Thursday January 24, 2008
The Guardian
Sir Alex Ferguson has entered the debate about Rafael Benítez's increasingly precarious position at Liverpool by accusing the club's owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks of lacking "class". The Manchester United manager said for the first time that he believes Liverpool are out of the title race and he questioned whether they would ever be regarded as serious challengers while there were so many political problems behind the scenes at Anfield.
Ferguson believes Gillett and Hicks are to blame and, referring to "a closely knit and well-run club 20 years ago", he highlighted the manner in which the two Americans had admitted talking to Jürgen Klinsmann about replacing Benítez. "That was a bad piece of business on Liverpool's part, there's no doubt about that," he said. "At big clubs it's paramount that the board shows its class. That sort of thing can be very upsetting for a manager."
Ferguson made it clear he had sympathy for the Spaniard and he likened Liverpool's pursuit of Klinsmann to the revelation earlier this season that Tottenham Hotspur had offered Juande Ramos the manager's job while Martin Jol was still in charge. "As a manager there are a lot of moments in every week when you feel very much on your own," he said.
"People don't want to knock on your door because they think you're busy all the time when the truth is you can be sitting there twiddling your thumbs. You can fill your time by phoning other managers but there are a lot of hours spent on your own and, in moments like that, Rafa must feel very alone right now. The thing in his favour is that Rafa seems quite a stubborn character who can put aside emotion whereas Martin seemed to be more affected when it happened to him."
United return from their trip to Saudi Arabia today and Ferguson is convinced that Liverpool, 14 points off the top, no longer pose a credible challenge for the title. "They will concentrate on trying to win the European Cup rather than the league," he said. "I say that because there are three clubs ahead of them [discounting Everton] rather than just one. If it was just one club they were chasing, you couldn't write them off but it is very difficult to think that three teams could drop that number of points and be caught."
He also suspects that Benítez might have missed out on players during the transfer window because of the uncertainty surrounding the club. "The important thing in all of this is that the big clubs should be seen to be acting like big clubs," he said. "Most players would want to play for Liverpool but when they see a club that they think is topsy-turvy, with a divide between the manager and the directors, they might think twice. When the choice comes, they want to join a stable club.
"One thing for sure is that Rafa has brought in a lot of his players because of his Spanish connections. If, for example, an English manager was then to come into Liverpool, that connection would suddenly be gone." The tension at Anfield has led to mass protests in support of Benítez from the club's fans, reminiscent in some ways to the campaign against the Glazers that has been orchestrated by United's followers. The difference is that Ferguson seems happy under the regime at Old Trafford, where he is allowed the kind of power that is denied Benítez.
"I've been very fortunate because I have had good directors - people like Bobby Charlton and Martin Edwards - who always supported me very well," Ferguson said of his 21 years at Old Trafford. "There have been times when we have had to budget but, on the whole, I have never been refused money and I have more or less got any player I wanted. Arsène Wenger has always had great support at Arsenal as well. So there's unity there. And that's right. You should allow a manager to get on with his job."
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