Correction: Manchester United Fans DIDN’T Ask Ferguson To Quit in Protest

“United fans will ask Ferguson to quit in protest,” read the front page of the The Guardian sport section on Monday. Not quite true.

The story has been one of the most popular sports news stories in England over the past few days, probably because, to both the neutral and the United fan, it sounds so outrageous. How could Manchester United fans want the club’s most successful manager and one of the greatest British managers of all time to quit his job in some sort of show of protest? Wouldn’t that be shooting themselves in the foot? They can’t be that stupid can they?

Events since the story was published imply that, on the whole, they are not and that really this was more a case of The Guardian making a few clever tweaks to a story in order to mislead and create a storm.

Here is what the paper reported on Monday:

“Manchester United supporters fighting the Glazer family’s ownership of the club are contemplating asking Sir Alex ­Ferguson to make the ultimate sacrifice and resign in protest.”

“The idea was put forward at a specially convened meeting of fans’ groups to determine an action plan to drive out the Glazers. “

“The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust, which arranged the meeting before Saturday’s 3-0 defeat of Burnley, are also exploring the possibility of asking Eric Cantona to act as their figurehead, and plans are being put in place for a protest march before the Champions League tie against Milan on 10 March.”

“More than 300 supporters attended the talks and Johnny Flacks, a founding member and former chairman of the Independent Manchester United Supporters’ Association, received a round of applause after proposing that a letter should be written to Ferguson asking him to step down.”“This is not intended as an Alex Ferguson rant,” Flacks said. “But he claims to be a socialist, a former shop steward and a man of the people, so he must be horrified by what is going on. It would work only if thousands of people sent a copy of this letter to Ferguson letting him know that our fear, if the Glazers stay in control, is that his legacy is going to be destroyed. We wouldn’t want that and I don’t think he would either.”

If you were to read this without any other knowledge, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Manchester United supporters groups expressed their desire to force Sir Alex Ferguson to resign in protest at the Glazers. But the key thing to pay attention to here is the part in bold. The report implies that Flacks got up at the meeting, made his point to the Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) and all present, microphone in hand, and was cheered and applauded in agreement.

The reality is quite different. After the story broke, MUST made a complaint to The Guardian about the way in which the truth had been bent and released a statement on their website:

“Contrary to reports today regarding Manchester United supporters calling for Sir Alex Ferguson to resign MUST (the Manchester United Supporters Trust) wishes to put it on record that we believe the organisation and the vast majority of United supporters are 100% behind Sir Alex Ferguson. The only people we want to see leave Old Trafford are the Glazer family.

All United supporters are entitled to voice their opinion but these comments were made by one individual at a meeting where it was made clear it was private and journalists were briefed that it was totally off the record to allow supporters to speak freely. We believe that all those journalists who attended the meeting respected this agreement but the story came from reports on internet message boards followed by a call direct to Mr Flacks rather than from the meeting itself.”

The statement goes on:

“MUST has been in contact with The Guardian regarding this story and they have agreed to amend the headline and important aspects of the report to more accurately reflect the facts.

In particular the fact that the quotes were not taken from the meeting but rather from reports on internet message boards and a direct conversation with Johnny Flacks the day after the meeting.

Furthermore the comment that the proposal received a round of applause has been removed.

Finally the paper has agreed to add that the comments made by Mr Flacks do not represent the group (MUST) as a whole.”

So it transpires then, following a complaint to The Guardian by MUST, that in fact Johnny Flacks did not get up at the supporters meeting, call for Ferguson’s head and receive rapturous applause and approval as insinuated in the original report. In fact the quotes in The Guardian were taken from a conversation with Flacks the day after the meeting.

Furthermore, MUST also report in their statement that any line of anti-Glazer action that involved removing Ferguson was not widely supported, and that “the counter point of view was given a loud round of applause in response.” The Guardian has since amended its article on the story.

So to clarify, rather than MUST and other supporters groups preparing to “ask Ferguson to quit in protest” as reports The Guardian’s Monday headline, in actual fact this was the opinion of one individual at the meeting, expressed in private, a day after the meeting took place.

But that’s not quite as juicy now is it?

English Premier League, Fan Culture, Manchester United, The Media