The storm over his comments, directed at referee Alan Wiley following United's 2-2 Old Trafford draw with Sunderland, has effectively served to gag the Reds boss.
There will be a self-imposed vow of silence in the post-match interviews if any controversy is mentioned, because Sir Alex has accepted he overstepped the mark on this occasion.
His unprecedented public letter of apology issued last weekend while he was on holiday in New York may not have appeased many, but it did reveal that the United manager knew his tongue had landed him in more hot water than he anticipated.
Fergie took on the wrong guy when he claimed Wiley, who will be in the middle for City's game at Wigan this Sunday, wasn't fit enough to referee a match of that standard.
It sent shockwaves through the referees' ranks because Wiley and controversy have rarely been bedfellows.
One Premier League official told M.E.N. Sport: "Wiley is very experienced and is looked up to by his peers.
"I cannot remember the last time when he was involved in any controversy. His strength is he is just an understated sort of guy.
"He turns up does his job and you just know that with Alan in the middle there is not going to be some kind of huge debate on Match of the Day.
"Being a policeman (Wiley is a traffic cop in the Midlands) is like being a ref in that you get abuse from time to time.
"His appointment this Sunday is just like any other Premier League gamein that it is a high profile one. There was never any question of him not having a decent game because that would have sent out completely the wrong message.
Wiley ability
"Alan will just get on with it in the superb way he goes about his business with faith in his own ability."
While the FA's division can expect to have a comfortable meeting, referee Mark Clattenburg can also expect not to have his eardrums battered by a certain 67-year-old Scot.
Whoever draws up the list of Premier League officials has certainly got a sense of humour!
The last time Clattenburg refereed a United versus Bolton match, as he will again on Saturday, was at the Reebok in October 2007.
The official was on the end of half-time Fergie tirade after he alleged the Wanderers were getting away unpunished for some robust tackling. Fergie was sent to the stand and was eventually handed a two-match touchline ban and a £5,000 fine for his outburst.
Ultimately, that is probably the sentence that will be meted out again when the fallout from the Wiley row is all digested at the FA's Wembley HQ.
Fergie will orchestrate United from the stands, the Reds will probably win and his bank manager won't be unduly concerned about five grand leaving his account.
Wiley's reputation will be intact and he will actually have the sympathy of all crowds for the foreseeable future. Fergie's critics, meanwhile, will whinge that the punishment didn't fit the crime.
Eventually, he will feel compelled to have another outburst at some later stage in the season and the whole rigmarole will start up again.
At the end of the day it is a storm in a tea cup and only headline news on the sports pages because it was Sir Alex Ferguson who had one rant too many.
It was a chance for anti-United and Fergie factions to give him a roasting.
Only similar comments from Arsene Wenger could have sparked such a long-running debate.
Why? Because Ferguson and Wenger are the most successful Premier League managers of the last two decades.
Their viewpoints carry weight whether you agree with them or not. It is why Fergie is asked to speak at so many diverse occasions from football dinners to business seminars.
Had any other Premier League boss - or anyone lower down the leagues - come out with the same comments we would never have even got to hear about them at all.
It was a clumsy way of going about getting a potentially serious subject into the open, but if Fergie firmly believed that an official's fitness is questionable, then the powers that be should listen.
Prozone stats may have proved Wiley was up to speed and the standard of officials' fitness is better than ever, but we'd never have known that but for Fergie's outburst.
A future Ferguson rant may actually hit on a real problem in the game that needs addressing.
Fortunately, this episode is not likely to shut the Reds boss up permanently and football should be grateful for that.
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Fergie is Fergie, simple as that.
Modern day life is such now that your not allowed to "find fault with" otherwise it's seen as Bulling and it's a sad day when you can't speak out about something that you feel to be an injustice ,Utd played rubbish that day against Sunderland and i don't blame the ref for our poor display but if S.A.F. or anyone else for that matter have a problem with someone in any walk of life then you should be allowed to say so without it been misconstrued and called Bulling.
He was just misunderstood:(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8306582.stm
All the controversy sells papers and TV ads the rest is meaningless! If a lower division manager or a manager in the North Manchester Sunday League was to do this,he would be hammered! Ferguson is playing on his so-called revered status! Any moans he has should be behind closed doors and NOT in front of the TV cameras! Same goes for all managers.
