Those jammy fuckers down the M62

The Camera’s focussing on Fergy whenever United sucked was probably the only ambassadorial role he’s done for the club

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Probably a meet and greet role that doesn’t get much media exposure?

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Shame they didn’t record and publish this - the fume would outgoldbridge-goldbridge and ol’ sourpuss could probably have earned back his yearly fee in five minutes…

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He should never have been allowed in the stadium after he left. Having the old boss haunting the place is never a good idea. I’m sure Klopp will come back to watch a game one day (and get rapturous applause) but he has the grace to fuck off for a few years first.

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Could be at the RBL game but yeah he won’t be at Anfield until Arne has settled in fully and done well if he does.

Does no one else think it was in bad taste for Fergie to take such a lucrative gig in the first place? He had already made a fortune from the club and it was his desire for even more money that created the ownership turmoil in the first place that gave the Glazers the opening to come in (rock of Gibralter)?

This seems like the sort of move a savy operations would make knowing it would cause short term blow back but was needed to move forward from the current malise.

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It has been a disaster all along. Every time a manager has started a period of struggle and a player makes some kind of mistakes, it is an easy camera shot, just pan over to Fergie looking sourly down on the latest incompetent. Instant narrative.

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And utterly, wonderfully, magically and possibly orgasmically stupendous. Fergie’s continued presence at OT leaves me permanently deliciously gruntled.

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The number of Utd fans who seem oblivious that their current plight has Surralex’s fingerprints all over it.

Leaving an aging squad for his successor, because he was looking for his one last day of glory, lining himself up with a seven figure ambassadorial role, to getting embroiled in an argument with the owners over horse spunk - it isn’t a great legacy.

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I read a piece the other day talking about how Utd’s success was built on forwards and goal scoring and that is where Utd are failing today. It cited Fergie buying Van Persie as an example of “good” united buying a forward in his prime

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The irony is that Rock Of Gibraltar turned out to be a relatively mediocre stallion. He’s sired a few good horses, but nothing exceptional.

Not a patch on Arctic Prince, Dancing Brave and Indian Ridge.

As a failed stallion, or as a racehorse?

Their progeny have been ridiculouly successful. Saw Indian Ridge in a field in Ireland once, nag in a field with a bloody big smile on his face.

While Van Persie wasn’t in his prime I think Fergie did generally buy good forwards. At least compared with those of his successors. The damage done to their club financially from signing van persie is nothing like the spend on players since he retired. Other than Zlatan, I’m struggling to think of a Utd forward in the last decade I thought was really good.

The guy on the Anfield Wrap was always talking about how Fergie, especially in his latter years at Utd would prioritise buying defenders and forwards over midfielders and it kept him getting results.

He was a good purchase, achieving exactly what he was purchased for - they won the league with him in the first season when he was 29. However, he had always been injury prone, that season and the one before it were the only PL seasons he had more than 30 appearances. Predictably enough, the next two seasons were more in line with his previous, plus he was slowing. But he is absolutely the archetype of Ferguson leaving a club headed toward decline.

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Come back when you know more about horse racing and breeding than me.

And the reason why Indian Ridge was smiling is because he saw you and realised that, for once, he wasn’t the biggest prick there. :wink:

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Come back when you’ve helped one of Indian Ridge’s daughters foal. There’s terminology I have wrong there but as I FUCKING HATE HORSES I don’t care. Owners and trainers at Ascot was fun, but I suspect the food wasn’t upto your standards.

He did what he was bought to do. No doubt about that. But he was not remotely in his prime and handcuffed them to a very expensive rapidly depreciating asset. If it wasnt clear, the focus was not just on comparing the quality fo forwards, but what the identity of those forwards said about the club’s attitude to putting together a winning team. Ibra, Falcao, Cavanni are not just worse in this telling of it, but represent a short term thinking that never leads to a club digging itself out of the hole it is in.

In that framing, positioning Van Persie as a contrast to that is just an unreasonable sucking off of Fergie. The real piece to be written about that is how that rot started under Fergie, first with the continued reliance on Giggs and the return of Scholes, but then buying Van Persie for Fergie’s immediate benefit, not Utd’s. The story about what they have done with their forwards since is partly a continuation of that and partly a response to the hole it created for his successors.

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I’m just as happy having breakfast at a greasy spoon cafe as I am having dinner at a three-star Michelin restaurant. In fact, I did both in the same day once.

It’s a question of quality v price. Loads of places sell overpriced shite to tourists, people who follow social media influencers, and the like.

I haven’t been into the hospitality at Ascot since before Covid. Will have to give it a try soon.