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The Joy of Six: manager/media spats

After Joe Kinnear's remarkable attack on the press, we pick six more volcanic managerial funks. You can read the full text of Kinnear's expletive strewn rant here
Sir Alex Ferguson faces the press
Sir Alex Ferguson faces the press. Photograph: John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images

1. Sir Alex Ferguson v the gentlemen of the fourth estate

Sir Alex Ferguson once said that Dennis Wise could start a fight in an empty room; if that's the case, Fergie could impose a media ban in one. He has had it in for the BBC ever since he decided they were all Liverpool fans in 1994, when Jimmy Hill pointed out that Eric Cantona was potentially at fault for trying to redefine the contours of John Polston's face with his boot. Nor is Fergie averse to using big boy's language before the watershed on Sky. While some of his complaints have been valid, particularly the most recent one in response to the wilful and irresponsible misrepresentation of his considered comments about Chelsea, there have been numerous other occasions on which he has lost it for no apparent reason. The best came towards the back end of the 2001-02 season. With Ferguson under pressure and facing his first trophyless season for four years, he took enormous exception to a few hacks pointing out that Juan Veron's main contribution in his first season in English football was to flounce around the middle third of the pitch like someone at the mercy of a particularly debilitating constipation. "He's a fucking great player," Fergie announced triumphantly at a press conference. "Youse are all fucking idiots." Then he ordered all the hacks to "get out". Which, coincidentally, is what he effectively said to Veron when he sold him a year later after realising what the gentlemen of the fourth estate had known all along.

2. Ron Atkinson v Richard Keys and Andy Gray

During his managerial career, Enoch Powel- sorry, Ron Atkinson was a friend of the media, always available with quotable irrelevance and one-liners. But that changed briefly on a Monday night in 1996, when he found himself in seriously high dudgeon with Sky's Richard Keys and Andy Gray, who had been Atkinson's assistant manager only four years earlier, during a live post-match interview. Atkinson's Coventry had lost a massive relegation battle at Southampton and, when it was put to him that they were up a well-known creek with only the vaguest idea of how to locate a paddle, he started emitting steam from every orifice. "I'm sorry ... you can sit there and play with all your silly machines," he began. "If the boys play badly I'll whip 'em, but I ain't whipping them for that. Who was the man of the match by the way?" Keys confirmed that it was the Southampton goalkeeper, Dave Beasant. "So we must have played not bad then. Thanks lads, goodnight." At which point Big Ron whipped off his headphones and threw them in the direction of the producer, only to then lurch towards him and apologise (although he actually looked like he was lunging in to slug him with a right-hander). In doing so, Ron undid all the convincingly angry work of the previous 30 seconds.

3. Javier Clemente v Manolo Lama

The much-travelled Spanish manager Javier Clemente has always treated the media with the contempt they deserve. When one journalist attempted to validate his opinion by saying he'd "seen a lot of football", Clemente cut him in half with the observation that "the cows at Lezama [Athletic Bilbao's countryside training ground] watch football every day and they haven't got a fucking clue". Recently, however, he excelled himself with the sort of humane observation last heard when Noel Gallagher said he hoped Damon Albarn and Alex James got Aids. Clemente said that he wished Manolo Lama, a radio journalist who had made a career of instinctively shouting 'tomayto' every time Clemente said 'tomatto', had died in a car crash in 1987. "Manolo Lama had a car accident and I was in the same speedway. I sent him a message to say I was sorry for him. But Lama insulted me 10,000 times. Do you want a person that crushed you for 25 years to be alive? I would have liked Lama to die in 1987."

4. Liam Brady v various reporters

Anyone who has seen RTE's peerless football coverage will know that Liam Brady is prone to the occasional cathartic wobbler when Eamon Dunphy goes off on one. But this was on another level entirely: after his Brighton side had drawn miserably with Canvey Island in the FA Cup in 1995, Brady was in such a volcanic funk that he treated even the most mundane questions about football like they were as frivolous an enquiry as "What colour pants are you wearing today, Liam?" or "Dani Behr or Louise Nurding?" (Well it was 1995.) Brady couldn't escape the interviews fast enough, and in one he reached a nadir by uttering the Brentish phrase, "If my granny had balls she'd be my grandad", before marching off and giving the interviewer the lamest shove ever. Dunphy would have finished the job properly.

5. Avram Grant v the press

Most managerial meltdowns are intrinsically belligerent, but Avram Grant has always done things a bit differently. His passive-aggressive press conference at Everton last season, when he basically answered every question with a 'yes' or 'no', was almost without precedent. If Grant's sibling Baron Greenback had been this monosyllabic, DangerMouse wouldn't have needed to get out of bed. The conference was seen as a farce, and another indication of how far out of his depth Grant was, but that's more than a little harsh: if Jose Mourinho had been able to resist talking about himself for long enough to do something similar, it would have been hailed as postmodern Clough of the highest order.

6. Steve McClaren v the press

Like Avram Grant, Steve McClaren was on such a hiding to nothing with the media that he could have cured cancer and been reproached for doing hard-working doctors out of a job. But unlike Grant, his press-conference strop was so feebly childish that he deserved all the abuse he got. England had blundered to a 3-0 victory over Andorra and, after answering a couple of questions with his crying face on, McClaren suddenly said, "Gentlemen, if you want to write whatever you want to write, you can write it because that is all I am going to say. Thank you."
And this from a man who employed Max Clifford and bathed his teeth in Dulux when he took over as England manager so as to ensure a smooth relationship with the press. Still, at least he learned from it and made sure he didn't make an arse of himself with the media again, right? Say what?

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