Fair play to the two who blew the whistle on fergie

A small, redeeming feature of professional football is its propensity once in a while to afford moments of intense pleasure to those of us who loathe the game. One such moment occurred recently with the news that two actresses had infiltrated Manchester United’s annual general meeting with the aim of embarrassing the club’s manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

Two things should be made clear at the outset. First, the word “actress” is not used here in its euphemistic sense to describe the sort of young ladies who advertise in telephone boxes, none of whom would be seen dead in the company of Man United shareholders, or “fans”, as the club prefers to describe them. Secondly, the “Sir” in Alex Ferguson is one of those joke knighthoods that come out of a Christmas cracker during the Royal Family’s winter festivities at Sandringham. Other butts of this harmless jest include David Frost, Tim Rice, Trevor McDonald, Paul McCartney, Cliff Richard, Elton John and, of course, Mick Jagger.

But back to the actresses. It is said that they and three other people bought small shareholdings in Manchester United a few days before the AGM, entitling them to be present. Furthermore, it is alleged they were “briefed and planted by enemies of the Man United manager”, chief among whom is said to be his former friend John Magnier, a multi-millionaire racing tycoon who is being sued by Ferguson over the stud fees for a racehorse. So much for the details. The fun is to be derived from the response of the club to these alleged “dirty tricks”.

Oliver Houston, a spokesman for Shareholders United, a group of Manchester United supporters with small stakes in the club, says: “It was shoddy in the extreme to hijack an important forum such as the AGM to try and settle personal grudges in the glare of the media spotlight. This is not healthy for the fans, the shareholders or the company.”

To which the response is, why not? Anyone with any experience of public companies will know that it has long been a legitimate tactic of individuals or “ginger groups” to buy small shareholdings and attend the AGM with the aim of airing their grievances and asking embarrassing questions. It is often the sole opportunity they have of holding the board to account.

If in the case of Manchester United it might be shown – heaven forbid – that Ferguson is not a fit and proper person to be involved in the management of a public company then it would be in the interests of the shareholders to know. If on the other hand he is a parfit gentil knyght who would rather die of a thousand cuts than besmirch his escutcheon, he has nothing to fear from the impudence of actresses.

Then again, this is football and normal rules of corporate governance, finance, economics and common sense do not apply. Consider the facts. A little more than a decade ago, the old First Division received less than &£2m for the TV rights to its matches. Then along came Rupert Murdoch and Sky, bearing money by the pallet load. By 2001, Sky had agreed to pay the Premiership &£1.3bn over three years. Like children given more sweets than they could dream of, football’s custodians became extravagantly bilious. The money was recklessly squandered on overpriced foreign players and lunatic wage deals which produced that ineffable modern excrescence, the millionaire footballer.

Today, half our clubs are broke. Some, such as Leeds United, stand on the brink of bankruptcy. And encircling the financial chaos, like a bunch of halitosis-ridden extras in a spaghetti western, are the fans, those foul tribes of hate-filled, drunken, obscenity-chanting uglies.

As for football’s grasp of financial probity, ten years ago, during a High Court battle between Alan Sugar, the then owner of Tottenham Hotspur, and Terry Venables, his former manager, the word “bung” appeared clothed for the first time in a new meaning. Sugar testified that Venables had told him that the proposed purchase of Teddy Sheringham from Nottingham Forest would be eased if Forest’s manager, Brian Clough, received “a bung”, and that this was custom and practice throughout the game.

Given the rotten state of football and its remoteness from normal codes of financial conduct, it is not surprising that Manchester United should cry foul when outsiders dare to ask questions. After all, crying foul and blaming everyone else whenever it suffers the least setback on or off the pitch, is the club’s modus operandi.

Embarrass Ferguson? I doubt that is possible. A rough-hewn Scot behind whose coarse and unpleasant exterior lies a coarse and unpleasant interior, he is immune to finer feelings. When his star player, the thuggish French poet and philosopher Eric Cantona, trod on an opponent’s head and was criticised by the TV pundit and former player Jimmy Hill, Ferguson exploded in rage, saying that Hill knew nothing about football. Head-treading, you see, is part and parcel of the beautiful game.

I suggest that other public companies take note. When one of the infiltrating actresses was asked to name Man United’s goal scorers in the 1999 European Cup final, she was unable to answer, instantly revealing herself as a fraud. If, for instance, Sainsbury’s suspects someone of trying to sneak into its AGM, it should ask them for the exact date on which the company introduced its three-for-two offer on Hobnobs.