Three Premier League managers – and one unemployed nobody – have offered to defiantly step in on the touchline to cover Sir Alex Ferguson’s five-game ban in protest at the gum-chewing Scot being ‘unfairly picked on’ by the F.A.
The outraged gaffers – Alex McLeash, Steve Bruce, and Blackpool’s crazy ferret Ian Holloway – have contacted the game’s governing body about the logistical possibility of rescheduling their own team’s fixtures so they can each take a game apiece prowling the technical area at Old Trafford and beyond, urging on and offering instructions to the likes of Rooney and co. Meanwhile, or so their theory goes, Ferguson will be banished to the stands and looking down on his arse-kissing acolytes with pride and gratitude.
The protest is being led by massive-faced, former Blackburn boss ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce who has secretly confided to friends that he is delighted at this potential opportunity because ‘it will get me out of the house’.
We contacted Allardyce yesterday to ask why the quartet felt so strongly about the punishment meted out to Ferguson for his inflammatory comments made about referee Martin Atkinson following United’s recent reversal at Chelsea.
After waiting patiently for him to polish off a mid-morning snack of potato waffles smeared with lard he was only too happy to illuminate us.
‘It’s a fucking disgrace is what it is!’ he spluttered, as we ducked to avoid flying chunks of potato, ‘How dare they pick on Sir Alex like this after all he has achieved in the game! The F.A are jumped-up pygmies attempting to bully a giant and me and the lads are determined to offer our shouting services on the touchline to show solidarity with such a lovely, lovely man. A gentleman no less’.
‘I once shook his hand after my team opened up our legs and let them fuck us by seven goals at Old Trafford. It was like touching the hem of God. I haven’t washed my palm since and the fact that it’s naturally my wanking arm just makes it all the sweeter. It’s like he’s almost doing it for me.’
He added, ‘Myself, Brucie, Big Eck, and that mad little c*** from Blackpool are all planning to put in a shift to help highlight this atrocious injustice and help the finest club in all the land through this difficult time. Plus, on a personal level, it will be nice to put on the old over-coat again, demolish a pack of Hubba-Bubba, and point a lot.’
'Scholesy, what the fuck was that?! Dont pass the thing. Lump it in there! That's why God invented the sky.'
Holloway, the ‘mad little c***’ in question, further expounded on this unusual display of managerial uprising at a press conference ahead of his own team’s crucial relegation clash this weekend with, ironically, Allardyce’s former charges, Blackburn.
‘Britain has a rich tradition of protesting and insurrection, ordinary folk taking a stand against social iniquity and ‘the man’. There was the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the suffragettes, and Band Aid. Now there’s us – the Fergie Four. In my opinion Sir Alex Ferguson is the greatest man alive and my original suggestion was to erect a statue right there on the touchline of each game that he is being forced to miss. It would have looked magnificent but Sam asked who I was and told me to ‘pipe the fuck down’. We’re getting a statue built anyway, to be put up outside Bloomfield Road for when we’re next honoured with the great man’s presence. Hopefully that might cheer him up a bit’
‘First he had Rooney threatening to leave and now this. How much heartache should one man have to endure?’
'Is Fergie watching me? Is he smiling? Are his eyes twinkling with pride?'
Fellow protester Steve Bruce also fears for his beloved mentor’s state of mind.
Speaking at a charity launch for deformed adults he told us,
‘Alec…..I can call him that, he told me so……is a true warrior with the heart of a lion. His strength is only matched by his enormous sense of fair play. But when I spoke to him the other day on the phone he did sound a little bit down. Which made me sad’.
‘Everybody thinks he’s bullet-proof you know but beneath the surface there is a human being with real feelings. People often don’t take this into account and I know only too well the pain caused by such a misconception. I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man! That’s why I jumped at the chance to help out and get the boys together. Plus I get to manage Manchester United for ninety minutes.’
But what, the Cutter wondered, of the additional extra game? If the four band of rebels took charge of berating and abusing the fourth official for the whole duration of a match apiece that would leave a final game with just Mike Phelan looking bewildered and lost.
Birmingham boss Alex McLeash enlightened us about this whilst also revealing a hint of disharmony in the protest camp.
‘That will be the Wembley semi-final against City. We all wanted that one badly but I had to drop out of contention because I was only there a few weeks ago. But the others are fighting like dogs for it. Allardyce suggested a bare-knuckle fight to decide who got it but I think the three of them have finally settled on a paper, scissors, rock contest.’
‘Allardyce will lose because he always goes for rock’, he added, shaking his head in dismay.
