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Wayne Rooney's greedy demands will spell the end of Fergie and his hairdryer
Last updated at 11:56 PM on 23rd October 2010
First, a moment of considered, heartfelt, empathetic, contemplative, respectful silence for the unholy mess that Manchester United found themselves in last week. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Right, got that out of my system. Now let me be serious.
I’ve been predicting in this column for the last two years that the endgame for Sir Alex Ferguson’s empire at Old Trafford is upon us.
And the Wayne Rooney debacle has merely served to illustrate precisely why that indisputably glorious era is almost over.
Feeling the heat: Sir Alex Ferguson
When the school bully gets bullied into submission, he has to leave the school.
Ferguson has been one of the greatest managers the game has ever seen. But he has also been one of its most unpleasant. And anyone who doubts that should have seen the extended version of his second emotional press conference last week, when he suddenly turned on some poor unsuspecting journalist and spat vile abuse in his direction.
This is what Ferguson does to people. He bullies, he spits, he abuses, he disdains, he belittles. He’s a despot. And he has been fabulously successful at it. But then, so was Idi Amin for a while.
When it comes to class as a human being, he’s not in the same league as a Bobby Robson or Bobby Charlton. So I won’t be shedding too many tears for the old growler as he faces his humiliating final curtain. To do so would be rankly hypocritical — I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me.
Nor do I have a shred of sympathy for the position he found himself in with Rooney. Given he has treated players like downtrodden pieces of meat for decades, it has actually been quite funny watching one of them suddenly do the same to him.
I’ve got no truck with Rooney. I think his head has disappeared so far up his expansive Liverpudlian backside that it will now take extensive surgery to retrieve it.
We’ve seen a lot of greedy, mercenary behaviour by footballers in recent years. But Rooney beats them all. He spends the last six months playing like a one-legged disease-ridden armadillo, then has the gall to say he’s too good to play with the likes of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes.
Wazza, a word in your shellsuit: you’re barely good enough to play with their bootstraps, you dumb little oik.
Then we come to his off-field behaviour, which has been even worse. The boozing, hookers, smoking, cursing and public urinating ... you name the idiot footballer cliche and Rooney has been doing it.
Yet rather than go down on bended knee and thank Sir Alex for standing by him, and protecting him, he stuck his arrogant chest out, called him a liar, slagged off the club and said he wanted out.
In a world of his own: Even by the tawdry standards set by modern footballers, Wayne Rooney's shameless self-aggrandisement has left a foul taste in the mouth
Horrible though this was, I can’t take the likes of Ian Holloway seriously when they hysterically raced to defend poor defenceless Fergie.
Do come off it ... this ‘victim’ has been bullying everyone else for the past 40 years. And when it comes to slagging people off, Ferguson is in a class of his own.
Watching him wipe the tears away as he revealed his broken heart the other day was priceless. It was like watching Simon Cowell weeping as he critiqued a useless singer. Stick to the Mr Nasty act, Sir Alex. It’s more convincing.
The reality of this situation was very simple. Managers used to have all the power and men like Sir Alex Ferguson used and abused it with impunity.
Big United stars like Beckham, Stam, Van Nistelrooy and Keane were beheaded humiliatingly when the gaffer decided they were getting too big for their boots.
And he barely gave them a backward glance as their heads rolled off out the back of the Stretford End. Now the players and their agents have the power. And ironically, it’s a Stretford who is going to be the End of Sir Alex.
Paul Stretford’s attitude is revolting. He is the absolute personification of everything that’s wrong with modern football. All he cares about is money and he’ll do whatever it takes to make him and his clients as rich as possible.
He clearly corrupted Rooney’s head and turned him into this grasping, hideous train-wreck of a human being with promises of untold oil-laden riches at Manchester City or wherever this hapless gravy train was hoping to rumble on to next.
Scourge: Paul Stretford is a money-obsessed blackguard
The fact that they performed the biggest U-turn in world sport is almost certainly linked to the harsh reality that I suspect nobody actually fancied paying £200,000 a week for a player who hasn’t scored a goal in open play for his club since March 30 and whose performances in the World Cup made a lame donkey look mobile.
