| Little Pea reinvigorates Sir Alex Ferguson's lust for life | Barney Ronay Manchester United's manager has a knack with overseas players and Chicharito is proving the old touch is still thereIt is a mark of football's capacity to renew and reinvent and frantically reupholster that the late winner scored by Javier 'Chicharito' Hernández at Valencia in midweek was all it took to transform Sir Alex Ferguson, in those few moments, from an increasingly frayed and troubled, red‑faced, spittle-flecking ancestral, touchline monolith into a reinvigorated, future-proofed, cannily cutting-edge, red-faced, spittle flecking, ancestral touchline monolith.There was a fresh flowering in his cheeks when he later discussed his wonderful, his own, Chicharito. "The way he took his chance, it was like shelling peas," Ferguson said, appearing, as he can on these occasions, jarringly sweet and doting. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fresh-faced, new-favourite-toy young player can have a reanimating effect on even the most beaten-down and spatchcocked dug-out grump. This already looks like a beautiful relationship in the offing – and one that Ferguson probably needs, too.It is important to remember that young, slippery, talented foreign players are still the most perplexing challenge for a manager. In our island-football culture players are still divided into two groups: normal and foreign.The foreigner must be addressed. He must be mastered. With ageing managers their nose for foreigners – the foreigner instinct – is often the first thing to go, like an old dog's sense of smell or the steering on a rust-peppered Rover estate.Many successful English managers were effectively killed off by the first great wave of foreigners. Howard Wilkinson, the last to win the league, never grasped the new world. Instead he found himself lassoed and bound, Gulliver-like, by the foreigners' tiny hands, quick feet and alien skill sets.Over time we learnt some basic rules. Russians are complex. A Portuguese may fade. Don't overpay for a Scandinavian. Your club's first Brazilian will be a disappointment. In fact, like port always being passed to the left, a Brazilian should only ever arrive from the West. Never go East: the fossil-fuel funded, post-Soviet Brazilian tends to age badly, glove-bound and tight‑chafed, wizened by winter.Foreigners have always been important for Ferguson who alone among top managers, straddles the pre- and post-foreigner eras.While other modern managers focus on massed coaching staffs as central to their dug-out identity – witness the many fluffers and groupies of José Mourinho's entourage – Ferguson is careless with his assistants. Mike Phelan already has the air of a faithful mid-period second wife, destined to Hoover and bake and look pinched and troubled in his apron, before obediently disappearing to live in a bungalow in Bridport.For Ferguson it is instead a mastery of the foreign, a refusal to be outflanked, that has been central to his professional thrust. Not that there haven't been some disasters. At times his forays into the foreign can even seem a little hobby-ish and derivative: the Makelele-cartoon Eric Djemba-Djemba, the Thierry Henry-ish stab with David Bellion. Paying £28m for Juan Sebastián Verón was like buying a big flash yellow motorbike that ends up just sitting in your front garden looking pointlessly sleek for a couple of years.During the recent scouting trip to Valencia it was hard to shake the image of Ferguson looking rather glazed and awkward in the stands beneath his gift-shop sombrero, like the assistant manager of a regional double-glazing firm peer-pressured into performing a stiff-backed limbo at a Sandals Jamaican beach party.But the hits have outweighed the misses and in many ways Ferguson has measured out his reign in an unbroken lineage of key foreigners. The first was Eric Cantona: the Scot's first Statement Foreigner, a show of regal pan-European modernity to be paraded Kong-like past the gasping crowds, flexing his furred biceps, magnificently devouring a banana. After which the baton of key foreigner arguably passed to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who seemed to say: foreigners? No big deal. We source them. We nurture them. They're a bit like us. Most recently Cristiano Ronaldo became the central figure as Ferguson's player pool took on a Latin and southern European shade, Bebé-ridden and Anderson‑inflected.The old polarity with Arsène Wenger still exists here. Even now Wenger retinas his aura as the master of all foreigners, curator of a frictionless poly‑lingual bazaar peopled by Syldavians, Etruscans, Wookiees, Smurfs. This is not without its ongoing ructions and resentments. The current Arsenal goalkeeper debate (it is a proper debate: on Thursday night Sky Sports News had a scrolling message that read, "Where do you stand on the Arsenal goalkeeper debate?" – so it must be) has been seized upon with barely disguised glee as a coded case of foreigner confusion.Even Wenger suffers, it seems, with his oddly excitable goalkeepers, these