Oliver Holt Eats His Words On Sir Alex Ferguson

Well, I’m sorry, but I still think Sir Alex Ferguson should win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award for 2008. I know the BBC has already got a Coach of the Year award as part of its annual show. In fact, they practically invented it so they could give it to Fergie back in the Treble year of 1999. And I know that a coach has never won the main award, which has always gone to a competitor. It would make the presentation interesting, too, because Ferguson doesn’t speak to the BBC and hasn’t done for four years. But don’t tell me Fergie’s not a competitor. Don’t tell me he doesn’t have just as much influence on a United result as any of the players out there on the pitch. And where does it say in the title that a manager can’t win? It’s the Sports Personality of the Year, not the Sportsman or Sportswoman of the Year.

So I still don’t understand why the Manchester United manager hasn’t been mentioned yet as one of the favourites after everything he has achieved in the last 12 months. Plenty of people, myself included, wrote him off after United went three seasons without winning the Premier League and almost a decade without repeating their Champions League triumph of 1999.

When Ferguson won the European Cup with United’s penalty shoot-out victory over Chelsea in Moscow, he became only the third manager in British history to win the competition twice. It’s a momentous achievement, shared only by Brian Clough and the great Bob Paisley among British bosses. It was the way Ferguson did it, too. The way that he won the trophy playing fantastic attacking football. The way he built a side of flair and fluidity around the beauty of the creative talents of Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. And the flawless way he combined the youth of those stars with the experience of loyal club servants like Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes.