4 April 24, 2022The Sunday Times
Football Premier League
about the sale of the bloke. (I have to
say, if I had £80 million to spend,
Harry Maguire wouldn’t be high up
my shopping list. But the price was
hardly his fault, was it?)
And then, just when Maguire
thought it couldn’t get any worse,
one of his own team-mates — the
spectacularly useless Eric Bailly —
tweets his support for a bloke who
wants Maguire dropped. Sheesh, he
may be flawed, Eric, but he’s not in
your league, mate.
What is it about him that causes
such a visceral reaction? Old Slab-
head, as he is almost universally
called by his social media critics,
didn’t help himself with his
behaviour on Mykonos a few years
back. Charged with, among other
things, assaulting a Greek copper and
bribery, Maguire was convicted but
then appealed immediately and,Rod
Liddle
Maguire is just a
convenient
conduit for
cry-baby fans
with IQ of a
shrubbery
Is there anybody left in the world
with a kind thing to say about Harry
Maguire? I can’t think, offhand, of
any player who has engendered such
odium among his own team’s
supporters simply for the act of
playing for them.
Some players do indeed inflame
the passions, but usually of
opposition fans. Harry — a man with
42 appearances for England — seems
to have the entirety of the red half of
Manchester shrieking abuse at
him. It is one thing to lament the
performance of one of your own
players after an embarrassing
defeat, but it is surely another to
tell him there are three bombs
placed in his house and
that he will be killed if he
doesn’t get out of town.
This is what
happened to Maguirelast week. One moment it’s the usual
stuff about how useless he is, next it’s
72 hours to leave Manchester,
warnings of high explosives and
death threats. Escalated quickly, no?
He sped back from United’s
training ground to his Cheshire
home, collected his somewhat
discombobulated family and they are
now all staying in a “safe house”.
The stuff online is indeed
rancorous and vicious and uniquely,
in my experience, there is no voice
for the defence.
Stuff like this, from the United
Peoples TV: “Every time I watch
Harry Maguire defend, my life
expectancy drops by a year,” from
one bloke. And: “What Maguire
brings to the team — own goals, goals
for the opposing team, and injuries to
his own team-mates.”
There’s a whole movement ofMaguire has the entirety of the red
half of Manchester attacking himthem under the hashtag
#Maguireout, spewing out hatred and
vilification. Remarkably, on the
United Peoples channel, rival fans
have put aside their usual disdain for
the supporters of United and joined
in the attack — fans from the noisy
neighbours, from Liverpool and, of
course, from Leicester City, gloatingTen Hag’s
first big call
will be on
Ronaldo’s
future at
the clubS
ir Alex Ferguson tends not
to read sports books. In his
downtime he prefers to
escape from the world that
had been his life. There is,
though, one sports book
that Ferguson cherishes,
David Maraniss’s biography
of Vince Lombardi, When Pride Still
Mattered. Lombardi is the most
celebrated head coach in NFL
history, having won five
championships in the 1960s,
including the first two Super Bowls,
with the Green Bay Packers.
In his own autobiography,
Ferguson explained how he felt when
reading Maraniss’s tome. “I was
thinking, ‘That’s me he’s writing
about, I’m just like Lombardi.’ The
obsession. I could identify closely
with one of Lombardi’s greatest
sayings: ‘We didn’t lose the game, we
just ran out of time.’ ”
Lombardi was a force of nature.
So, too, was Ferguson.
Lombardi left Green Bay in 1968 to
coach the Washington Redskins. The
Packers then fell from the heights.
They could not pick up where
Lombardi left off, even when
coached by two of his great disciples,
Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg. Twenty-
nine years passed before the Packers
won another Super Bowl.
Ferguson spent almost 27 years at
Manchester United. Thirteen Premier
Leagues. Two Champions Leagues.
In his last season, 2012-13, the team
won the title with 11 points to spare.
Then United fell from the heights.
They are still falling. Their interim
manager, Ralf Rangnick, says the
team need an “open heart
operation”.
The surprise would be that the
surgeon found a heart. This is the
ninth post-Ferguson season and the
worst. Why should the Packers have
gone through their dark age after
Lombardi left and the same thing
happen at United after Ferguson
called it a day? Mostly because the
dynasties were built on the vision
and drive of one man. They led and
the organisation followed. They left
and the organisations they left
behind were leaderless.
What Lombardi and Ferguson
couldn’t do was fold up the blueprint
and insert it into a baton to be passed
on to the next man. On May 8, 2013,
Ferguson announced his retirement.
The next day David Moyes became
the new manager, almost as though
employing another Glaswegianwould do the trick. So keen were the
club to make us believe they had
chosen the right man, they said he’d
been given a six-year contract.
After Moyes was sacked ten
months later, it transpired he was on
a one-year rolling contract, which
entitled him to one year’s salary after
being axed. The club lurched from
one manager to another, praying for
someone to find what had been lost.
The problem lay not in the managers
but in the boardroom.
The void left by Ferguson was
deepened by the departure of David
Gill, the chief executive, at the same
time. Ed Woodward, the executive
vice-chairman, soon became the
most influential voice, and was
trusted by the Glazer family to take
the club forward. Keen to do
things his way, Woodward
seldom reached out to
Ferguson or Gill. That was a
damning mistake.When the history of the post-
Ferguson decade is written, a chapter
will be devoted to the comings and
goings of Paul Pogba. United lured
the 16-year-old from Le Havre in
2009 and then lost him to Juventus
three years later, having failed to get
the France player to sign a new deal.
Ferguson felt Pogba had not behaved
properly and thought United would
be better off without him.
At Juventus, Pogba proved to be an
important midfielder in a team that
won four consecutive Serie A titles
and reached a Champions League
final. In the summer of 2016,
Woodward wanted to sign a player
who would show United’s
commercial partners and their fans
that the club were prepared to buy
the most expensive players. They
paid £89 million for Pogba, a
world record at the time. Over
the past six seasons Pogba’s
performance level and all-
round attitude validated
Ferguson’s original reservations.
Rangnick says that Pogba, now
out of action with a calf injury,
has played his last game in a
United shirt. He will leave
on a free transfer at the
end of the season.
Without a plan for
Pogba, United allowed
their £89 million asset to
plummet to zero whileDavid
Walsh
To build a dynasty like
Ferguson’s, United’s
new manager also
needs drive, vision
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