cartwheeling spiky-haired showmen with their air of frazzled defiance.Despite Wenger's fluency in this area, Ferguson's relationship with foreign players still feels somehow more urgent and personal. It seems significant that there has recently been a vacancy in the role of pet foreigner. Could Chicharito be the new project? He is certainly an appealing figure, an instant, fearless finisher, unusually limber in his leggy athleticism. They look good together, too, in an endearing, slipper-fetching, Wallace and Gromit-ish kind of way. Either way, in a season of tedious Rooney-blah and Glazer-wrangle, it is very nice to see Ferguson with a familiar spring in his step.Sir Alex FergusonManchester UnitedBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Wigan sink 10-man Wolves Wigan climbed out of the Barclays Premier League relegation zone with a 2-0 victory over 10-man Wolverhampton at the DW Stadium. foxsports.com.au |
Liverpool takeover: Roy Hodgson's job is safe, says new owner John W Henry New owner John W Henry has assured under-pressure Roy Hodgson that his job at Anfield as manager is safe. telegraph.co.uk |
Rafael Benitez Uses Proverb to Criticise Liverpool's Purslow MILAN (Reuters) - Inter Milan coach Rafael Benitez used a Spanish proverb to attack Liverpool's previous owners and managing director Christian Purslow on Tuesday while springing a surprise in his squad to face Tottenham Hotspur. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Fiver | Wounded Ferg, and Mangled by Flying Heffalumps | Barry Glendenning and Paul Doyle Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm(ish), or if your usual copy has stopped arrivingWAYNING ON FERGIE'S PARADEOver the past couple of decades covering Manchester United press conferences, English football writers must have thought they'd sat before every Lord Ferg there is to see: Angry Ferg, Belligerent Ferg, Cagey Ferg, Indignant Ferg, Caustic Ferg, Morose Ferg, Good Humoured Leaning Back With His Hands Behind His Head Ferg, eh ... Mike Phelan and an Empty Chair. But after 263 years in the job, the Manchester United manager today surprised hacks by reaching deep into his repertoire and unveiling a brand new, slightly worrying version: Wounded Wistful Sympathy-garnering Ferg.Although the press conference was staged ahead of Manchester United's Big Cup match against Bursaspor, talk of Fergie's plans to contain Turkish striker Sercan Yildirim was mysteriously conspicuous by its absence. Instead, the assembled hacks sat in slack-jawed astonishment as their occasional nemesis appeared to deliver what seemed like a suspiciously honest, full and frank statement about the current tsunami of nonsensical speculation surrounding the future of Tabloid Wayne.Announcing that his out-of-form striker's Mr 15% had told Man Utd chief exec David Gill that Wayne was not interested in signing another contract with United, Wounded Ferg looked genuinely hurt as he revealed the "terribly disappointing news" that the tabloidese prefix "wantaway" could now legitimately go before his player's name every day for the next three-and-a-half months had left him "shocked" then added that he'd "had a meeting with [Rooney] and he intimated in his own way that he wanted away".Looking more morose the further down his list of scribbled "facts" he read, Ferg said that he "hadn't had an argument with Wayne Rooney" but was "disappointed" that the player had told reporters he wasn't injured "because we sent him for a scan and he needed treatment." An increasingly crestfallen Ferg then insisted "the door is still open for Wayne" if he changed his mind, failing to add if the door in question was the same one that was still open behind him in order to facilitate a quick getaway without having to answer any questions."I can't answer any question about why he's doing it – I can speculate, I can offer opinions but it won't matter a dicky bird," he moaned, moments before his exit. "We're as bemused as anyone can be because we can't quite understand why he might want to leave." With Fergie having delivered a soliloquy Olivier himself would be proud of, the ball now firmly in Rooney's court and speculation rampant about his next move, the Fiver can think of a several million reasons why the player might want to leave a cash-knacked club that can't afford to pay him the massive signing-on fee and £300,000-per-week wages he could conceivably command elsewhere. But it would be crass to suggest his actions are money-motivated at this difficult time.QUOTE OF THE DAY"We have a saying in Spanish, which is: 'White liquid in a bottle has to be milk' ... You will know who is to blame [for the Liverpool saga]. White liquid in a bottle. If I see John the milkman in the Wirral, where I was living, with this bottle, I'd say, 'It's milk, sure'" – Rafa BenÃtez finally finds the mastermind behind Liverpool's woes: John the milkman.CESC WAIT?The visit of Crozilian striker Eduardo to the Emirates Stadium tonight for Shakhtar Donetsk's Big Cup tryst with Arsenal will trigger poignant memories for all fans of the