But Stretford and Rooney have played Ferguson like a pair of virtuoso fiddlers and abused their power no more shamelessly or enthusiastically than he has always done.
By letting them successfully do it, Ferguson has finally thrown in the towel. The old Sir Alex would have rather shot himself than let a player treat him the way Rooney has treated him this week.
It was the last grovelling action of a desperate man who had already let United sell their two best players in the last year — Carlos Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo, both at the height of their game.
And who then replaced them with severely pale imitations.
Regardless of Rooney’s decision to stay at Old Trafford, does anyone looking at this United squad genuinely believe they have a chance of winning the Premier League or Champions League in the next few years?
Scholes, Giggs and Neville will be gone next year. The youngsters are nothing special from what I’ve seen. The goalkeeper is too old and making big mistakes.
Losing their touch: Manchester United's invincible aura is evaporating faster than Paul Stretford's hopes of a sell-on fee. The Red Devils threw away a two-goal lead at Old Trafford last Saturday against West Brom, with 39-year-old keeper Edwin van der Sar culpable for the Baggies' equaliser
United fans blame the Glazers because the truth is too unpalatable to admit. But I blame the manager, nobody else. For the simple reason that Ferguson hasn’t said one word in public to criticise the club’s owners.
So we must assume he is, as he says, entirely happy with their stewardship of his club and that, again as he says, they have always given him the money to buy any player he likes.
Now, either Ferguson really believes this or he is only saying it because he doesn’t want to lose his job.
Either way, he has lost it. Because a Joey Barton-like simpleton with an IQ of 45 can see that the Glazers have run United into the financial ground. They’ve no cash, period. And if Ferguson was as proud of the history and heritage of United as he insisted this week, then he’d turn his infamous hairdryer right on to the Glazers.
But he won’t because, like all bullies, he prefers to bully people weaker than himself. And the Glazers have the power to fire him. The hairdryer has been turned off at the mains anyway.
This was the week that Britain’s supposedly toughest manager rolled over to greedy players and bullyboy agents.
As a result, Manchester United will win nothing this season and Sir Alex Ferguson will be gone next summer.
Because nobody is scared of either of them any more.
More...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...#ixzz13EGdfhaG
Last updated at 11:56 PM on 23rd October 2010
First, a moment of considered, heartfelt, empathetic, contemplative, respectful silence for the unholy mess that Manchester United found themselves in last week. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Right, got that out of my system. Now let me be serious.
I’ve been predicting in this column for the last two years that the endgame for Sir Alex Ferguson’s empire at Old Trafford is upon us.
And the Wayne Rooney debacle has merely served to illustrate precisely why that indisputably glorious era is almost over.
Feeling the heat: Sir Alex FergusonWhen the school bully gets bullied into submission, he has to leave the school.
Ferguson has been one of the greatest managers the game has ever seen. But he has also been one of its most unpleasant. And anyone who doubts that should have seen the extended version of his second emotional press conference last week, when he suddenly turned on some poor unsuspecting journalist and spat vile abuse in his direction.
This is what Ferguson does to people. He bullies, he spits, he abuses, he disdains, he belittles. He’s a despot. And he has been fabulously successful at it. But then, so was Idi Amin for a while.
When it comes to class as a human being, he’s not in the same league as a Bobby Robson or Bobby Charlton. So I won’t be shedding too many tears for the old growler as he faces his humiliating final curtain. To do so would be rankly hypocritical — I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me.
Nor do I have a shred of sympathy for the position he found himself in with Rooney. Given he has treated players like downtrodden pieces of meat for decades, it has actually been quite funny watching one of them suddenly do the same to him.
I’ve got no truck with Rooney. I think his head has disappeared so far up his expansive Liverpudlian backside that it will now take extensive surgery to retrieve it.
We’ve seen a lot of greedy, mercenary behaviour by footballers in recent years. But Rooney beats them all. He spends the last six months playing like a one-legged disease-ridden armadillo, then has the gall to say he’s too good to play with the likes of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes.
Wazza, a word in your shellsuit: you’re barely good enough to play with their bootstraps, you dumb little oik.
Then we come to his off-field behaviour, which has been even worse. The boozing, hookers, smoking, cursing and public urinating ... you name the idiot footballer cliche and Rooney has been doing it.
