FERGIE’S SWIPE AT THE ANTI-GLAZER LEAGUE

Source: Daily Mail (no online content)

By IAN LADYMAN

SIR ALEX FERGUSON has launched an attack on the Manchester United supporters who formed the breakaway club FC United in the wake of the Glazer takeover last year. United manager Ferguson accused the fans who turned their back on the club of self promotion and questioned their loyalty to the dynasty he has built during his 20 years at Old Trafford. In a new book chronicling the events of last season, Ferguson said: ‘It is a bit sad, but I wonder just how big United supporters they are. ‘They seem to me to be promoting or projecting themselves a wee bit rather than saying “At the end of the day the club have made a decision, we’ll stick by them”.’ FC United were formed just weeks after the Old Trafford club were bought by the Glazer family in the summer of 2005. Thousands now turn out to watch the non-League club play in the North West Counties Football League, rather than go to watch Premiership football at Old Trafford. An FC United spokesman said last night: ‘It’s sad that Ferguson, who was a previous champion of supporters’ rights, has chosen to make these comments. ‘The situation is that whether fans stopped going to Old Trafford on a point of principle or because they could no longer afford the prices, they did so with a heavy heart and remain Manchester United supporters. They deserve better than this.’ In the book, Ferguson also dismisses claims that fans prevented BSkyB from buying the club in the 1990s. ‘It was the Monopolies and Mergers Commission that stopped that,’ he adds. ‘They (the fans) carried on to the degree where they actually thought they should have a say in the running of the club.’ But a spokesman for the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association said: ‘The only people who have constantly given to United are the fans, and that gives them the right to have a say as to how the club is run.’ Meanwhile, United striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who scored twice for Norway in their 4-1 win over Hungary on Saturday, will start tonight’s Euro 2008 qualifier against Moldova on the bench. It is understood that Ferguson and Norway coach Aage Hareide have an arrangement to limit injury-plagued Solskjaer’s international activity, but the decision has angered fans and the media in the player’s homeland.