Payback time if Fergie fails

David Mellor13 April 2012

Alex Ferguson has broken the British transfer record three times in the past 12 months and has spent nearly £90 million in the past two years.

But last season was United's least successful in a decade, proving that it's not just in the NHS where spending money doesn't guarantee results.

But all credit to United. Though the shareholders didn't like it - one senior banker told me spending that kind of money at this kind of time proved football could never be a proper business - Ferguson finally got his man.

A year after suggesting Wes Brown was the best defender in England, he has signed a player who possibly is - Rio Ferdinand. United's defensive frailties have been obvious for two or three seasons, costing them dear in both Europe and the Premiership, but better late than never Ferguson.

Which brings me to the really interesting question: as someone who is spending money at a time when even the most profligate Italian and Spanish clubs have had their chequebooks confiscated, will he make the most of his resources?

Or will Ferdinand become another Juan Veron and will United's season be frittered away like the last one? As almost the only financially stable, expansionist outfit left in the entire Continent there will never be a better moment for another domestic and European double.

That would be the very least return I would expect if I had shares in Manchester United and had watched the profits disappear on a single purchase - not to mention the exceptionally generous contract renegotiations for David Beckham, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs and, of course, Ferguson.

I have a hunch at some point over the next 12 months, Ferguson may come to regret not retiring this summer.

Greedy agents with a licence to kill football

But whenever a player does badly he sits back and takes the money even though it is tantamount to fraud on the public. Chelsea's Eidur Gudjohnsen is in one camp, the hugely disappointing Winston Bogarde in the other, and every club has similar examples.

You'd think that, given the game's parlous state, agents would take a break from winding up their few successful clients this summer. Not so.

With cash flow diminished they are more frenetic-than ever, as Gudjohnsen's agent Peter Harrison proves.

Harrison told Radio Five Live he wasn't putting a pistol to Chelsea's head, but, if they said no his client, would have to consider his options. That kind of line comes straight out of The Godfather, doesn't it?

Harrison has told us he wants a shed-load of money for his client without revealing his own demands. This oversight should be rectified.

The answer, if given honestly, will be interesting to anyone who shares the view that football agents are a conniving, predatory, parasitic bunch of sharks.

Give FA's Barber the brush off

Lots of Chelsea fans banged on about it and I mentioned it in this column. But what we didn't do was complain direct to the Football Association, which has given these cheapskates a chance to wriggle off the hook.

FA director of marketing Paul Barber has told Chelsea's Onside magazine that less than 100 people complained out of 200,000 fans who watched FA-sponsored matches at the Millennium Stadium last season. Which he says, proves that "an overwhelming majority of people have been satisfied with their match-day experiences".

It proves nothing of the kind. It merely shows that most of us moaned to everybody except Barber and his mates - the authors of our misfortune. Next time we should jam the FA switchboard - and even circulate Paul's mobile - so he's left in no doubt again what a rip-off he is presiding over.

I have a suggestion: Instead of sitting in some fancy hospitality box he should watch his next Cardiff match from my sons' old seats. Please feel free to contact me Paul, because we'd love a pic of you being an ordinary fan for a change. But I'm not holding my breath.

The Wright sort of move

If he is as capable as some people have suggested he'll certainly have plenty of chance to show it behind Everton's rickety defence. Far better for him to do that than spend another season behind Seaman.

Which is why it would also be no bad thing if Terry Venables really does intend, as one notoriously unreliable tabloid has suggested, to sell Nigel Martyn and give Paul Robinson his chance.

Robinson, Wright, and especially Liverpool's Chris Kirkland are the future of English goalkeeping. Seaman surely can't continue in the national team, and Martyn and David James are at best stop-gaps.

Which is why it really was ludicrous for Kirkland to go to Anfield at the same time as Jerzy Dudek, who was always going to be their first choice. At the very least Liverpool should loan him out. If not, this is the exception that proves the rule - a time when an agent with the player's best interests at heart really should encourage him to move on.

A capital offence to stage the Games in Manchester

And undeniably it has cost a small fortune to stage, so let's hope the Commonwealth Games are a success. But for me the Commonwealth is an irrelevant and increasingly disregarded remnant of the Empire, and the Games are an undeniably secondrate spectacle.

I grind my teeth at the thought that, while a fine new athletics stadium can be built in Manchester for Games which most of the world will ignore, our masters couldn't construct a proper stadium in London to host an infinitely superior event, the World Athletics Championships.

The Commonwealth Games were a consolation prize for Manchester's failed Olympic bid which, like so many questionable ventures our leaders commit us to, was doomed from the start. I recall an International Olympic Committee insider being pressed on Manchester's behalf. At first he demurred politely, and then finally in exasperation cried: "I once went to Manchester, and I never want to go there again."

My father was born on the outskirts of the place, and I go there often, but you know what he means, don't you?

In preferring the claims of a provincial city over our capital, serious damage has been done to British sport. If this is indeed the last major sporting event to be hosted here for years, it will be because we put London last not first.

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