Oh how Sir Alex Ferguson must’ve been incandescent with rage. A self-appointed managerial Deity who has  for years gone unchallenged in the world of football business suddenly found himself called a ‘hypocrite’ and ‘arrogant’ by Tottenham’s bullish young chairman Daniel Levy. In the same statement, Levy found time and words to also spotlight Rafa Benitez’s crude behavior around the desired acquisition of Robbie Keane. In taking both managers on so bluntly in the public eye, Levy has undoubtedly played a dangerous game. After all, they are both members of a quarter who behave like untouchables in English football, who believe the rest of the league (and English game) is there to serve them. Levy also left himself open to charges of politiking, that is to say, arse-covering. And then there are those, many upon many in fact, who are simply delighted that Daniel Levy stood up and said what no-one has had the courage to say before. Because the fact is that the impunity with which Ferguson and Benitez operate is disgraceful. This column supported Ferguson when it came to the Ronaldo/Madrid situation, but this column also forgot how may times Ferguson has done similar to others, including Spurs. The club’s pursuit of Michael Carrick two seasons ago trod the same lines as their stalking of Berbatov, and we will never know if the rumors of Gary Neville bringing a ‘Carrick’ Man Utd shirt to the 2006 World Cup Finals were true or nasty gossip. Indeed, so bizarrely brazen has their pursuit of Berbatov been, they felt compelled to run a story on the official Man Utd website about Berbatov’s agent saying he felt it was likely his client would end up at Old Trafford! 

And then came the rebuttal, Ferguson at first claiming Spurs would be ‘embarrassed’ if they took it any further whilst also curiously adding something about Levy being ‘funny like that’ or ‘that way’ or…oh, who cares, because the truth is I’ve been misunderstood anyway. JUST like Fergie in this instance. Yes folks, in case you didn’t know, only a few days after the rage and rebuttal came the curious confession of the Norwegian Man Utd supporters club who basically said they mis-understood Ferguson when he spoke to them at a supporters meeting, and that THEY were to blame. Convenient doesn’t even do it justice.

Then there’s Robbie Keane and Liverpool. Reportedly tapped up by a ‘mutual friend’ (get your googles out junior detectives!) Keane reportedly (note how we have to say that) told Spurs supremos that an approach had been made, that he wasn’t biting, that if the cub were willing to sell he’d happily move but that he would be equally happy to stay. Somewhere in there, more tapping came, more ‘happiness’ drained away, and suddenly, Keane was desperate to go and play for his ‘boyhood’ club (note: Keane has been seen at Celtic matches, not Liverpool ones). And so suddenly, from a player who on May 28th said he was enjoying the stability and enjoying life at Spurs and looking forward to a rumor-free summer, we had a player who was apparently becoming a ‘negative’ force in the dressing room, angling hard to get the move through and generally showing as much ‘love’ for Tottenham as he might a discarded tea-bag. Apparently senior figures at the club were ’shocked’ at his turnaround whilst at the same time acknowledging that with that amount of outside pressure, it was getting harder and harder to keep him from looking in that direction. All because Rafa, in a cheap two-bit dime-bag thief move, doesn’t want to pay the price tag so decided, instead, to unsettle the player in the hope of seeing him become such a thorn in Spurs side that they’ll sell him on the cheap. 

Who knows, perhaps the tactic will work? We have yet to see how strong Levy will be in the face of cold, hard cash. I know that many of us who don’t think like businessmen would rather take 5 million less for Berbatov and sell him to Barcelona than to Man Utd, and still more of us would rather sell Keane anywhere but to Benitez. Of course in the Moroccan bazaar culture of football dealings, it is odds on that both will now leave for close to 50 million. But what Levy has done is blow the whistle on their egregiously brazen arrogance and behavior. What will it achieve? Probably no more than each player getting the price on the their tag paid, as well as ‘outing’ certain players who like to think of themselves as club ‘legends’ and so forth. But if it only achieves those things, plus the satisfaction of satiating the hunger for many supporters to see their club stand up to this sort of bully-boy bullshit, then it was a whistle worth blowing indeed.

Finally, I must complain about the sanctimonious bore of a supporter, you know, the one who’s ‘rational’ all the time. Their reactions to the anger shown by many Spurs supporters at Keane’s betrayal is to say we all need to ’see it from his perspective’ and so on. OK, His perspective. Over 50k with some bonuses on-top. Club vice-captain. Hero. To many. I’m sorry, it’s hard to see it making any sense however I look at it. So if I wish to get angry about this sort of stuff, then kindly bugger off and allow me the courtesy. I’m not harming anyone, and Keane couldn’t give a monkeys what the likes of me think, though I’ll give him one guess. In short, being rational as a football supporter is an absurd, stupid and annoying decree, thus walk far away from people who try to impose such nonsense on us genuine supporters.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Football News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.