Five reasons why Ferguson reigns supreme

It’s hard to believe that Sir Alex Ferguson is no longer going to be the manager of Manchester United. Given his relentless, almost legendary drive, I thought that he might have gone on for a few more years; in fact, I half-suspected that he would one day have to be carried out of Old Trafford in a box. On the thirtieth anniversary of one of his greatest triumphs – Aberdeen’s win against Real Madrid in the final of the European Cup-Winner’s Cup- it seems fitting to republish this piece from a couple of years ago. Ferguson’s fierce competitive streak might not have endeared him to some, but –to my mind- there are five reasons for stating, with confidence, that he is the best manager the game has ever seen.

1. He had unprecedented success with an unfashionable club.
Most professional leagues are dominated by a handful of powerful clubs, so anyone who can buck their local trend deserves to be considered an exceptional talent. Perhaps you’d have to live in Scotland to appreciate the scale of what Ferguson achieved at Aberdeen in the early eighties. To break into the Celtic-Rangers duopoly was a monumental achievement; to win a European trophy was simply off the scale. It can be argued that Brian Clough, in terms of over-achieving at unfashionable clubs, has a better record than Ferguson. His feats at Nottingham Forest and -to a lesser extent- Derby County were remarkable, but Clough doesn’t score in the other categories.

2. He had success over a sustained period.
Ferguson won promotion with St. Mirren in the mid-seventies and won his first league title with Aberdeen in 1980. 33 years later, he was still winning. Old-timers might mention Bill Struth at Rangers, who managed for 34 years, amassing ten league titles, ten Scottish Cups, two League Cups and various other Glasgow Cups and Merchant Charity Cups. With all due respect, some of these trophies don’t carry a whole lot of weight in historical terms and Struth’s Rangers (like Jock Stein’s all-conquering Celtic in the 60s and 70s) competed in a relatively weak league that is dominated by two teams.

3. He had success with different clubs, in different leagues.
Some managers have great success at one club, but fail to replicate that success elsewhere. Don Revie, for instance, was outstanding at Leeds, but did little of note away from Elland Road. It takes truly exceptional talent to achieve great success in more than one job and Ferguson has been a league champion and a European trophy winner with two teams in two countries. Mourinho has succeeded in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain, while Huddink, Robson, Trappatoni, Herrera and Eriksson (and probably a few others) all have very impressive CVs, but none of them score as convincingly in the other categories.

4. He successfully built a number of winning teams over a prolonged period.
Ferguson built at least four or five successful teams at Manchester United. Bob Paisley scores highly for his work at Liverpool, as does Jock Stein at Celtic, but Paisley inherited a side that was already very successful. He clearly took his club to another level, but his 1977 European Cup-winning team featured six players who had played in Bill Shankly’s last match in charge. Jock Stein, brilliant as he was, worked at a club with massive domestic advantages, playing –to all intents and purposes– in a two-team league, wherein any achievements have to be viewed in the context of an extremely lop-sided domestic set-up.

5. He won the trophies.
Nothing in the modern era compares with the haul achieved by Ferguson. He won thirteen league titles at Man Utd, three at Aberdeen, four major European trophies and god knows how many FA Cups and League Cups. It's a frightening total.

Some have suggested that for a club of Manchester United’s stature to have won the Champions League ‘only’ twice is a tad disappointing. Bob Paisley, after all, won three European Cups in five seasons and, since it is the major trophy in club football, there is a case for saying that he was more ‘successful’. But the European Cup in those days, much as it might be difficult for fans of Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Celtic to concede, was a knock-out tournament in which two successful rounds (perhaps against part-time Scandinavian or mediocre Eastern European opposition) took you to the quarter-finals. The European Cup was an easier tournament in which to be successful than the current Champion’s League. That is why teams like Malmo, Bruges and Partizan Belgrade could make it to the final; that is why teams Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Steau Bucharest could win it.

It has been claimed that Ferguson was lucky to survive at Old Trafford after his first three seasons appeared to lack any obvious signs of progress, but he had inherited what was, in effect, a social club that played occasional games of football. He recognised quickly that he would have to dismantle not only the team, but the whole culture of the club. That was always going to take time and, if the progress at first appeared to be sluggish, it now seems clear that Ferguson was far too talented and driven not to have succeeded, one way or another.

