99.9% of rumours are completely unfounded, but 99.9% of tapping up goes on behind closed doors. If a manager or team display a consistent pattern when trying to unsettle players, then they can expect to face these sorts of allegations.
Exactly. If they are going to tap up a player they will do it away from the cameras and the media rather than by making comments to the media.
More so behind closed doors though. Barcelona talk about Fabregas' "Barcelona DNA", Real Madrid apparently were offering to buy Ronaldo cars and all sorts when he was at Man Utd. Those are both examples of blatent tapping up. Sir Alex said Modric is a good player. That could could be tapping up or could have just been an innocent comment, you can't prove either way so to start blindly accusing him of tapping up with no real proof is silly.
I said apparently, I don't know if that was true or not. There was all sorts going on in the Ronaldo saga, hard to know what to believe and what not to believe.
I was trying to think of some examples of blatent tapping up. The stuff that Real Madrid came out with about Ronaldo being treated like a slave because Man Utd wouldn't sell them to him was just ridiculous. That is tapping up.
It's a good job that Man Utd would never do such a thing and haven't been repeatedly accused of indulging in such behaviour, isn't it?
They never come out with anything as blatent as that, not that I can remember anyway, and this Modric situation is certainly nothing like that. You can't prove that Sir Alex comment was intended to tap him up.
Using the offer of cars as an example may have been a bad idea but the comments they came out with could hardly have been more blatent.
Did they suggest that he was the best player in the league and then start using journalists to start lots of rumours in the media? Did stories suggesting a move appear in papers like Marca on virtually a daily basis? How terrible.
Sir Alex is not ordering the media to make up stories to unsettle Modric, get real, he has no control over what the media say/print. The media will come out with stories and blow things out of all proportions to try and sell more papers/attract more viewers. The media are completely separate from the clubs and are not told what to say by them. If anything Sir Alex doesn't like the media and doesn't get on with them at all.
Look MUFC Jimbo. If a Manchester-based Daily Mail journalist called Joe Bernstein can get "(Luka Modric) has indicated that he wants to move to Old Trafford" printed, when it's a lie, then we're all not being paranoid. This has happened twice before in recent living memory.
They print whatever will sell papers. Sir Alex is not ordering the media around telling them what to do, especially as he and the media don't get on at all. If it was a Man Utd club newsletter printing this then you would have a point, but it's not, it's a paper that is completely independant from them or any other club.
We are going round in circles. I just think it's ridiculous to suggest that a football manager is telling the media what to print, especially when said football manager has a history of not getting on with the media.
So the reason for the media persistently linking Spurs players with Man Utd (as opposed to say Chelsea) despite all the evidence is?
Ferguson gets on fine with the sections of the media that do what they're told. What happens to those that don't comply? http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/video/2011/may/25/alex-ferguson-bans-journalist-video He does the same thing with match officials. Play the game his way or you're fat, unfit, questionable or biased.