Yet rather than go down on bended knee and thank Sir Alex for standing by him, and protecting him, he stuck his arrogant chest out, called him a liar, slagged off the club and said he wanted out.
In a world of his own: Even by the tawdry standards set by modern footballers, Wayne Rooney's shameless self-aggrandisement has left a foul taste in the mouthHorrible though this was, I can’t take the likes of Ian Holloway seriously when they hysterically raced to defend poor defenceless Fergie.
Do come off it ... this ‘victim’ has been bullying everyone else for the past 40 years. And when it comes to slagging people off, Ferguson is in a class of his own.
Watching him wipe the tears away as he revealed his broken heart the other day was priceless. It was like watching Simon Cowell weeping as he critiqued a useless singer. Stick to the Mr Nasty act, Sir Alex. It’s more convincing.
The reality of this situation was very simple. Managers used to have all the power and men like Sir Alex Ferguson used and abused it with impunity.
Big United stars like Beckham, Stam, Van Nistelrooy and Keane were beheaded humiliatingly when the gaffer decided they were getting too big for their boots.
And he barely gave them a backward glance as their heads rolled off out the back of the Stretford End. Now the players and their agents have the power. And ironically, it’s a Stretford who is going to be the End of Sir Alex.
Paul Stretford’s attitude is revolting. He is the absolute personification of everything that’s wrong with modern football. All he cares about is money and he’ll do whatever it takes to make him and his clients as rich as possible.
He clearly corrupted Rooney’s head and turned him into this grasping, hideous train-wreck of a human being with promises of untold oil-laden riches at Manchester City or wherever this hapless gravy train was hoping to rumble on to next.
Scourge: Paul Stretford is a money-obsessed blackguardThe fact that they performed the biggest U-turn in world sport is almost certainly linked to the harsh reality that I suspect nobody actually fancied paying £200,000 a week for a player who hasn’t scored a goal in open play for his club since March 30 and whose performances in the World Cup made a lame donkey look mobile.
But Stretford and Rooney have played Ferguson like a pair of virtuoso fiddlers and abused their power no more shamelessly or enthusiastically than he has always done.
By letting them successfully do it, Ferguson has finally thrown in the towel. The old Sir Alex would have rather shot himself than let a player treat him the way Rooney has treated him this week.
It was the last grovelling action of a desperate man who had already let United sell their two best players in the last year — Carlos Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo, both at the height of their game.
And who then replaced them with severely pale imitations.
Regardless of Rooney’s decision to stay at Old Trafford, does anyone looking at this United squad genuinely believe they have a chance of winning the Premier League or Champions League in the next few years?
Scholes, Giggs and Neville will be gone next year. The youngsters are nothing special from what I’ve seen. The goalkeeper is too old and making big mistakes.
Losing their touch: Manchester United's invincible aura is evaporating faster than Paul Stretford's hopes of a sell-on fee. The Red Devils threw away a two-goal lead at Old Trafford last Saturday against West Brom, with 39-year-old keeper Edwin van der Sar culpable for the Baggies' equaliserUnited fans blame the Glazers because the truth is too unpalatable to admit. But I blame the manager, nobody else. For the simple reason that Ferguson hasn’t said one word in public to criticise the club’s owners.
So we must assume he is, as he says, entirely happy with their stewardship of his club and that, again as he says, they have always given him the money to buy any player he likes.
Now, either Ferguson really believes this or he is only saying it because he doesn’t want to lose his job.
Either way, he has lost it. Because a Joey Barton-like simpleton with an IQ of 45 can see that the Glazers have run United into the financial ground. They’ve no cash, period. And if Ferguson was as proud of the history and heritage of United as he insisted this week, then he’d turn his infamous hairdryer right on to the Glazers.
But he won’t because, like all bullies, he prefers to bully people weaker than himself. And the Glazers have the power to fire him. The hairdryer has been turned off at the mains anyway.
This was the week that Britain’s supposedly toughest manager rolled over to greedy players and bullyboy agents.
As a result, Manchester United will win nothing this season and Sir Alex Ferguson will be gone next summer.
Because nobody is scared of either of them any more.
More...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...#ixzz13EGdfhaG
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
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