At (nit) wits' end

One of the more annoying stories during the present English Premier League soccer season is the feud between Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson, managers of Arsenal and Manchester United respectively. Those two clubs have dominated Engish soccer for the last decade.

I won't go into much detail about the long history of ambivalence between England's two leading managers; you can read here and here to get an idea.

I know mind games are part of any sport, especially in soccer. The lack of playoffs in most top divisions (in Europe anyways) means that every regular season game, even in the first few months of the season, ultimately matters. This places the pressure on managers for a longer period of time than in North American sports, where the heat only ratchets up in the late regular season and playoffs.

Ferguson has always been English soccer's master provocateur. Much was made of his successful rattling of Newcastle boss Kevin Keegan during the 1996-97 campaign, which some attribute to Newcastle's late season collapse. This was contrasted to the previous season, where Blackburn manager Kenny Dalglish did not respond at all to Ferguson's provocation and ended up winning the championship.

The spat between Wenger and Ferguson used to be amusing. There used to be a certain intriguing subtlety to their jabs, which made it interesting. This has been replaced by naked hostility. Ferguson claims Wenger called his players cheats. Wenger claims Ferguson brought the sport into disrepute.

It's all quite tedious now. This mentality is something you might except from 7 year olds, not England's two most successful managers.

The person most enjoying this spat, outside tabloid editors, is José Mourinho. His Chelsea side is 10 points clear of Arsenal and 11 ahead of Manchester United. Having conceded only 8 goals in 23 matches, it seems highly unlikely that Chelsea will be caught by either of the sore losers. Perhaps Wenger and Ferguson would be better off improving their sides' frailties than whining about the other.



Update 1: José Mourinho has just committed the cardinal sin of declaring the championship has already been effectively won by Chelsea 10 points in mid-January is a very comfortable lead, even more so the way Chelsea is playing. But that Mourinho would go so far as to declare the title his so early is mind-boggling error in judgement.

Update 2: Now police are warning that the spat could incite crowd violence.