Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has been involved in word wars down the years with all of the Premier League’s top managers. Kevin Keegan was soundly trounced in the 1990s during his first spell at Newcastle. There seems to be a truce with Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger after several seasons of back and forth. Jose Mourinho certainly held his own with the Scot while winning two titles at Chelsea. Now Liverpool’s Rafael Benitez has thrown off his jacket and squared up to the long-serving manager for the latest round of rhetorical jousting.
“You have to cut through the venom of it,” Ferguson said Sunday in response to Benitez’s claims that the Premier League allows the United boss to operate with impunity when it comes to pressurizing and abusing referees. “That’s my only response. There was a lot of venom in what he said and I don’t understand where it has come from. I think he was an angry man. He was obviously disturbed about something but I think when he reflects on it he will surely realize it is wrong.”
Benitez meanwhile added to his initial attack by claiming he had been swamped with support for condemning Ferguson, before adding that United Chief Executive David Gill‘s role at the Football Association means there is a possible conflict of interest. “The situation now is we are at the top of the table and they were saying Liverpool is not a threat,” Benitez said. “Now they know we are a threat, they have started playing mind games. But I don’t think it’s a mind game when you already have control over everything; it’s a mind game when you are on the same level as the other people and you can show you are cleverer than the others.
“But when you have control of everything and your chief executive is in the FA and things like this, then that is not mind games.” Benitez said it was “a fact that one person who has a lot of power and control and is on a lot of committees is in the FA.”