Premier League 2005/2006 - Part 9

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IN THE match-day programme for Manchester United's game against Everton on Sunday, Sir Alex Ferguson wrote about the reaction to the club's current troubles and accused the media of making it personal.

In the Old Trafford press room, a couple of dozen reporters fell down on the floor and died laughing.

Because the truth is that when it comes to making things personal, Ferguson wrote the book on it.

The United manager has been making it personal for 19 years with the English media. So let's have a little less of the whining now he thinks he's getting some back.

Nasty put-downs, singling out individuals for vicious criticism, sneering, treating people with contempt and lack of respect - Fergie turned it into an art form.

That's why no-one was surprised when he did his lip-curling Sid Vicious impersonation yesterday and stormed snarling and cursing out of a press conference after 74 seconds.

Ferguson didn't seem to care that his histrionics would inevitably pile more pressure on his reeling side before tonight's crucial home showdown with Wigan.

Paul Jewell, the Wigan manager, had spoken generously and warmly about how Ferguson was the best boss this country has had for 20 years.

No-one would disagree with that, but Ferguson's puerile petulance ensured that Jewell's words would be utterly overshadowed.

His obnoxiousness is tolerated and indulged by everybody at United, of course, because the alternative is to point out to him that his behaviour is boorish, rude and ignorant.

Even the press have always treated him with the kind of respect and decency that he rarely returned.

The examples of his efforts to humiliate reporters are far, far too numerous to be listed here, but a few old favourites are worth trotting out.

A couple of years ago, for instance, a friend of mine asked Fergie a reasonable question. Even Sir Alex thought it was reasonable.

"That's a good question," he said. "But it would take a whole interview to answer it and that's an interview you're never going to f***ing get."

More recently, a reporter from The Times was escorted to the side of the Old Trafford pitch by the Arsenal press officer after a game.

The idea was for him to speak to a couple of the Arsenal players when they emerged from their dressing room.

The routine is deemed to be common practice at most clubs who do not have a raging Mr Angry for a boss but, when Ferguson spotted the reporter, he came charging towards him.

"Get that c*** out of my tunnel," he screamed, veins popping and eyes bulging. The woman from Arsenal and the reporter stared at him in startled dismay.

And when the sports editor of the Daily Mirror asked him, on the occasion of his 1,000th game as a manager, if there was anything he could do to improve the relationship between the paper and the club, Ferguson fixed him with a glare.

"Yes," the manager of the self-styled greatest club in the world said. "You can f*** off and die."

I've even got my own anecdote to add to the comic troupe now. It happened at a press conference in Lisbon last week when I had the temerity to ask Fergie whether he would be under pressure if United lost to Benfica the following night.

He refused to answer but he did look as if his head was going to explode. Then he turned to Cristiano Ronaldo, who was sitting next to him on the dais.

"We've got some right f**king pr**ks in here today," he muttered.

We'll excuse him that last one. As several people have pointed out, Fergie could plead fair comment.

But the wider issue here is that the legacy of a brilliant manager and a fiercely intelligent, fascinating man is slowly being poisoned by the bitterness and hostility that seems to consume him.

He appears to hold grudges against most people under 60, the entire BBC, every national newspaper, multi-millionaires who give him a free horse, every referee who ever lived, Roy Keane, and everyone who ever crossed him.

His outburst yesterday about how the press harbour a hatred for United was typical of the paranoia that has started to grip him in his decline.

The press don't hate United. Most of us veer in the other direction. And spend our time defending ourselves against accusations of bias from Arsenal supporters.

But when the club is knocked out of the Champions League before Christmas for the first time in 10 years, some criticism of the manager - however venerable and august he is - is bound to be forthcoming.

Some of my colleagues have already observed that it wasn't the press booing the team at the final whistle on Sunday. It was the fans, many of whom also feel he has no right to appeal to their better natures any more after he so meekly accepted the Glazer takeover.

Ferguson's descent into a caricature of a man with a persecution complex, a man raging against the world, is desperately sad.

He could be charming and amiable and funny, too, once.

I still think of an interview I did with him in his office at The Cliff 10 years or so ago as a privilege.

But the point was reached long ago when his vitriol and his taste for the role of playground bully began to tarnish the image of the club and damn its attempts to improve its public relations.

His achievements at Old Trafford and, before that, with Aberdeen, demand that he should be remembered as one of the greatest managers Britain has ever known.

But the danger is that the sourness, the hostility, the anger and the bitterness that are accompanying him into old age will cloud his reputation.

If you treat people like dirt, if you abandon the normal parameters of common courtesy, eventually it will catch up with you.

Will Ferguson, for instance, be remembered with the same affection as Busby, Shankly, Stein or Paisley?

I'm not sure. Too many years of making it personal might have put paid to that.