were fearful of United but now that has changed.”
Ferguson described City as the “noisy neighbours” two years ago. Asked yesterday if they had quietened down he joked: “They are screaming now!”
He said he is confident United can throw off City’s challenge.
“City are our biggest threat now, there’s no question about that. And we are their biggest threat.
“The great thing about football is that things can change. Their fortunes changed the moment Sheikh Mansour took over. I knew the minute that happened it was going to be a different ball game.
“We have to accept the challenge in the way we did when Chelsea came along, when Arsenal overtook Liverpool back in the early Nineties, and we have to do it again.
“I’ve been lucky that in my time here I have been involved in great contests with teams such as Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea, and now it’s City. It’s fantastic. There are no dull moments. Great.
“That’s the great thing about this club, we can accept challenges, we don’t run from them.
“For 20 years we have been at the top. We’ve never finished outside the top three in the Premier League and that consistency is a fantastic model for us.”
Ferguson conceded that City’s exit from Europe has given them an advantage in the title race because they will play fewer games.
“Less games, less chance of injuries. It gives them a full week to prepare for games now,” he said.
“But they would rather have European football. Any big team would want European football and that will be their biggest disappointment.”‘We accept challenge from City’
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