Fergy Still Cranky

After all of these years, you would think that the competitive juices of Sir Alex Ferguson have some what dissipated. After all he has won the Scottish League three times, the Scottish Cup four times, the English Premier League 11 times, the FA Cup five times and the Champions League twice. Surely someone who has done it all before not just once but many times wouldn’t be so upset about losing to Chelsea.

But maybe that is what is so great about him. That after all this time, he still hates to lose. It is such an anathema  to him that he has difficulty stomaching it and it has nothing to do with soccer betting.

I have no issue with him not wanting to ever lose, I have an issue with him being a sore loser.
Take his comments after the game: “The referee’s position to make the decision was absolutely ridiculous, he can’t see anything. He’s got a Chelsea player (Joe Cole) standing right in front of him and he doesn’t even move.
“That goal shouldn’t have been allowed. It was a bad decision, but there’s nothing we can do about it. You lose faith in refereeing sometimes, that’s the way the players are talking in there. It was a bad one.”
Manchester United get their fair share of dubious refereeing decisions. Some would say a lot more than others. So it comes across as a case of extremely sour grapes for Ferguson to make these types of comments.

You can’t have it both ways. Did he say anything when they were the beneficiaries of an incredibly long injury-time against Manchester City? No of course not.

But someone in Ferguson’s position needs to be a bit more objective. It simply can’t be a case of the referee being a bad one whenever a decision goes against you and being a good one whenever it does.  That show a distinct lack of respect for the opposition.

Manchester United can feel entitled to think they will win every game they participate in. That comes with the territory for a team of their stature. More often than not they do win but in the cases they don’t, they need to show a little bit more humility. They need to doff their cap to whoever has defeated them and say ‘well played’.

What we don’t need is more whinging and complaining. You take the good with the bad and considering how much good and little bad they get – this really shouldn’t be too hard.

David Wiseman writes for this blog. He also writes about cricket betting.