I am a proud Manchester United fan. I am a proud English football fan. However I am a hypocrite.
I hail Sir Alex Ferguson as the best manager in British – and arguably even World – football history. Yet, had he been appointed manager of Manchester United today and produced the results he did back in 1986 he would have been gone within a season. And I would have been there shouting for his dismissal like the rest. Like we did to Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, Ole and Ragnick. I don’t think anyone can argue with that.
Even by Sir Alex’s own admission he was nearly sacked in the 1988/89 season -where we were thrashed by the ‘noisy neighbours’ City 5-1 away, and banners started to appear around Old Trafford asking for baying for his sacking.
And then he famously won the FA cup and the rest is history. Or is it? If we take a closer look, that FA cup win was still 2 years removed from any further success from United. Would one FA cup in five years suffice today to appease fans? Well, a European trophy – granted not the big one – and a 2nd place in the Premier League didn’t save Mourinho.
And that was in half the time Fergie got. We were beaten 4-0 by fierce rivals Liverpool, went extended periods without wins, and suffered a period of six losses and two draws in eight games in the start to one season and despite promising the league title next year in 1991 – he never delivered.
Sir Alex did win the inaugural Premier League in 1993 – 7 years after becoming manager. What manager of a major club – or any club – would be tolerated for 7 years in this day and age? The point I am making is not to knock the early struggles of Sir Alex Ferguson, far from it. I am pointing out that success is not always overnight.
Since then the world has become ever more connected. We want things now, we want them at our fingertips – at the click of a button. The modern world waits for no one. But my point is that we can’t apply that to football. We have to accept that Football clubs are ultimately a business. A business needs a plan, and time to implement that plan. Big companies will lay out projections reaching out across ten or twenty years, yet we expect managers to come into a job and immediately produce results.
It is unrealistic. Back to Sir Alex, we United fans conveniently forget a particularly ugly time in United’s history in 2006, which I will get to.
Arsene Wenger came into Arsenal in 1996 and almost immediately had success (by that day’s standards anyway), he did infinitely better than Fergie did a decade earlier in his first few years at United. In Wenger’s first seven years he won the Premier League three times – including two doubles – and four FA Cups.
Ultimately, the Champions League eluded him, through mainly bad luck – you definitely need a dose of luck to win a tournament format in football. I’m looking at you Greece…
By 2001, Fergie had dominated English football by any metric. Winning seven out of all nine Premier League titles so far – and being runner-up every year he didn’t win. Winning the consecutive double and then the treble – his crowning achievement. The cherry on the top of his career, finally for the first time since Sir Matt Busby bringing the European Cup home to Manchester.
And hardest of all, he managed squad transitions, which are probably the toughest part of management. Where you not only build one winning team, but have to convert that team as players age and the next generation come through, into a new squad of young players that can also take up the mantle and win. You can become a victim of your own success, as you can argue Wenger eventually did, as you have to live up to the expectations you have built by winning so much.
Fergie had earlier put paid to this with his ‘class of 92’ – who famously came up through the academy to prove Alan Hansen wrong when he said ‘You’ll never win anything with kids,’ after an opening day 3-1 defeat to Villa in 1995. Under Sir Alex, Manchester United’s youth system was being expanded and he himself was known for picking out the best young talent from across Europe with an extensive scouting system put in place.
However it was approaching that time to transition again. Arsenal had stormed to 1st place in the title-race in 2001-2002 – standing 7 points clear – with United finishing outside the top two, 3 points behind Liverpool, for the first time since the inception of the Premier League. Eyebrows were raised but in typical Fergie fashion, and at the height of the absolute war between Arsenal and Manchester United that saw some of the best, worst, and craziest episodes in English football history, Fergie reclaimed the title in 2003.
But then a new contender entered the arena. Mourinho AKA ‘The chosen one’ joined Chelsea in 2004 and it became a three-way battle for supremacy. This was a drought that would see three long years without a Premier League title for Manchester United.
And if we reach back to the part of our minds that we probably scrubbed as United fans, or pretended we didn’t take part in or give credence to, we will remember that in 2006, as we had sat and watched Arsenal and their ‘invincibles’ achieve an unbeaten season. And watched Chelsea win back to back Premier League’s, murmurs of ‘Fergie out’ were muttered around Old Trafford, and hit the headlines in the notoriously fickle tabloid media, that Fergie himself had battled with since day one.
Fears crept in, was he too old? Had he somehow lost the secret sauce? Was it all a fluke and we had only dominated because English football had been weak at the time, and now the Premier League was becoming more European. Fergie couldn’t adapt? Was too stubborn to adapt.
After all, he sold Beckham on a whim. ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. Football is a changing game these days’. Are some of the arguments being laid forth. Others blamed the Glazers, and Glazer-hating fervour reached fever-pitch at this time. But all this has been forgotten. Glossed over like ‘Glazer out’ graffiti being painted over on the side of the ground.
Again, in Fergie fashion he went on to win titles three in a row. A feat he might have achieved twice had Aguero not broken hearts United hearts around the world in whats was arguably the greatest moment in English football history if you look at it objectively. He won five of the next seven titles available and again bringing back the European cup in 2008.
As well as taking us to two more Champions league finals where, had it not been for Barcelona and probably the greatest team of all time spearheaded by a prime, unplayable Lionel Messi, we may have earned more European accolades.
When ending his career on a Premier League title win in 2013 after citing personal issues, he literally took a mic and asked the Old Trafford fans to give Moyes, his hand-picked successor, a chance. And what did we do? We gave him ten months. No, not the seven years that we gave Fergie, ten months. Not even a full season.
So looking at the Liverpool fans who are saying ‘Klopp out’, and hearing the news that he is on ‘shaky ground.’ From a Man United fan who was ready to lynch Sir Alex – hallowed by thy name – Ferguson in 2006. Don’t do it. This man brought you your first EPL in 20 years, your first European cup since the heady days of 2005’s comeback of comebacks.
Klopp took you to two other UCL finals, domestic cup success and lost the title by a point in a 100-99 point thriller of a season vs Man City. Plus there have been some great signings for Liverpool in his tenure. You don’t want to look back in 10 years after a huge win and say ‘Good job we didn’t sack him back in the day eh laa?’
