Sir Alex Ferguson - photo checkmihlyrics Licence
Write a column - fill your word count - publish - move on and repeat. It’s a job which demands sharpness, urgency and an ability to find the angle. It isn’t easy - but it helps if you don’t think your readers will remember what you wrote a week ago.
Steven Howard of the Sun has written a couple of pieces about Sir Alex Ferguson and the title race recently - one on March 9, entitled ‘Laughing all the way to five‘, and another entitled ‘Let the mind games begin‘, written seven days later on March 16. The first is a celebration of a manager calmed by confidence in his charges and coasting towards silverware on every front. The second suggests Ferguson might be mentally fragile after Manchester United beat Inter unconvincingly 2-0 (do you remember when winning without playing well was the hallmark of Champions?) and were then beaten at home by Liverpool 4-1.
Quotes from the first article are in blue, and the second are in red.
Is Ferguson in control as United move towards the end of the season?
And another roar. And two more goals to make it a 4-0 thrashing and another step towards United’s 19th FA Cup semi-final and an unprecedented Quintuple.
It can’t go on like this, surely? Well, right now, it looks as if it will. Ferguson can do no wrong, one seeming master-stroke following another.
AND we thought it was Rafa Benitez who was supposed to be cracking up.
Now it is Alex Ferguson on the psychiatrist’s couch, after the fault lines that started to emerge a few days earlier against Inter Milan were brutally exposed by Liverpool at Old Trafford.
Some will say the strain is getting to Ferguson, seeing it was his considered opinion that Manchester United — despite their heaviest home defeat in 17 years — were the better team on Saturday.
Is Ferguson getting squad rotation right?
Even the rotation system, the procedure that has caused so many problems at other clubs, is working to perfection.
The immediate charge against Ferguson is he picked the wrong team. That Anderson, despite the odd impressive display last season, is heading in the wrong direction and should not have had preference over, say, Ryan Giggs.
United have had a great run - talk it up or down?
As United sweep all before them — unbeaten in 15 games, one defeat in 30, a club-record 11 league wins on the bounce — so Ferguson’s good humour increases.
While Liverpool floated back to Merseyside on an enormous high, United are left to contemplate some nagging doubts at the end of a run that had seen them beaten only once — against Derby in the Carling Cup — since losing 2-1 to Arsenal at the Emirates last November.
Though they eventually saw off an average Inter 2-0, it was only their third Champions League victory in eight games following draws with Villarreal (twice), Celtic, Inter themselves and Aalborg.
Prior to that, they had also been beaten 2-1 by Zenit St Petersburg in the European Super Cup.
Manchester United were doing phenomenally well last week, and this week they’ve been comprehensively beaten by a team who are probably their biggest challengers at home and in Europe. They’ve not stopped being heavy favourites for the league, and they’ve not stopped being amongst the favourites for the Champions League, which for all its excitement is not a competition invariably won by the best side competing. But by finding an angle which dismisses most of what he published last week, Steven Howard has doubled his productivity. Back to the grind, then - write a column - fill your word count - publish - move on and repeat.