most popular club in Islington after Koko, Underworld and the Quaff and Spew. While it is perhaps inevitable that the occasion will cause Arsene Wenger's consciousnessto be invaded by memories of precious limbs being mangled by flying heffalumps, it could be important for the future of at least one young Catalan that Arsenal's manager bears in mind the fact that oafish players are not the only sources of injury. Managers with clumsy timing can also do damage.Wenger goofed last December when, by his own admission, he took a risk and thrust Cesc Fabregas back into the fray against Aston Villa. As it turned out, the midfielder suffered a recurrence of his hamstring injury and missed the next three weeks. Arsenal dropped points against Everton, the only half-decent side that they faced during that period.Now, with Fabregas back in the squad having again missed several weeks with hamstring-twang, Wenger finds himself in a similar position to the one he did last December – should he or shouldn't he play an on-the-back Fabregas? "It will be whether I take a gamble or not, because Cesc has been out for a long time," explained Wenger. Given that Arsenal are already pretty much guaranteed to progress in Big Cup and that on Saturday they clash with Manchester City, who represent the next biggest threat to Arsenal's title aspiration after Chelsea, Arsenal's keepers and Arsenal's centre-backs, it might be construed as reckless to start with Fabregas tonight. Indeed, even if Fabregas were fully match-fit, it might make more sense to keep Jack Wilshere in the starting line-up, if only because his tackling will surely frighten Eduardo and co.£66 HAT-TRICK OF FREE BETS WITH BLUE SQUAREClick here to find out more.FIVER LETTERS"Does anyone else have a grudging respect for Lord Ferg after his press conference today? Imagine having to constantly deal with players who think £100,000-a-week isn't enough and are always wanting more. If only he was always this honest and humble" - Tom Richardson."Re: Lord Ferg's comments at the Unicef launch event being 'a message to you Rooney', has he also attributed Rooney's poor form to having done 'too much too young'?" – Gary McGuinness."Re: Tim Lovejoy's romantic playlist (yesterday's Fiver). I thought I'd give a female perspective. I'm Waiting For The Man?! Tim hits the spot here: there is nothing, but nothing, more romantic than a junkie. Clearly he's something of a literalist. I'm beginning to suspect Tim has a secret timed 'bedtime' playlist climaxing in the Pixies' Here Comes Your Man" – Louise Wright."Re: Colin Murray misinterpreting a joke cigar at a Man City game (yesterday's Fiver). I have sympathy with Colin here: I thought the City fan was paying homage to Joey Barton" – Rich Wilson."Fifa has an ethics panel (yesterday's Bits and Bobs)? What exactly do they do?" – Joe Gibson.Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver now.BITS AND BOBSBlackburn, Chelsea and Aston Villa will play the Hong Kong champions in the Shirt-Selling Cup, sorry, Asia Trophy next year to help prepare for the 2011-12 season. "We look forward to reacquainting ourselves with old friends," the Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, said marking up two-for-one deals on Liverpool away kits. "We also hope that our on- and off-field knowledge will aid Hong Kong's progress as a football nation."Humberside businessman Assem Allam – he's worth £150m if you're interested – claims he is in talks with the Hull City owner, Russell Bartlett, regarding the sale of the club "I have been here for 42 years and have built my business in the area," said Egyptian-born Allam. "I think it's time to pay it back – Hull City are important to the area."West Ham striker and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band extra Freddie Sears is off to Scunthorpe on loan.Leicester City are on the verge of signing the world's loneliest blogger, Darius Vassell.And Cagliari's seventh-century fanbase have landed the club a €25,000 fine after Inter's Samuel Eto'o was subjected to sustained racist abuse last weekend.STILL WANT MORE?Jonathan Wilson knows so much about Russian football that he's writing a 200,000 word PhD thesis on what FC Rostov had for breakfast this morning. So listen up when he explains why Spartak Moscow are within sight of the Big Cup knockout stages.David Lacey has seen more football matches than you've had hot meals, so you may want to read who he thinks are football's greatest ever midfielders.Ha! And you thought Sweden was some kind of socialist paradise! Hooliganism and poor quality on the pitch are blighting the country's football, says Big Paper's Swediest Swede, Marcus Christenson.Andy Hunter has been kind enough to give Roy Hodgson a list of five things he needs to do to avoid the sack.SIGN UP TO THE FIVERWant your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up.MASOCHISM = PAYING MONEY TO ATTEND LUTON TOWN V FOREST GREEN TONIGHT, VOLUNTARILY ... FOR PLEASUREWayne RooneyManchester UnitedBarry GlendenningPaul Doyleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |