CHAMPIONS LEAGUE/CSKA Moscow v Manchester Utd:ALEX FERGUSON last night revealed the depth of his anger at being charged by the English FA for comments about the referee Alan Wiley when he stomped out of a Uefa press conference in Moscow after the issue was raised.
The Manchester United manager was this week charged by the FA with improper conduct for questioning Wiley’s fitness and took offence to a polite question on the subject ahead of this evening’s Champions League game at CSKA Moscow.
Asked how he felt about having to explain himself to English football’s governing body, Ferguson replied: “Silly question, gets no answer.” When another reporter interjected with “It’s not a silly question”, the United manager bristled visibly.
“I’m not answering that,” he said, rising from his chair, turning on his heel and heading briskly for the exit, pausing only to issue a curt “Good night”.
Although Ferguson had spent the previous 20 minutes fielding questions from English and Russian journalists, he had been terse throughout.
It is to be hoped Ferguson has recovered a degree of good humour when he receives from CSKA’s manager tonight a signed copy of a business tome entitled Renewing Organisations. At a time when the first-team order at Old Trafford appears to be changing again, Ferguson should nonetheless be intrigued by the conclusions reached by the book’s author, Juande Ramos.
The Spaniard will spend this evening directing CSKA’s latest Champions League game from the technical area adjacent to Ferguson’s at the Luzhniki Stadium. Unlike many peers, Ramos’s world is not entirely consumed by football, and the former Tottenham manager has combined starting a new job in Russia with polishing off a non-fiction work aimed at business executives in all spheres.
As United continue to adapt to life after Cristiano Ronaldo, while seemingly preparing for a future that looks increasingly likely to feature Jonny Evans plus either the hitherto undroppable Rio Ferdinand or Nemanja Vidic at centre half, Renewing Organisations may keep Ferguson surprisingly occupied during the four-hour flight home from Moscow. As David Beckham and Roy Keane, among others, will testify, United’s manager does not do sentimentality and likes to keep Old Trafford in a state of almost permanent revolution.
Right now he seems fixated upon a potential central-defensive rearrangement. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Evans could start Sunday’s Premier League encounter at Liverpool. Not for nothing has the Manchester Evening News asked readers to vote on United’s “best central-defensive pairing”.
Although the injury-prone Ferdinand and Vidic both flew to Russia, their 21-year-old Belfast rival is expected to feature against CSKA tonight after Ferguson admitted it was becoming “increasingly hard to justify leaving Jonny Evans out”. During Evans’s two separate loan spells with Sunderland, Keane said the defender would establish himself as a United first-team regular “sooner rather than later”. That time could be nigh.
With United – who should be inspired by memories of beating Chelsea in the 2008 final at the Luzhniki – boasting a 100 per cent group stage record, Ferguson has decided this is a game he can take slightly less seriously.
Accordingly, he has left Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Darren Fletcher, Patrice Evra and Park Ji-sung behind.
Even so, CSKA have won their last six European home games, and the way in which not just Evans but also Michael Owen and, if fit, Dimitar Berbatov – who has not started United’s last five Champions League games – cope with them could inform Ferguson’s selection at Anfield.
