THE OBSERVER
So, is Sir Alex Ferguson sackable or not? At the end of a week when Manchester United's chief executive raised the issue we really ought to know the answer to that question by now, but we do not.
David Gill's intention appeared to be to position United back in the real football world, where managers of major clubs are sacked regularly if they blow transfer budgets and fail to come up with the trophies. He was doubtless aware that Ferguson's record is beginning to be mocked on the Continent and probably keen to distance the plc from recent comments by the manager to the effect that he could go on for ever.
Hence the stir created when, in a BBC Radio Five Live interview, David Gill, United 's chief executive,conceded that even Fergie was dismissable. "He is sackable," said Gill. "We live in a pressurised sport."
Nevertheless when it comes to pressure Ferguson is fortunate in his employers. United 's fellow aristocrats on mainland Europe would have given him much shorter shrift, not so much for failing to win the national league but for consistently coming up short in the Champions League.
In the six seasons since Manchester United won the European Cup they have won only one tie at the knockout stage.Their record in two-leg encounters is :P14 W3 D4 L7. If ever they failed to qualify for the competition proper it would be the financial equivalent of relegation back home. Gill bleeped like a reversing HGV when his radio comments hit the headlines.
Replacing Ferguson, "has not even entered our psyche at the moment", he said. At the moment? Hmmmmm ...
Fergie surely will not be sacked. He will still pick his time to pack it in. But even the best managers can stay on too long. Stan Cullis outlived his long-ball era at Wolves, Bill Nicholson became disillusioned trying to recreate Tottenham's Double-winning team in a greedier, more cynical football age and Brian Clough's successful years with Nottingham Forest ended in booze, tears and relegation.
None of which should apply to Ferguson.Yet he will not need telling that in football fame is ephemeral and today's results matter more than yesterday's glory. And sooner rather than later, maybe at the end of next season, he will again feel he has had enough - and this time mean it.
Meanwhile United supporters must be having nightmares about a Fergie-less Manchester United owned by Malcolm Glazer, the elderly American non-fan whose repeated bids for the club keep cropping up like mouth ulcers.
MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS
Mark Hughes can climb among the contenders for the most coveted job in football when he crosses swords with Sir Alex Ferguson next weekend - the right to succeed his mentor as manager of Manchester United.
With Old Trafford's prodigal son guaranteed a rapturous reception as he matches his Blackburn Rovers side against the club he helped set on the road to success 15 years ago, one international teammate feels `Sparky' Hughes could also be tilting for a far bigger prize than those three vital points.
"When Sir Alex does decide to call it a day, only Mark's record would put him in the frame for the manager's job at Old Trafford," says former United and Wales star Mickey Thomas, who feels Hughes has already shown enough potential to prove he will make it to the top as a manager, claiming success with Blackburn could set him on course for a more permanent return to Old Trafford.
"He has a fantastic background and would probably be the choice of many of the United fans, but it will be his record as a manager which counts. It is not an easy job being manager of Manchester United but then again neither is being in charge of Wales or Blackburn Rovers."
THE SCOTSMAN
Backtracking rapidly from comments made in a radio interview designed to centre on Manchester United’s much-reduced profits, the club’s chief executive, David Gill, said that thoughts of sacking Sir Alex Ferguson "haven’t even entered our psyche at the moment".
But as any Freudian would observe, the very fact that he pointed out that the thought had not entered his or anyone else’s psyche must mean that it has. Gill put a new spin on the dreaded vote of confidence.
Whether he intended it or not - and in this age of the soundbite savvy, this was perhaps more than just unguarded comment - Gill’s acknowledgment has focused the world more sharply on the sharp end of United’s season and on its repercussions.
Sir Alex was reported to be on holiday somewhere hot. If so, autograph-hunters should approach the great man’s sunbed with caution. Gill may have recanted, but what’s said cannot be unsaid, and Ferguson must now deal with the notion that his future is more publicly on the agenda.
Gill no doubt had noted the fate of Freddie Shepherd at Newcastle. He said at the start of the season: "You don’t sack Sir Bobby Robson," before doing just that four matches later. Such are the thin margins in this game. Football is merciless and pitiless, and in a business sense Gill merely stated the obvious: no-one is indispensable. He did himself no favours, though, by saying that the quote had been taken "out of context", when everyone listening to Radio Five Live heard him as a whole. The context, such as it was, was a semi-veiled acknowledgment that Ferguson must win the Champions League or Premiership next season.
Ferguson has been musing on his footballing mortality while fulfilling an interview to a Portuguese magazine. In it, he said that he sometimes questioned whether he still has the energy for the job, before concluding that he has. For the first time, he named his preferred successor, his coach Carlos Quieroz.
Unlike other figures, Ferguson is a master of the media; not a misplaced word here, no lack of context in what he is saying. As he enters the first year of a rolling 12-month contract, it is only right that he continues to question his thirst for the job, and takes it on only when he is certain of his answer.