Goodbye, Sir Alex?

The first thing I thought when I read today that Manchester United have 68.5 million pounds per year on a 716 million pound debt was, “I wonder if there’s odds that Sir Alex Ferguson retires this year.” My next thought was, “Does he work in the United Kingdom doing, well, anything? Because then the answer is ‘yes.”‘ Needless to say, the financial situation of Manchester United reveals a lot about the strategic behavior over the last couple of years.

Pretend you are Sir Alex Ferguson. Put down that trophy and the glass of fine wine for a minute, it is the beginning of the 08-09 season and we need to think about the future!

You have a chance to pass Liverpool for most premiership titles if you can get one more. Here are your major problems:

Your club is owned by people who bought it to funnel money into their own pockets to cover their other debts. Meaning that Manchester United football club is essentially the credit card the Glazers use to pay their other credit cards. Not the best business model from the perspective of the football team manager.
Christiano Ronaldo wants out to go to Real Madrid. He is probably the best football player in the world.

What exactly are your strategic priorities? Simple: win everything next year. There is no tomorrow.

You keep Ronaldo with the promise he can leave the next year.
Do you line up a replacement for Ronaldo knowing that he’s leaving? No, because: a) there’s no money and b) it will upset team chemistry and your goal is to win this year.
Do you show a lot of interest in Anderson, Nani, and the other youngsters? Do you give them the chance to fail and learn you gave to someone like, say Ronaldo (whom Roy Keane perpetually seemed to want to strangle during the step-over years)? No. It’s all about this year.
Do you acquire Dimitar Berbatov even though it’s not clear how he fits in long term? Yes, because it’s all about this year.
Do you win the Premiership again? Yup.
Do you stay one more year? Why the heck not?

So here you are, Sir Alex of 09-10. This is it. The team made only 12 million pounds of Ronaldo’s sale due to its crippling debts. Man City is rich. Aston Villa, Spurs and Everton could potentially be a second big four. Alex McLeish and Roy Hodgson are pretty impressive managers of small clubs… this is getting to be a tough neighborhood. Chelsea has Carlo Ancelotti and looked scary good at the end of last year under Hiddink. Gulp. Let’s face it, Chelsea are better.

What you need to do for 2009-10:

Get a winger.
Rely on your veterans for one last push.
Get a big year from Wayne Rooney.
Hope that the wider distribution of talent makes the race tight enough that you just might steal it.
Get lucky.
Retire with another title.

Flash forward to the actual season.

It’s SOOO close. In fact, it is so close for you, Sir Alex, that you are willing to risk tilting the pinball machine very aggressively to help your luck, including calling Alan Wiley fat. You know it’s wrong. You know that you will get in trouble. You will also do it again and again. Why? Because you also know that this is it, and if you can just get lucky enough, you can leave with one more Premiership title, and that you’d gladly live with the Alan Wiley incident for the rest of your life for the slightest chance that you could also say for the rest of your life that you won the title this season.

Imagine if you pull it off. You can win and then leave the husk of a great organisation to Jose Mourinho, who will not have the financial backing to succeed at the club, thus allowing you to leave on top and diminishing the stature of one of your greatest rivals as you leave.

This is why you’re the best, because you are always thinking this many moves ahead.

Good luck and enjoy your forthcoming retirement, Sir Alex.

Steven Maloney is a contributing writer for Glorious Football and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He can be reached for comment at steven.maloney@gmail.com.

Written By Steven Maloney (80 Posts)

Steven Maloney is a regular contributor for Glorious Football. You can follow him on Twitter @stevenmaloney. Like Albert Camus, he fancies himself as having learned his morals "on the football pitch and in the theater." His football writing interests are in the institutional structures and strategies of world football, as well as the ways in which contemporary politics enters into the world of football and vice-versa. His most cherished memories of the game are of being in Holland for Euro 2000. In the interests of full disclosure, he supports Arsenal, the United States and DC United.