Turns out old red nose is more childish than I thought...

apparently it was on the players request. His relationship with the Preston chairman is very good, apparently.

 

Unfortunately this is the kind of petty, small minded, petulant act that "Sir" Alex Ferguson is all too well known for.

It seems Ferguson Jr still needs daddy to hold his hand and fight his battles for him.

It's not the first time SAF has behaved in this way. He still refuses to give interviews to the BBC because about three years ago, their investigative journalism programme "Panorama" investigated corruption in football and Darren Ferguson's name was linked with some very dodgy goings on in the transfer market.

Rather than litigate and clear little Darren's name in court..... which is what anybody who had nothing to hide would do....... SAF instead spat out his dummy and has since refused to speak to them.

Going back even further, I recently heard Nicky Campbell, of BBC Radio 5 Live tell how, back in his Aberdeen days, Ferguson became miffed with a journalist on a local newspaper and angrily phoned the editor of the paper demanding that they sack the journalist or they would never get an interview ever again.

He is well known for his petulant outbursts down the years. The infamous "hairdryer" treatment that he gives players who don't match his exacting standards, or walking out on press conferences or even refusing to take part at all if certain journalists that he doesn't like aren't removed.

A truculent, irascible, vindictive man whose pettiness knows no limits. The day he retires (or is carried feet first) from football will be the day something very nasty goes out of the game.

 

Wrong, it was Ferguson's son Jason that the BBC made allegations about.

Aside from that, Sir Alex is a legend who has the respect of just about everybody in the game.

 

I stand corrected on the Jason / Darren issue. Other than that, all comments still apply.

I'm sometimes amused by the use of the phrase "legend" when applied to people who are obviously still living. Are you suggesting he is a mythical figure, whose existence cannot be reliably authenticated..?

Or is Manchester United's record an unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical.


Legend... (chuckling).... dontcha just love footballing cliche addicts.....

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Well, I could have said 'living legend', but I'm not sure I needed to, seeing as my thesaurus offers the following words as synonyms:

celebrity; star; superstar; icon; phenomenon; leading light; giant

Besides which, he's the most successful manager in the history of one of football's biggest clubs; he divides opinion like few before him, being despised and adored in equal measure; and he is at the centre of a wealth of stories about his fiery temperament, most of which will never be verified.

Of course he's a legend, and football will be the big loser when he calls it a day. No cliché about it, although it's funny you should say that, seeing as pretty much your whole post struck me as a bit of a tired old cliché (to use a tired old cliché).

 

Morning

 

I'd suggest Ferguson is "one" of the most successful managers in the history of European football, but that's an entirely subjective argument. Some may argue he's not even the greatest ever Scottish manager of all time. Some might say Jock Stien (who won the European Cup with a team composed entirely of Scots, a feat Ferguson couldn't achieve with a team made up entirely of Englishmen), and who could reasonably have expected to make a better job of the 1986 world cup with Scotland had he lived was a greater manager. Certainly, Stien didn't have access to the financial / player resources that Ferguson has enjoyed at the helm of one of the world's richest and most fashionable clubs. He won 10 Scottish league championships, including 9 in a row, and 15 Scottish Cups / League Cups between 1965 / 1978, a period of only 13 years. In 1967, Celtic won every competition they entered, which sort of trumps Ferguson's treble of 1999. Stien's 10 League titles in 13 seasons, as compared to Ferguson's 12 in 26 years at Old Trafford stands up remarkably well, methinks.

In 2003, Scottish fans voted Stien as the greatest ever Scottish manager, in a poll conducted by the Sunday Herald.

If you're talking entirely about numbers of trophies won, it wouldn't surprise me if other managers in other countries could boast a similar quantity as both Stien and Ferguson.... one for the statisticians there..... it wouldn't entirely surprise me.

If you talk only about European Cups / Champions League wins, well, Bob Paisley won three, Brian Clough won two and Ernst Happell, Ottmar Hitzfeld and Jose Maurinho won it twice with different clubs. Something like eight other European managers have won it twice. Maurinho could possibly go on to equal, or even surpass Paisley's record. Where would that leave Ferguson's record in the bigger picture..?

When put alongside the achievements of others, Ferguson has certainly been very successful, but he is far from unique, or even legendary..... He is simply the lastest of a long line of highly competent individuals who have risen to the top of his particular generation.

His day is now. Others have been before, and others will come in the future.

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Fergie is a petulant child. Classless like the players he surrounds himself with. They feel entitled to success simply because theyve been successful in the past. Their behavior on the pitch and his on the touch line is shameful.

 

the media is sickening, I will NOT miss this guy at all.