The Myth of Fergie’s Mind Games
I once watched an Alex Ferguson press conference on Sky Sports News. He commented on the danger of Wigan being cast away at the bottom of the table. He said that once a team was cast away at the bottom of the table, it was hard to recover, because being cast away historically meant relegation. The next day, for reasons that escaped me at the time, I went to live on a desert island for six months, wearing only a loincloth and surviving on a diet of coconut milk and papaya leaves. Only when I returned did I realise what had happened. Damn you Ferguson.
Look at why Roberto Mancini has become addicted to eating fruit pastilles on the City bench. Here’s a spoof extract from what Ferguson’s programme notes may look like ahead of the Old Trafford derby:
‘The match will be an intriguing contest between two title-chasing sides and Roberto will be keen to get one over our team, especially due to his love of fruit pastilles. Both teams will be looking to attack. Fruit pastilles. I’m pleased that Jonny Evans has had a good week in training, and we’ll be looking for him to put in a performance today. Eat more fruit pastilles Mancini. Eat them until your teeth drop out. Ha ha ha ha!!!! PASTILLES.’
One of the biggest myths of the past decade has been the effects of Alex Ferguson’s legendary mind games, games that leave opposition managers broken men, nervous wrecks, that leaves players as pale shadows of their former shells. A little dig here, a pithy response there, and entire league campaigns fall to pieces. And the press are to blame for this, loving to “big-up” his every utterance into some sort of meticulously chiselled campaign to give his team the edge. It’s just a shame (for them) that the facts don’t seem to back up this viewpoint.
There are two shining examples of rival managers somewhat losing the plot during a title-chasing campaign against United. First of course was Kevin Keegan, who would have loved it, loved it, if Newcastle could have won the Premiership. A mental breakdown caused by Ferguson and his team? Not really – their form had been faltering for months, their defence faltering even more. They lost the league without any help from across the Pennines. As Garry Cook might have said, they bottled it, whilst United did what they always do and continued to notch up the points. Watching your team squander a 12-point lead in their quest for a first ever title is I imagine quite stressful, and eventually it got too much for Keegan, for whom managing England was also too mentally draining. Keegan’s rant came after a Newcastle victory, but it came at a time when Manchester United had already overturned the previous deficit and built a three-point lead in the title race. For Newcastle, the damage had already been done.
Then of course there was the Rafa Benitez press conference, where he regaled us all with a certain number of facts. Again, was this Rafa feeling the pressure, him cracking up after a war of words with Ferguson? Well maybe he was feeling the pressure, most would, but it certainly didn’t affect the team. Liverpool’s form was better after Rafa’s rant, and they managed to even stagger to a 4-1 win at Old Trafford – not bad for a side that had been destroyed by Ferguson’s mind games.
It’s a similar story for Manchester City this season. If United go on to win the league, which now seems the more likely outcome, it will be due to a couple of factors that have nothing whatsoever to do with anything Alex Ferguson might have said – namely United’s possible record points total, and City’s struggles away from home since last year. A sly comment in a press conference hasn’t made City’s strikers freeze in front of goal in Swansea or Stoke or West Brom. A well-timed barb didn’t cause City to get a player sent off at Stamford Bridge or fail to mark a Swansea player a couple of weeks ago. The myth of his mind games can be filed with the other myth doing the rounds in the press at the moment, namely that City have squandered a 7-point lead in the title race (a lead they have never had except when having played a game extra).
It also ignores the fact that despite Ferguson coming out on top much of the time, be it a title chase, or a cup competition, he doesn’t always, and no doubt when Mourinho beat him to the title or Guardiola’s Barcelona showed their class at Wembley, he had plenty to say about football as well. Do mind-games not count when he loses? Or maybe they don’t translate well into Spanish.
The latest “war of words” was started by a Patrick Vieira comment, and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Roberto Mancini. Vieira’s barb (it wasn’t even that to be fair) seems to have worked, garnering an angry response from Ferguson (not that I could care less about the whole affair), and yet many in the press, especially his little lapdog Bob Cass at the Daily Mail, have reported this as Ferguson once more triumphing in the mind games, or as one Mirror journalist put it, “putting Mancini in his place”. Strange that, because as Rory Smith at the Times rather pertinently pointed out, if the roles had been reversed and Mancini had responded to a David Gill comment, the papers would be once more trumpeting it as a victory for Ferguson, goading City into a response. But as I said earlier, I really couldn’t care less.
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And I doubt managers or players do either. No manager worth his salt would be distracted by anything another manager says. Few players would care in the slightest, especially foreign players who are unlikely to have even heard what he has said. The pressure comes on the pitch, not off it. The top players, the players conditioned to excel at the top, will perform when needed, others will falter.
Which is a shame really, as Ferguson says he has plenty more ammunition, which doesn’t bode well for City. Let’s just hope they can shake off the psychological damage in order to put up some sort of title challenge next season. Now, where are those wine gums?
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