Tony Blair Turned To Sir Alex Ferguson For Advice

Much hullabaloo in the UK press at the moment over Tony Blair's recently published memoirs, in which, by all accounts, he comes across as a bit of an egotistical chap.

Interestingly, though, at one point he reveals he occasionally deferred to Sir Alex Ferguson over how to deal with the fractious relationship between himself and Gordon Brown.

According to The Sun, Blair saw the situation as being analogous to the relationship between ‘a football manager plagued by a talented but difficult player' and asked the Man Utd boss for advice, without ever explicitly referring to Gordo:

Mr Blair writes: "What would you do if you had a really difficult but brilliant player causing you problems? I would ask.

Get rid of them, he would reply.

And supposing after you got rid of them they were still in the dressing room and in the squad? I would say.

That would be a different matter, he would reply, laughing.

What an illuminating conversation. Is the rest of the book like this?

Unsurprisingly, the pair's chats didn't lead to any decisive action and Blair decided to tough it out with Brown until such time he could describe him as "a strange guy" crippled by "personal drawbacks" and possessing "zero emotional intelligence" in order to promote a book.

Old Fergie has demonstrated a worrying level of influence over our fair nation in the past couple of days. First cajoling the Home Office into handing out work permits, now having the ear of a Prime Minister? At least it finally explains Fergie Time.

[ The Sun via Off the Post]

This post, written by Richard Gilzene, is republished with permission from The Spoiler. Go there often if you like soccer stuff.