Fergie's failings

"MEN are we and must mourn when even the shade of that which once was great has passed away." William Wordsworth was writing about the decline of the Venetian Republic but it will do as an epitaph for Sir Alex Ferguson, who has been having such a hard time of it of late, and who, typically, has sheltered behind a sullen and silly ban on any kind of Press Conference bar those he is obliged to give for matches in the European Champions Cup.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise. Ferguson's relations with the Press have never been idyllic. He has treated local journalists up in Manchester with often contemptuous disrespect, so easily infuriated when anything was published of which he disapproved. I know that he and I, though never publicly at odds, have hardly been bosom pals since some years ago when in my opinion he so rashly jettisoned three of his best players, Paul Ince, supposedly guilty of getting too big for his boots, Mark Hughes and the Russian international, right winger Kanchelskis.

In my view United missed them badly and were lucky that late in that season, Newcastle United, under Kevin Keegan (goaded by Ferguson in his public pronouncements), blew up and enabled United to snatch the title.

Some feel that Ferguson badly compromised himself and his powers when he announced that he would be giving up as the United manager at the end of the current season. But it seems to me that the blatant mistakes he has made are the true cause of his and his team's problems even if he has perhaps lost some of his capacity to keep his men in line.

It was clearly a serious error to get rid of the big Dutch centre-back Jaap Stam, guilty of criticising Fergie and team-mates in an indiscreet autobiography, and try to replace him with a wilting centre-back such as the now 36-year-old Laurent Blanc, who has been the weak point of the United defence ever since, badly lacking in pace. Of course, things haven't gone too well for Stam of late, since he has been suspended at Lazio for allegedly taking nandrolone, but there is little doubt that he has been badly missed, which explains why United are after another PSV stopper in Holland: PSV complaining, as they indeed did about Stam, that he has been "tapped."

You can hardly, however, blame Fergie for the ghastly series of errors by that flashy French 'keeper Fabien Barthez, giving away two ludicrous goals at home to Deportivo La Coruna and another pair at Highbury versus Arsenal, sandwiching those errors with a gift to Liverpool at Anfield. Not forgetting last season when you may recall he tried to bluff Paolo di Canio into thinking he was offside, in the FA Cup tie in Manchester. But Paolo knew better than that. He advanced, he scored, and United were out of the Cup.

But what of the Paul Scholes affair, which Ferguson surely handled in the clumsiest way. Having dropped Scholes from the team, he proceeded to add insult to injury by choosing him the following day, a Monday, to play at Highbury in a meaningless Worthington Cup match, arranged cynically by both teams when they had played the day before. United put out what amounted to a team of juniors. Scholes clearly felt insulted and didn't come down to London. You could hardly blame him; a two weeks' wages fine was the sequel. But to treat in this way so loyal, committed and generally self-effacing a player seemed inept.

Then, most important, there is the question of tactics. For reasons best known to himself, Ferguson, this season, has decided, especially in European Cup matches, to operate with just one striker up front in the shape of the vastly expensive Dutch international, Jaap van Nistelrooy. Not the ideal role for the Dutchman who has filled as best he could. But it places a huge burden on him, condemns Scholes to operate in a role quite alien to him and largely gives the initiative to the opposition. It hasn't worked in Europe, it didn't work at Highbury where Ferguson covered Arsenal with compliments, evidently making the best of what had happened: though with a sensible goalkeeper, perhaps it would not have done so. Roy Keane has generously tried to exonerate Barthez and admitted he himself has been below form: emphasising that Barthez also makes sensational saves. No real excuse.

My mind goes back to two events; of a sort. After a game some years ago at Swindon, when United's French star Eric Cantona famously stamped on the recumbent John Moncur, we journalists waited in the Press room for Fergie to appear. A long time passed; the jobsworths were afraid to essay the sanctity of the United dressing room. At least we were given word. Ferguson had left the stadium without a word.

At West Ham United some time later, at a Press Conference after a game, Fergie was holding court when a thin elderly grey-haired bespectacled man standing near me asked a slightly intrusive question. "I'm away," said Ferguson who got up and walked out. "Who are you working for?" I asked the man, who replied, "No, no, it's me bruvver, it's me bruvver!" He'd got his brother's ticket, wasn't even a journalist and had managed to terminate the Press Conference!

In his hugely successful but somewhat peevish autobiography Fergie lambasted his ex-player Gordon Strachan and ex-coach Brian Kidd; who wanted to sue but didn't. Strachan didn't either but for me he had a better case. But the thin-skinned Ferguson finds it easier to emit criticism than to take it. So it goes. And so does he.