Collymore, STFU

Stan Collymore has reared his ugly (and misinformed) head once more, having a pop at Sir Alex Ferguson about his recent comments on the Winter break and FA Cup replays.

Sir Alex Ferguson is deluded that being manager of Manchester United entitles him to dictate to the FA about the running of the game. His latest musings about using an obscure rule scrapping FA Cup replays when both teams agree and his pontifications on the merits of a winter break have really annoyed me. United are the wealthiest club in the world – or at least were before Man City’s takeover – so trying to use FA rules designed for tiny clubs is ridiculous. Ferguson is a wonderful football manager but he is not and should not attempt to be a football administrator. When is Fergie going to realise that winning trophies and being at the helm of Manchester United football club doesn’t buy you currency in the administration stakes?

So, Ferguson is intrigued by an FA rule which states that replays in the Cup do not have to take place and that gets on Stan’s nerves. Either he’s a very fragile individual or he really is scraping the barrel for something to write about in his column for The Mirror.

Had Collymore done his research he would have seen that Ferguson’s comments about the FA Cup replays were totally innocent, a mere reference to something he had just been made aware of, which The Sun made in to a massive deal. At no point did Ferguson support the idea to get rid of replays, quite the opposite. Clearly, Collymore is a Sun reader, and has bought in to their lies hook, line and sinker.

“It was scandalous stuff in The Sun newspaper, scandalous,” said Ferguson. “I don’t know what we do about these people. There was never any question of Manchester United asking to scrap replays. I said that yesterday. You can’t deny clubs like Southend and Torquay the chance to get some glory for themselves and get some revenue.”

Then there’s Ferguson’s recent comments about a Winter break, which would mean our players would be less tired and all it would mean is extending the season by a couple of weeks. Support for the winter break is dominant in the Premiership, with representatives from top clubs seeing a mjority in favour of it. Yet Ferguson is such a bad man for talking about it.

The vultures are circling at the moment and Fergie seems to be everyone’s number one target. Means he must be doing something right!