Alan Wilet's fitness is now under the microscope and by golly if SAF was right, Alan Wiley's a..e is grass !!!!!
If anyone involved in such a competitive sport, such a passionate sport can't take criticism, they should crawl into a hole and hide for the rest of time.
Football matches, anyone with an ounce sense will tell you are highly charged, passionate affairs at all times.
Things are bound to be said in the heat of the moment. I've saw and heard team-mates give each other mouthfuls - imagine Roy Keane now, he'd never be out of court- if players reacted like Wiley Leighton.
SAF on hoy. The knight's gonna get 'em.
Hmm. What'll it be? Another two match ban?
Phelan coordinating the Liverpool match?
Worries.
good article and well said..
I had total sympathy for Wiley, that was until I read this piece and discovered that he's a rozzer. Fergie's right, he definitely is not fit to referee a football game!!!!!
"Fortunately, this episode is not likely to shut the Reds boss up permanently and football should be grateful for that." You mean the press are grateful; the majority in football are not. Ferguson is a scoundrel, and most of the press sycophants.
Wileys a traffic cop!!!
That explains all the hold ups. He's too bloody slow!!!
If folk actually got down off their Utd trampling horses, they might care to look at the facts.
Wiley isn't as fit as he should be, you only need to see him live (and boy, you can't miss his bellie) to know that. Everyone seems to be missing that. + he ran further than all the defenders & 2 keepers, and the strikers as well???? woooh, steady on, you'll have players roaming ALL over the pitch soon, just to prove they're as fit as alan wiley !!!! Hansen would have a field day on MotD then with positional madness !!
Oh yeah, & the Sam Allardyce blast was brushed to one side too, as who cares what big sam thinks about Refs, when Uncle Taggert is around!
Now SaF, can't come out & say Wiley'ss a porker, otherwise this would be an even bigger non-story with which to beat Utd with and Venessa Phelps would start stalking him/sending death messages !!
what he said was right, how he said it was wrong ! ....end of. PLEASE MOVE ON......it's boring ffs.
("The official was on the end of half-time Fergie tirade after he alleged the Wanderers were getting away unpunished for some robust tackling. Fergie was sent to the stand and was eventually handed a two-match touchline ban and a £5,000 fine for his outburst.
Ultimately, that is probably the sentence that will be meted out again when the fallout from the Wiley row is all digested at the FA's Wembley HQ. )
Stuart Mathieson.....good god man get up off your knees and remove your lips from Taggarts bum!! Is that seriously all you think he should get for his bullying, ranting and raving??
Ferguson, reminiscent of his bagpipes has become a windbag and far less comprehensible.
If you start to do and say what you want then people could get the impression that the manager has the monopoly on referees that come to oldtrafford and that they fear mistakes and sometimes bow under pressure.
Don't know about the anti united brigade but it could be convenient 7 minute excuse.
If the FA insist on persuing this matter and the Ref. Union rep Leighton gives evidence to any pre-hearing enquiry, then the fitness (in terms of physical efficiency etc), of referee Wiley, will have to be "legally" established. The comments by Leighton, being judge, jury and executioner, are in my opinion unacceptable. The publication of such comments surely have rendered the matter "dead in the water", for SAF cannot get a fair hearing. SAF should insist that Leighton justifies his comments and that the fitness (or otherwise)of referee Wiley, on that day, must be legally established. Without that there can be no case to answer. If referee Wiley is not prepared to prove his fitness, openly, then surely there can be "no case to answer". The question of SAF bringing the game into disrepute also turns on that point. There would be disrepute only if SAF's comments were not true. If they are true, then no act of disrepute has been committed. Referee Wiley may feel somewhat aggrieved and Leighton may be jumping on some anti United bandwagon, but the comments issued by the latter are as bad, if not worse than those attributed to SAF, for in trying to prove an act of "disrepute" he has resorted to his own act of "disrepute". As for comments from the bitter blues, I am truly disappointed in them. Their lemon coated tongues, their bigging up of their "new" team, their denigration of any other club, except their own, is really sickening. In my 70yrs. of supporting Manchester United, I have never, ever, wished harm to Man Setee (there you've got me at it), and I've seen more City great players than most bitter blues could shake a stick at.
