CONTRARY TO SIR ALEX FERGUSON’S warning, Steve Bennett, the referee, did not require a police escort on his way out of the City of Manchester Stadium on Saturday afternoon, but there was, just as the delirious home supporters had taunted, a taxi waiting for the Manchester United manager.
Where it was taking him, nobody seemed to know, but the driver would have been well advised to keep his thoughts to himself and the same would apply to Ferguson’s nearest and dearest. After United famously lost 5-1 at Maine Road in 1989, Ferguson’s wife got home to find him with his head buried under a pillow, “engulfed”, as he wrote in his autobiography, by “a sense of guilt” and haunted by his inability to identify what was wrong. At least this time, unless he buried his head in the sand rather than under a pillow, the problems should have been blindingly obvious.
There were many elements to the 145th Manchester derby, not least the performances of Richard Dunne, Stephen Ireland and Trevor Sinclair for Manchester City, but, in the final analysis, one cannot help coming back to Ferguson, who is in that unenviable position where his faltering regime is defined not by victories but by defeats, each one a blow to his hopes of staying in charge next season.
Whatever Ferguson and his assistant, Carlos Queiroz, suggested, United did not lose this game because of Bennett. The reasons were far closer to home: another strange team selection, another shambles in defence, another poor display from a substandard midfield and another indefensible show of immaturity from Cristiano Ronaldo.
To blame it on the referee was absurd; to bully him, as witnesses claim Ferguson did at half-time, was appalling. If Bennett mentions the incident in his report to the FA, Ferguson will be charged with misconduct.
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Queiroz, when he had finished whining about Bennett, preached on Saturday about what “good defensive sides” normally do, but United are nothing of the sort. In terms of organisation and tactical discipline, they could learn an awful lot from City — who even on their off-days resemble a team following orders from their manager, Stuart Pearce — never mind Chelsea.
With this in mind, it was a startling error to throw Patrice Evra into the heat of a derby, a mistake compounded by the selection of the hapless Mikaël Silvestre instead of Wes Brown at centre half. Ferguson revealed that he “played Silvestre because he’s French and could look after Evra”. Evra’s debut lasted only 45 minutes, but while his display lived up to his pre-match billing by a French journalist as “quite good going forward, quite bad defensively”, he at least had an excuse. Less so Rio Ferdinand and Silvestre, who were caught dozing on the job yet again as first Sinclair and then Darius Vassell were left alone to beat Edwin van der Sar, putting City 2-0 up at the end of an otherwise low-key first half.
At the interval, Ferguson confronted Bennett in the tunnel, while Wayne Rooney kicked the dressing-room door, but United had no room for complaint when Ronaldo was sent off in the 66th minute. Piqued by an aggressive tackle by Stephen Jordan, the winger got up and launched himself at the nearest opponent. Thankfully, his challenge, with two feet raised, did not connect with Andrew Cole. Ferguson called it “rash rather than vicious”. Queiroz called the red card “a bad decision”. Bennett, fully aware of the player’s intent, called it right.
With ten men, United enjoyed their best spell, Ruud van Nistelrooy reducing arrears, but they were caught on the counter-attack in the final seconds, with Ferdinand and Gary Neville nowhere to be seen as Robbie Fowler, on as substitute, gleefully made it 3-1.
Ferguson later made a remark about Bennett enjoying City’s post-match hospitality and then had the nerve to suggest the referee might reconsider Ronaldo’s red card. All the while, the taxi meter was running, Ferguson’s destination unknown and his future ever more insecure.