Ferguson genuinely unsettled by Benitez

PREMIER LEAGUE:Liverpool's sustained challenge in the Premier League has come as a shock to Alex Ferguson

THERE IS only thing worse than having Alex Ferguson as an enemy, and that’s having him as a friend.

If the most Fergie can muster when a rival crosses his path is an affectionate pat on the shoulder and a word of gruff Glaswegian consolation, it’s obvious his team poses as much threat to Manchester United as a Govan Primary Schools’ Invitational XI.

Arsene Wenger learnt this in the most publicly humiliating way possible when, moments after United had beaten Arsenal at Old Trafford at the fag-end of last season, Ferguson took his old sparring partner gently by the arm and whispered a few quiet words into his ear, with all the practised tenderness of a nurse who has just found an infirm patient wandering the hospital wearing only a bemused smile and slightly damp trousers. For Wenger, it must have been crushing.

Four years previously, seeing the Frenchman in a state of such abject suffering would have prompted Ferguson to perform his trademark drunk-uncle-at-a-wedding victory dance. That, however, was when Arsenal posed a meaningful challenge to United’s superiority. Once that evaporated, so did Ferguson’s interest in treating Wenger as a serious rival, although the knuckle-duster might yet be brought out of cold storage ahead of their Champions League squabble this week.

Even then, the venom might not flow as freely as it once did. Wenger and Ferguson now appear to be caught up in some sort of weird, elder statesman romance, all fluttering eyelashes and whispered sweet nothings on the effectiveness of each other’s holding midfield players. For all we know, they’re probably poking each other in sensitive places on Facebook.

This is a problem for Ferguson who, like most Scotsmen, needs a rival to fuel his own pursuit of success and, needless to say, prick his own persecution complex. In that sense, it is to his immense good fortune that, in Rafael Benitez, he has found someone who enjoys playground name-calling almost as much as he does.

Now, surely all thoughts of Ferguson’s retirement can be postponed indefinitely. If anything is guaranteed to keep him young, it is the prospect of spending the next four years sparring with the Liverpool manager, who is now viewed with such unbridled contempt it would be no surprise if Ferguson hung a picture of him in his office at Carrington, having first doodled devil’s horns on that immense forehead of his.

At various points, the Spaniard has been labelled “disturbed”, “weird”, psychologically unstable, “arrogant” and “beyond the pale”. Even more striking has been Ferguson’s willingness to hawk his views to whichever media outlet shows an interest, with the result that a man who once viewed the press with contempt has now turned into football’s version of Michael O’Leary.

CNN, Le Journal du Dimanche, the New Statesman – all have been treated to Ferguson’s innermost thoughts, and nearly all have been rewarded with a few Benitez-tinged barbs. Stand by next week for a scathing critique of the Spaniard’s dress sense in Horse Hound and a spread in Ulster Tatler lambasting his preferred holiday destinations.

Benitez is, of course, an easy target. If Ferguson could ask Old Trafford’s genetic scientists (they’re bound to have some somewhere) to build him a hate figure, it would probably look a little like the Castilian.

Works for Liverpool? Check. Chippy foreigner not afraid of a little verbal jousting? Check. Lauded for his tactical nous in major European ties? Check. Throw in a few shares in the Coolmore Racing stud and a bolt through the neck and you have Fergenstein’s Monster.

Personalities aside, it is obvious just why Ferguson has worked himself up into such a lather over Benitez, who had previously been treated with relative indifference.

The United manager is rattled, pure and simple. It was one thing for Benitez to lead Liverpool to the odd, isolated triumph in the Champions League, where luck is so often the deciding factor, but the Merseysiders’ sustained challenge in the Premier League has come as a shock.

Having successfully shrugged off the challenge of Chelsea since Jose Mourinho flounced off to Italy, Ferguson must have been settling down for a nice, easy run of uncontested league championships in the build-up to retirement: instead, Liverpool, all red tooth and claw, have turned the title race into a genuine, bloody scrap.

United are still almost certain to win the fight, particularly if they can play as dreadfully as they did on Saturday against Tottenham and still win 5-2. But Ferguson’s insistence on pricking Benitez at every opportunity – and even deploying his dumbly obedient lapdog, Sam Allardyce, for a quick snarl – suggests he has is genuinely unsettled by a manager who could yet turn out to be his best of enemies.