From Tony Barrett:
TheGame - Times Online - WBLG: Liverpool do not need a new manager, they need new owners
Ferguson's manipulation of the press
Sober, reasoned analysis is almost as difficult to find in English football as pitches that Didier Drogba hasn’t tumbled on. The Premier League has become a place where he who shouts loudest is heard most, with Andy Gray topping the decibel chart on a weekly basis.
The more worldly wise in the game are all too well aware of this, knowing that a diversionary post-match comment can wrong-foot sections of the media as easily as a Cristiano Ronaldo shimmy bamboozles a full back. Which is why Sir Alex Ferguson chose to question the fitness of referee Alan Wiley immediately after Manchester United produced their worst performance of the season to date in their 2-2 home draw against Sunderland.
Fergie knows the beast, he helped create it after all. He also knew full well that a storm of criticism would surely come his way for his team selection, formation and tactics, not to mention the poor form of several big money signings, and so Wiley got it in the neck. It didn’t matter that the referee had enjoyed a decent enough game or that questioning his fitness amounted to little more than an attack on his professionalism, the Staffordshire official had become collateral damage in the United manager’s media war, a battle he has waged with some success for more than two decades.
The most surprising element of all is how many danced to Ferguson’s tune, especially seeing as he didn’t even have the decency to perform it in front of Her Majesty’s press, choosing, as per usual, to speak only to MUTV, the club’s in-house television channel, a platform on which there is about as much chance of his opinions being questioned as there is of a re-run of the 2005 Champions League final being shown.
The media at large cannot complain about Ferguson’s behaviour though, not when it is indulged to such an extent. The fact that he does not have the decency to hold a post match press conference, a duty which is not beyond any of his Premier League counterparts, but still knows he will be quoted by the press without having been subjected to the usual scrutiny, puts him in a position of immense media control.
Similarly, the fact that everyone knew his comments about Wiley were a diversion was not enough to stop them from taking the spotlight away from a poor result and performance. It is media management at its most powerful and for some reason Ferguson gets away with it again and again and again.
The UK press recently stood up to Ken Bates, the Leeds United chairman, when he chose to admit only photographers from Action Images and Varleys, two picture agencies, to his club’s recent Carling Cup clash with Liverpool. In light of this, the national newspapers refused to use any pictures supplied on the basis that the restrictions were impinging on their ability to record game’s events as they saw fit.
No such sanctions have ever been applied to Ferguson, though, and his dealings with the media have a far greater effect on them than anything Bates has ever done.