Some folk say that he wouldn't have been successful away from Manchester United, but that is a bit like saying that Roger Federer wouldn't have won the British Open if he had taken up golf instead of tennis. It's entirely hypothetical and pretty close to being pointless. On the available evidence, it would more logical to speculate that, had he gone to another club when opportunities arose in the mid-eighties, further success would have led to him moving on, because Alex Ferguson was born to manage Manchester United.

Thirty years ago, we might have guessed it, but now we know it; love him or loathe him, he was the best. The football landscape just won’t be the same without him.

A quick point (about pedantry)

Further to my post last week about the correct grammar to use while commenting on popular music, I was emailed by one correspondent who suggested that I had spent rather too much time lurking in what he called ‘pedantry corner’.

Without wishing to appear pedantic, my understanding of 'pedantry corner' would be that it is a term designed to describe an area or, if you will, milieu, in which the general practice (and celebration) of 'pedantry' is permitted and perhaps even encouraged by those who (might choose to) linger therein.

Perhaps my correspondent would have been better advised to have used the term ‘pedant’s corner’, which I think would accurately describe a corner (or, to be more precise, a nook or cranny) to which one would occasionally retreat (or retire) in order to consult various reference books (and also magazines and websites) for the purpose of resolving (or attempting to resolve) any dispute arising from a discussion on matters pertaining (or relating) to the arts, sciences, politics and /or popular culture.

And, just to be clear, by 'discussion', I do not mean an extended interval of interlocutory jousting carried out between persons located in the same room, or persons located in different places but communicating via telephone, 'walkie-talkie' or an internet connection. I mean (or meant) a printed representation purporting to reflect (or represent) a moderated series of opinions (or postulations) on a given topic, in this case the use (and, presumably, abuse and /or misuse) of grammatically robust terminology while discussing the merits and demerits of pop groups.

I hope that clears things up.

The correct terminology

The other day, I was talking to someone about music and he ventured the opinion that "Mumford and Sons are a pile of shite". Leaving to one side the question of whether or not I was inclined to agree with this assessment of the musical abilities of that particular combo, I paused before making a reply. Surely, I thought, both 'Mumford and Sons' and 'pile of shite' are singular terms? Accordingly, I believe my friend should have said: 'Mumford and Sons is a pile of shite', or perhaps: 'Mumford and Sons are piles of shite'. Or, to be more accurate: 'The music made by Mumford and Sons bears some resemblance to a pile (or piles) of shite’.

But eagle-eyed readers will already have spotted the glaring weakness in my reasoning. Yes, I had assumed, a priori, that he was talking about the musical abilities of the musicians collectively known as Mumford and Sons. But what if he was referring to the physical appearance of those musicians? What if he actually thought that the members of that group in some way resembled an aggregation of feculent debris? Harsh as such an assessment might have been, it would at least have been supported by a statement that was robust in its grammar and hermeneutics. After a few awkward moments, I decided to go with my gut feeling and settled on my initial interpretation, namely that my friend was talking about the musical abilities of the aforementioned combo (this in spite of having reservations about the incongruity of his comparison between the noise made by musicians and an essentially silent pile of waste). Even so, I could not help but suspect that it would have made things far simpler had he compared the noise made by the musicians known collectively as Mumford and Sons to another noise (perhaps, for example, a drunken folk singer with toothache trapped inside a malfunctioning industrial dryer).

For the sake of brevity, I granted his erroneous comparison while politely suggesting that he might have avoided confusion by framing his opening remark thus: "Notwithstanding the apparent incongruity of the attempted equivalence, the noise made by the musicians known collectively as Mumford and Sons bears some resemblance to a significant (and perhaps stacked) accumulation of human or animal waste material".

Grammar, I mused, can be such a minefield, or rather, series of minefields.

Incidentally, on the question of what constitutes a 'pile' of 'shite', I have long maintained that an accumulation of excrement dropped in one sitting by a large animal (an elephant, for example) should have a different status and nomenclature to a random scattering of fecal matter dropped by a number of smaller animals and then gathered into a 'pile' by a zoo-keeper or park attendant. At the risk of provoking the kind of heated exchange generated by my recent post on Thatcher-hatred, I would suggest that while these two 'piles' -to the untrained eye, at least- might appear to be similar, they are, in fact, entirely unrelated entities.

For anyone interested in exploring this topic in more detail, I've posted an article over at:

www.ohforfucksakestoptalkingshite.com

Death Party Blues

When news of Mrs Thatcher’s death was announced last Monday, I resolved to stay away from internet message boards and social networking sites for a few days. Alas, in a moment of weakness, I checked briefly into Facebook and Twitter and quickly felt the need to go and have a shower. I don’t believe in the perfectibility of humankind, so I could hardly be surprised by some of the stuff that people were willing to post on social networking sites. Nor would I make any particular objection to people behaving in the way that they do; it is perfectly within their right. I can only wonder, with a sense of incredulous curiosity, at the extent of the lack of self-awareness in the kind of person who can post a picture of themselves cavorting drunkenly in the centre of Glasgow, bottle in hand, alongside a status update reading:
‘The witch is dead – Rejoice, because she led the party of hate and spite’.

Much of the comment I’ve read in the last few days (both in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere) seems to fall into two camps: Mrs Thatcher was either the greatest-ever prime minister and the saviour of Britain, or she was an evil witch out to screw entire communities and destroy industries. The truth, of course, lies somewhere between these two extremes.

I was a teenager growing up in Glasgow when the Conservatives won the election in 1979. I found it hard to believe that ‘that woman’ had become our prime-minister. I continued to despise her throughout the following decade and can still recall the sickening feeling of ‘losing’ the 1987 election, her third consecutive triumph. It seemed that the country was going through a dismal, depressing period and I hated Margaret Thatcher, her party and most of the things they did. But the passing of time has allowed me to develop rather a different perspective on events. It is clear that Britain in 1979 needed a transformative government, needed a Thatcher (or someone like her) to bring about certain necessary changes, changes that would make our economy fit for purpose in an ever-more competitive world. Those changes could never have happened under Callaghan, Foot or Kinnock. The assertion that Mrs Thatcher ‘destroyed’ the old industries is conveniently simplistic, but ignores a massive elephant in the room. What she did was end the expectation that everyone else should subsidise those ailing industries. Those dockyards, car factories, steel mills and coal mines, with their ancient practices and protections, could not have continued operating in a modern economy because the conditions in which they expected to be maintained were not sustainable.

I suspect that what is fuelling today’s Thatcher-hatred is not fury at the so-called industrial carnage, not righteous indignation at the perceived class warfare and not outrage at her seeming indifference to the plight of those who were the victims of economic vicissitudes. No … what hurts the Thatcher-haters most of all is that ‘that woman’ successfully took the temperature of the electorate, time and time again. And it’s not just that she won; it’s that in her winning, she changed the rules of the game.

Accordingly, the antics of these demonstrators since Monday seems a tad pathetic, like a blind and toothless old dog barking at the distant memory of a long-dead postman. The Thatcher-hatred seems little more than an enfeebled cri de coeur, an impotent acknowledgement of the defeat of old-style leftism. Bewildered and punch-drunk from successive failures at the polls, these demonstrators still rage against their ancient adversary, desperate to blame someone for their continued failure to capture the imagination and the votes of ordinary people.

But as they enjoy their street parties and their silly campaign to push that song up the pop charts, I’d like to think that, in a contemplative pause, perhaps deep in the quiet night, there might arrive, for some, a moment of revelation, a moment when that public mask of bitterness and scorn might fall away; a moment of something approaching self-awareness.

In his poem ‘Snake’ DH Lawrence beautifully expresses the contradictory desires expressed by a man when he encounters a snake at his water trough. On the one hand, he admires and wishes to befriend the creature; on the other, he feels a compulsion to violence and eventually makes a feeble attempt to kill it. Ashamed of his mean-spiritedness, Lawrence ends the poem with a near-perfect expression of self-loathing:

And I have something to expiate;
A pettiness.

Song of the Week: 'The Abracadabra Man'

This track (taken from the first Eisenhowers album) is an acoustic meditation on the perfidy of politicians and con-men, all of those clever folk who can pull imaginary rabbits out of ragged old hats. Does the world really need another Napoleon? I think not.  

Most politicians are snake oil salesmen (that is a theme that could be mined forever), but the idea of the ‘wrecking crew’ -the private lynch mob employed by the political shyster in this song- was designed to take it into an altogether more sinister dimension. Producer Stuart MacLeod is a big Rolling Stones fan and I think he had the track ‘Sister Morphine’ in mind when he recorded the guitar solo, but otherwise it’s pretty much just acoustic and vocals. 

The track was also nominated for the 2002 Grammys in the ‘Most creative use of a creaking studio door’ category, although I may have just made that up. 

The Abracadabra Man        

1976 was another planet

For those not old enough to remember, 1976 was not just another year in pop music, but another planet entirely.  As evidence to support this statement, I’d like to present exhibit A, a song by Mr JJ Barrie.  JJ was a genuine one-hit wonder who hit the top spot in the charts for a single week in June that year with ‘No Charge’.  Almost without parallel on the cheese continuum, ‘No Charge’ was a paean to motherhood that left mere cloying sentimentality on the starting blocks as it blazed a noxious trail to the far side of Maudlin Central.  The story of the song features a little boy who asks his mother for some extra pocket money after presenting her with an itemised list of all the household chores he has successfully carried out.  Mum, rather than do the proper parental thing and send the little scamp upstairs to tidy his room, decides to make up a bill for all of the things she has done for him.  Her ‘bill’ constitutes the chorus of the song: 

For the nine months I carried you growing inside me – no charge

For the nights I sat up with you, talked with you, prayed for you – no charge

For the time and tears that you cost though the years – no charge

And when you add it all up, the full cost of my love is – no charge 

Yes, ‘No Charge’ was weapons-grade schmaltz, capable of inducing a lump in the throat and something in the eye at twenty paces, but somehow –particularly when the vocal from mum kicks in- this song still manages to elicit at least the flicker of an emotional response in me.  I realise, with no little degree of shame, that this probably says more about my pitiful status as a nostalgic, easy-to-manipulate sucker than anything else.  

It is remarkable to think that ‘No Charge’ got to number one in the charts; it’s not just that they don’t write songs like this anymore, it’s more that anyone who even considered trying to write a song like this in 2013 would probably be locked up, or at the very least laughed out of the early auditions of X-Factor.  

There are some who would argue that pop music in 2013 is trundling along in a rather self-regarding dotage, endlessly regurgitating and repackaging everything it has done before.  This view holds that pop music in 2013 is generally too calculated, too marketed, too buffed to a sheen, too soul-less, too pre-packaged to be anything other than mere ‘product’.  I don’t necessarily subscribe to that, but I do suspect that, whatever else it might be, pop music now can never be less than streetwise, smart and self-aware.  1976 –by contrast- seems like a prelapsarian golden age, an age before cynicism and auto-tuning, an age before the irony cat got out of the bag. 

On the theme of self-awareness, I suspect that some folk will be expecting my next sentence to read something like this: 

“Ah … when I was a lad, it was all fields around here.”       

And funnily enough, the song that knocked JJ Barrie from the top of the charts was ‘(I’ve got a brand new) Combine Harvester’ by The Wurzels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_1nkUbepaU 

It's probably a conspiracy. Again.

The level of bile and vitriol on the various radio phone-ins and internet message boards regarding the outcome of the SPL’s investigation into financial affairs at Rangers has been ridiculous, but sadly predictable. You get the feeling that, for some folk, the appropriate punishment for Rangers would be permanent exile to a penal colony on Mars. Others take the view that the Ibrox men should be forced to play in sackcloth and ashes, change their name to Newco Cheating Bastards FC and start all over again in the Paisley and District Amateur League Division 4 (North-West section).

What some Celtic fans require from Rangers is similar to what the aliens required of the earthlings in ‘Independence Day’. For those who haven’t seen that film, there is a scene which takes place in an underground bunker, right in the middle of an extremely hostile alien invasion of earth. One of the aliens has been captured and is under questioning. President Whitmore (played by Bill Pulman) asks the alien: “Can there be a peace between us?”
“No peace”, replies the nasty extra-terrestrial. “What is it you want us to do?” asks the president. The alien, not entirely keen to explore the notion of finding some common ground, responds with one word: “Die!”

Some Celtic folk hate Rangers more than they love their own club (and this hostility will often be mirrored on the other side). The hatred is visceral and completely beyond the power of reasoning. Some believe that Rangers are the ‘establishment’ team who routinely bribe referees, control the media, bend the rules, influence officialdom and, in all probability, run secret sweat shops and brothels populated by orphans, waifs and strays.
Since the ‘liquidation event’, some Celtic supporters have taken to arguing that there is no such thing as the Old Firm anymore, that there is no such club as Glasgow Rangers. The fact is, of course, that if there is a team playing at Ibrox, wearing blue jerseys and being watched by 45,000 people every other week it is -whether they like or not- Glasgow Rangers. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it’s probably a duck.

There are lots of reasons (some silly, some rather more sinister) for this weapons-grade level of hostility. From a neutral point of view, there are plenty of things to dislike about both clubs, but Celtic perhaps provide the more interesting case study. The club's officials and fans often exhibit a curious mentality which somehow manages to combine a sense of superiority and self-righteousness with a large dose of victimhood.

I first became aware of this peculiar phenomenon many years ago. When I was a lad, Celtic signed an English goalkeeper by the name of Peter Latchford. It was quite unusual in the seventies for a player to cross the border from the English League to play in Scotland and his transfer was quite big news. At one point, Peter came to our school to do a ‘question and answer’ session with the pupils. He was a perfectly charming fellow and handled the questions really well. Being a Catholic school, full of pupils and staff who were ‘Celtic-minded’, he got asked the inevitable question:

"Do you think that referees in Scotland are biased against Celtic?"

His answer, more or less in these words, was: “Yes, definitely. The players and officials at the club told me all about it when I arrived and now I’ve seen it for myself”.

So … here was a club that, within the previous decade, had won nine consecutive league championships, god knows how many Scottish Cups and League Cups, had been to two European Cup Finals (and a few semi-finals), and yet its players, officials and a big percentage of its fans thought that there was a conspiracy against it. Even as a wee lad, I remember thinking: ‘But if everyone is out to get you, how come you keep winning all of these trophies?’

The truth, of course, is that there was (and is) no conspiracy against the club, although there may be sound historical reasons to explain the sense of injustice hardwired into the Celtic psyche. The club has noble origins and strong links –of which it is rightly proud- with the poor immigrant communities of the nineteenth century. It’s fair to say that the treatment sometimes handed out to Irish Catholic immigrants is something that Scotland should be embarrassed about. But that is ancient history; or at least it should be.

Alas, a lot of folk associated with Celtic can’t shake off that historical baggage; indeed, successive custodians of the club have cynically tapped into ancient wells of resentment among a certain element of the faithful, allowing that sense of injustice to mutate into something uglier and sillier, something more like paranoia and a perpetual sense of persecution. Consequently, this huge club -a global brand that enjoys every conceivable advantage in domestic competition- has often displayed an utterly cynical mentality: it wants to win everything, it wants to be in charge of everything (witness their various campaigns against the SFA) and yet it wants the option of playing the victim card whenever it suits.

Celtic’s interpretation is that the SPL’s verdict on Rangers was lenient, so this gives them yet another chance to play that victim card and to send out dog-whistle messages about conspiracy theories to their supporters. They say that the Rangers case is nothing to do with them, but still issued a club statement stating that: "We are surprised by the parallel conclusion that no competitive advantage was gained from these arrangements"

Just to be clear, I’ll translate that for you: “Those dirty cheating bastards have exploited their establishment contacts to get away with murder once again. We should have been awarded five or six league titles by way of compensation”.

Lest there be any confusion, I should point out that I hold no brief for either half of the Old Firm. I long ago tired of the tribalism and the incessant bleating about how the rest of Scottish football is holding them back and how they would be much better off playing in the English League or the North Atlantic Alliance, or whatever the latest daft scheme happens to be. My preference would be for the Old Firm to join a two-team league (available only by subscription to a satellite TV channel) in which they could play each other thirty times a season and leave the rest of us to get on with 21st century life.

So, like that alien in ‘Independence Day’, my message to the conspiracy theorists among the Celtic hierarchy and support is quite simple.

What do I want them to do? Just grow up.