maybe the refs legs have gone maybe he was to far behind play..... but maybe fergie is getting old, maybe he is losing his touch at beating refs with sticks so stretford get looked after in future games, and maybe just maybe little city are here lol at united i remember when everythin was rosey, all this trouble cos it took another 90 odd mins to snatch a draw against mighty mackams grego the peel hall blue
In a world where no one can speak their mind, where teachers do not want to grade papers with red pens as it hurts feelings, where every remark is deemed hate speech we are simply keeping the lid on boiling water and it will burst. Too heck with political correctness and not offending people when they ought to be reprimanded. Then again is it the truth when we speak out?
Every ref has to undergo fitness tests at the start of the season to ref the PL. The idea that Wiley was somehow unfit is risible and was Fergie's way of deflecting attention away from a rank bad performance. Wiley was not going to add on loads of invented time having watched his colleague inexplicably add on two minutes more than needed in the first plac and then another three on top just to make sure! Especially as Wiley was seen on camera laughing and joking with Ferguson on the touch line. He should be applauded for his integrity when he could easily have given in to the pressure from Ferguson. If any punishment is handed out, Fergie will have to take it. It goes with the territory. One of these days he will really overstep the line and the proverbial book will be thrown at him big style! He'll do well to side step the wrath of the FA is they go to town on his apology which effectively has another swipe at the refs. If the statistics were to be laid bare, they would show that United benefit far more from refereeing decisions than the suffer. Ferguson seems to think that this is simply not enough. That all decisions should go his way, every tackle by the opposition should be a free kick or penalty and a yellow or red card and any tackle by his players should go unpunished. Referees should play until such point as United are winning and if anybody has more points than United at the end of the season then they should have sufficient points deducted to ensure they finish second.
""Fortunately, this episode is not likely to shut the Reds boss up permanently and football should be grateful for that." You mean the press are grateful; the majority in football are not. Ferguson is a scoundrel, and most of the press sycophants.
sigmund fraud, strangeways
14/10/2009 at 16:06"
Daddy, why can't we support United instead ?
fowler, wythenshawe
14/10/2009 at 20:59
Yeah then we sold Ronaldo and still beat you lot.
sigmund fraud, strangeways
14/10/2009 at 17:14
"Ferguson, reminiscent of his bagpipes has become a windbag and far less comprehensible"
Now who does that remind me of?
sigmund fraud, strangeways
14/10/2009 at 16:06
Not a fan then?
Maybe Ferguson was wrong to go on such a rant, or perhaps he really was right and the referee was unfit on that particular day, who knows for sure.
The referee's association, like any good union, came to the rescue of the referee in question, backing up their argument with proof that their referees are fit as fiddles. But being fit isn't the whole of it, by whose values is that fitness measured.
If I want to run alongside a 100yard sprinter to see that he doesn't cheat, or to check out his style, I would first have to be as fit as that sprinter. Now take a referee in a football match, he should be as fit, and as fast as the average player, or else he can't keep up with the play. Being a former referee myself, all be it at a lower level, I prided myself in being there when I made a call, especially because I didn't have linesmen in most games. If I called an offside, I was in line with the player and there was no argument.
A good referee anticipates the play, much like playing chess, because he doesn't want to be sprinting up and down the pitch chasing the ball. He will be in position to change the direction of his run based on his anticipation, and sometimes he will get it wrong and be out of position, but that should be expected.
But are the Premiership referees as fit as the average player? If they are, then all is well. If they're not, then how can they keep up with the play?
Maybe it would be a good idea to test referees against the average player and see who is the fittest, and wouldn't that open a whole new can of worms?
How can men aged 40+ be expected to be as fit as men aged in their 20s? This is what we're faced with. At Villa last week City had to put up with a linesman who was unable to keep up in his half of the pitch thus missing a couple of offside situations. Fergie has probably got a point but the way he did it was cynical given his teams performance. Perhaps it's time we had a referee in each half of the pitch?