Why Sir Alex Ferguson's demeanour is driving me to distraction

I'm not sure if it's me or the gum-chewing, prune-faced Glaswegian who is losing it most
sir alex ferguson
Sir Alex Ferguson has a difference of opinion with the fourth official after being awarded six minutes of injury time in last Saturday's 1-1 draw at Birmingham. Photograph: Matthew Peters/Man Utd via Getty Images

Ever since the start of the new decade an eerie and unnatural feeling, a strange and unnerving sentiment, the exact and sensational nature of which I have been struggling to identify, has pervaded my spirit. Was it simply the bitter climate, a malfunction of the pituitary gland, or the early symptoms of some malignant neurasthenic disorder?

Friends were of little comfort. "It's your age," they responded when I attempted to find outline for the nebulous yet palpable ill that afflicted me. "Look at Martin. He used to be a perfectly ordinary GP, then he turned 48. Now he spends his evenings watching bootleg DVDs of The Cuckoo Waltz and Rings On Their Fingers, and sending emails to the agent of the lovely comedy actress Diane Keen asking if, with his medical background, it might not be possible for him to make a guest appearance alongside Diane on the hit afternoon soap opera Doctors.

"It's a mid-life thing," they said. "It's the menopause. Go and get a tattoo and your navel pierced and you'll feel better."

As it has transpired, however, the unearthly mood that has disturbed my waking hours and troubled me through oppressive nights of restless sleep is the product of forces far more alien and altogether less predictable than a dip in hormone levels, a broken central-heating pump, or incipient brain fever. It is a twisting of emotional normality compared to which developing an unseemly and obsessive passion for Jan Francis, doe-eyed star of Just Good Friends and The Secret Army, appears abysmally mundane.

On Tuesday, as I leafed through the sport section, it burst upon me like a thunderclap. "Oh Lord in Heaven," I cried, the pages falling from my fingers even as my hand flashed instinctively to my heart, "I have started to feel sorry for Sir Alex Ferguson."

Yes, that – unpalatable and shocking as it will seem to many readers – is the truth of it. At some point in the past month the combination of patchy form, poor results, a mounting injury crisis, burgeoning debt, the potential sale of the training ground and more and more photos of the Glazer brothers gazing ghoulishly down from the grandstand like gargoyle sentinels on the parapets of the House of Usher, has seen my sympathies engaged by the prune-faced Scot.

For most of my life the only reason I'd fantasise about putting an arm around the gum-chewing Glaswegian was so that I might execute a Vulcan death grip but these days, in my daydreams, I pull him towards me with a hearty chuckle, ensure him that everything is going absolutely great, while simultaneously checking the immediate vicinity for anything he might slip on, or bump into.

As I look back now I can see that the signs of this enervating and singular condition were there all along. When a German friend phoned after Manchester United's defeat to Leeds and said, "Ferguson called the fact there was only five minutes injury time 'an insult to football'. An insult to football? Has he never once listened to himself talking in the last 15 years?"

Yes, I admit there was part of me that joined him in his outrage, and yet as I recall the scene I now hear clearly the other voice in my head that day, the voice that was saying softly, "Oh, poor Fergie, he's really starting to sound desperate these days."

The Football Association is clearly experiencing a similar shifting of emotion. Having put the Scot on probation after his outbursts about the fitness of Alan Wiley earlier in the season, it now seems reluctant to punish him further despite his verbal assaults on the likes of Mark Clattenburg. Some will view this as another case of the blazers pirouetting around trouble. For once, I don't believe that to be the case.

There comes a point when the passer-by stops looking at the wild-eyed man ranting on the corner and thinking "maybe I should call the police before he hurts someone" starts to think "maybe I should call the social services before someone hurts him". And this is the point we are at now, I fear.

You may say that Sir Alex is a multimillionaire with a list of achievements that will ring down the ages, and that I should save my sympathy for people who deserve it, such as the victims of plague and pestilence and whoever it was who hired Tim Lovejoy to work for Radio 5 Live.

You are probably right. It's just that I cannot help myself. These days, whenever I see Sir Alex making that characteristic gesture of running his right hand through his hair to maintain his parting, it seems more and more affecting.

It is like watching a man putting on a clean shirt and tie during the zombie apocalypse, a touchingly hopeless attempt to restore some dignity while humanity destroys itself and the living dead chew on the carcass.

I just feel sorry for Sir Alex Ferguson. I can't alter that. It's just the way it is. Though obviously half a dozen straight wins and a big-money buy during the transfer window will sharply return things to normal, I'm sure.