Timing is a key factor in football, but Rio Ferdinand seems to have mislaid that vital element of the defender’s art, choosing to issue a rallying call to the Manchester United players while showing less than complete loyalty himself to the club in stalling over negotiations on a new contract. Some might also venture to suggest that his team-mates do not need to be lectured by one of their number who cannot stay out of the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
It is hard to imagine a more distressing season than the one just concluded for United, who have been overtaken in the Barclays Premiership and as the dominant financial force in English football by Chelsea, unluckily lost the FA Cup Final to Arsenal and saw Liverpool, their most bitter rivals, capture a fifth European Cup.
Ferdinand had a “goal” disallowed in that Cup Final, but that will not feature in most people’s recent memories of him. Instead there will be the “accidental” meetings with Peter Kenyon, the
Ferdinand, though, still feels able to patronise supporters struggling to come to terms with the implications of the takeover of the club by Malcolm Glazer. “Next season has to be better,” he said. “At a club like United you’ve got no divine right to win trophies but with the traditions we’ve got and the players we have in our changing-room we should be fighting it out for trophies until the end of the season. We didn’t do that this season and the fans deserve a lot more than that.”
Plenty of United fans are willing to dish out that stick to Ferdinand. He is dismissed by many as a flash Londoner, and his star has also waned in other quarters. He has been overtaken as
Nor has his defending been exemplary. He is still prone to lapses of concentration, some ill-timed last season. For example, his marking of Duncan Ferguson in a 1-0 defeat by Everton at