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Fergie Time

Fergie's retirement: Furious Paddy Crerand gets it spectacularly wrong on Newstalk

“I was with lots of people at Old Trafford — not a murmur about it.”

TIMING IS EVERYTHING — as Paddy Crerand was reminded this morning.

The former Manchester United midfielder looked pretty foolish after he launched a full-blooded rant rubbishing rumours of Alex Ferguson’s retirement — minutes before the news was made official.

The Telegraph broke news last night that a major announcement concerning Ferguson was expected in the coming days, fuelling speculation that the Scot was ready to walk away after almost 27 years.

But in the absence of any confirmation or denial from the club, Crerand went to town on the rumours in a heated interview with Oisin Langan on Newstalk Breakfast (listen here).

“I was down at Manchester United yesterday for three hours, maybe longer than that, four hours. I was with lots of people at Old Trafford — not a murmur about it.

“And then somebody came in and said the bookmakers are putting a lot of money on David Moyes to become the next manager of Manchester United. I said “Ah that’s the bookmakers, they must be short of a few quid or something.” There’s not enough racing going on so we’ll speculate on this and Manchester United’s a big story.

He added: “You know something, that’s a classic football story. Oh an insider told me, a source told me, Hans Christian Anderson told me… bloody Walt Disney told me.

How can there be truth in speculation? The world’s going to end next week — now, do you believe me? I’ll make it up, I’m speculating that the world’s going to end next week. Newspapers can report anything. Bloody hell, newspaper reports have been writing lies since the year dot.

Shortly after 9.15am, United confirmed that Ferguson will in fact be retiring after almost 27 years as manager. Oops.

Listen to Crerand’s Newstalk interview in full here >

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