Blackburn’s manager takes his side to Old Trafford and has enormous admiration for his Manchester United counterpart
Roberto Martínez may be squirming with embarrassment over what he is reported to have said about Sir Alex Ferguson and his friends within the Premier League, though in implying Sam Allardyce will be having a convivial drink with his old pal whatever the result of Blackburn Rovers’s visit to Old Trafford this evening the Wigan Athletic manager was not exactly revealing a state secret.
“Yes, I’m a Fergie lover,” Allardyce can exclusively confirm. “A loyalist, an admirer, call it what you like. Why wouldn’t any manager in the English league look up to the best in the business, probably the most successful manager this country has ever seen? He’s built six or seven great sides, won two European cups and 11 titles, so why shouldn’t a manager like me admire that?
“What Roberto said is not really a problem for me, but I think he has just learned a harsh lesson about life in this league. If you start departing from your own club’s business, for whatever reason, to talk about other matters, it can easily rebound on you. I don’t know quite what happened and what exactly was said but I don’t need to. Roberto has apologised to me and I have accepted his apology.”
The fact that Ferguson and Allardyce have long been buddies was demonstrated last season, when following Rafael Benítez’s attack on the United manager, Ferguson did not fire back directly but later accused his Liverpool counterpart of being disrespectful to Allardyce with seemingly little cause. Martínez’s somewhat clumsy attempt to lend support to his increasingly isolated compatriot on Merseyside only ended up reinforcing an older north-west allegiance.
Ferguson is in regular contact with Allardyce by phone and the pair meet often at charity lunches and functions and regard each other as allies, perhaps because, in his capacity as Bolton and now Blackburn manager, Allardyce has long been in Ferguson’s neighbourhood without being parked on his lawn. The Manchester United manager is never going to be bosom pals with the City manager, for instance, or find it particularly easy to call up whoever is in charge at Liverpool for a chat. Allardyce is more likely to socialise with younger managers such as Steve Bruce and Peter Reid, though in a professional context he and Ferguson are close.
Martínez possibly feels most sheepish about appearing to suggest Allardyce is lining himself up for Ferguson’s job, though he has only given today’s opponents something else to chuckle about in their post-match get together. And Bruce too, who will be there in spirit. As if to confirm Martinez’s suspicions that the three are in cahoots Allardyce revealed he had spoken to Bruce following Sunderland’s impressive performance at Old Trafford earlier this month, when they had to settle for a 2-2 draw but were close to claiming all the points.
“Brucey said they caught them on an off day, Sir Alex was having to pick a team with one eye on the league game and another on the European match in midweek, and that’s going to be the situation again today,” he said. “Sunderland nearly took full advantage and that’s what we’ll be hoping to do. Possibly this is a good time to be playing United, but if you look at our league record you will also see it is a good time to be playing Blackburn. We haven’t picked up a single point [away from home] yet, so unless we can improve on that fairly quickly it doesn’t really matter what form Manchester United are in. I didn’t get any specific tips from Brucey, we all know what we have to do when we go to Old Trafford. Most of the time will be spent trying to stop them playing.”
Allardyce was an Old Trafford winner in his time at Bolton, describing the feeling of beating United on their own turf as one of the best days of his life, though he goes into today’s game on the back of heavy defeats away to Arsenal and Chelsea, as well as an outbreak of swine flu. “When we get the United match over we will have three of the big boys out of the way for the rest of the season, at least away from home,” he said. “October was a pretty heavy month for us but we have some winnable games coming up in November. At the moment, if I am honest, I think Chelsea is the most daunting ground to visit, even more daunting than Old Trafford. Everywhere is daunting for a team with an away record like ours, of course, but Chelsea made mincemeat of us last week. They are in great form at the moment and United are not quite at their best If you were making an assessment now you would possibly say Chelsea look more like title contenders, but it is much too early to be writing off United. They know how to pace a season, and unlike Chelsea, they will not be losing key players to the African Cup of Nations in January.
“All you can safely say at the moment is that United have lost a little of their old ability to kill a game with the departures of Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez. Some players are capable of winning a game on their own, sometimes with a single act. That is exactly what Fernando Torres did at Liverpool last week. Very few other players would have scored that goal, maybe Steve Gerrard could have done it, but I don’t know. The point is that when you lose players of that calibre, they are hard to replace. Ronaldo and Tevez were both like that, they could just come up with something to stun you, and United presently lack something they had last season. Antonio Valencia is a good player, no doubt about that, but he is not going to pop up with those sort of goals. Dimitar Berbatov might, but United are still waiting for him to turn into that kind of player.”
Ronaldo scored just such a goal in the 2-1 win over Rovers in the corresponding fixture last season, though Allardyce thought the referee was at fault in not awarding his side a penalty. He has not been studying Ferguson all these years for nothing. “A 2-2 draw was taken away from us,” Allardyce said. “Mr Webb failed to be brave enough to give us a penalty at Old Trafford. It is not unusual.”
Blackburn RoversSam AllardyceManchester UnitedSir Alex FergusonPremier LeaguePaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk
