Futbol Chronicles: Sir Alex Ferguson Shouldn't Fear Manchester City

Sir Alex Ferguson has the been the most successful manager in England for the last 16 years. Manchester City have often found themselves in the shadows of their cross-town neighbors, laboring in the dwellers of the English Premiership.

Ferguson believes that the Citizens, despite their recent whirlwind spending and sea of changes, are no bigger than the small insolent club that he sees them as.

Now, in fairness to both sides, this column is not being written in favor of Alex Ferguson, but rather as a way of looking at the renewed rivalry that has defined Manchester football for quite the while.

You’ll have to go back to two seasons ago, when Sven Goring Eriksson was in charge of the Citizens, and when United were beaten by their cross-town neighbors by a score of 1-0 in an August match-up.

After City’s surprising victory, it was suggested perhaps United were beginning to feel their swan song, and that City, under the guidance of the experienced Eriksson and a wily Thai billionaire, were going on the upswing.

City fans were beginning to sense a season of hope, and were having a season in which it appeared a turn-around was coming to the City of Manchester stadium.

The Citizens won an impressive run of nine consecutive home victories, therefore leading them to finish in the top three of the Premier League by Christmas.

It was an impressive feat by City, and even United supporters themselves at one point were beginning to wonder whether City would actually compete against United for league honors that season.

There was no reason to believe that a club, led under the tutelage of Sven Goring Eriksson, would suffer a collapse in the second half of the season, but they did—and City  would go from the top three to finishing a disappointing ninth.

There was no reason to believe that Eriksson would wind up getting the axe after watching his club suffer a humiliating 8-0 loss at the hands of (GASPS) Middlesborough.

There was no reason to believe that the club would wind up going through a summer of upheaval after its Thai billionaire’s assets were frozen, leading many to believe that City would suffer a dramatic collapse of sorts.

However, even though the latter eventually happened, Manchester City survived the whole summer ordeal.

The football world was about the get a big surprise: a new billion dollar ownership group, and the surprise summer acquisition of the year: Robinho joining Man City from Real Madrid for a staggering 35 million pounds.

Of course, all of this, and the now recent revamp of the Citizens, has done nothing to sway Alex Ferguson’s belief that City is a small club.

Ferguson still believes that City would have to do more than win in order to convince the rest of the football world that they are serious contenders. He also believes that City will always be a “small club”, and will never live up to his team’s standards.

As for Ferguson, he has nothing to worry about, since he’s been in the game long enough to know that clubs have often came and went.

City may look like the team to beat in some people’s eyes, but to Ferguson, it’s just another club—another club trying to make its mark at the expense of other traditional powers.

Money doesn’t always buy you success; often you have to build your success from the bottom up. Ferguson has done that, and quite often rival clubs have plunged into the financial coffers hoping to reverse United’s dominance of the English game.