PRESS BOX VIEW – TIMES

‘There will be no happy ending for Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. There may well be an upturn in fortunes, an FA Cup triumph or similar, but the notion of Ferguson bowing out as a European Cup or Premiership title winner is becoming so remote as to be almost unimaginable. What matters now is the timing of his departure, the identity of his successor and, of course, his legacy.

The greatest manager of his generation is unfortunate that his twilight years at Old Trafford have coincided with the unforeseen emergence of Chelsea as a superpower, but at one time he and his staff would have relished that kind of challenge. These days, for all the fighting talk, there is an air of resignation about United, a weariness that pervades from the pitch to the stands and back again. When he goes, the need will not be for a safe pair of hands, as was thought when Sven-Göran Eriksson was considered three years ago, but for a belligerent who will stop at nothing to drag United back to their pedestal.

There was a feeling within the club until recently that the “football operation” was running so smoothly that, when the time came for Ferguson to go, he would merely hand over the reins to Carlos Queiroz, which some might say he did long ago.

It may seem that none of this has much to do with Tottenham Hotspur, but in fact it does. Eighteen months ago, the Tottenham board considered hiring Queiroz as their new coach, only to learn that, after an ill-fated season in charge of Real Madrid, he was already set on rejoining United. They ended up, briefly, with Jacques Santini before settling on Martin Jol, who, with a symmetry more readily associated with love triangles in the Primrose Hill celebrity set, had previously been considered for the job as Ferguson’s assistant.

Queiroz is nobody’s fool, but it would appear that the Londoners got the better deal. As United have stagnated under Ferguson and Queiroz, Tottenham have been rejuvenated. “A massive outlay in the transfer market has helped,” as Ferguson wrote on Saturday, but it helps, too, to identify the right kind of young players — Dawsons, Lennons, Carricks and Huddlestones, rather than Djemba- Djembas, Klébersons, Millers and Bellions — as well as an old head, Edgar Davids, whose tenacity would not have gone amiss in the United midfield.’