Ferguson: Man City is stupid and arrogant!

Sir Alex Ferguson has launched an extraordinary attack on Manchester City, labelling United’s big-spending neighbours ’stupid and arrogant’ and a ’small club with a small mentality’.

Clearly angry at City’s attempts to portray themselves as rivals for silverware this season and as Manchester’s ‘real’ club, in particular by celebrating the capture of United striker Carlos Tevez on a huge city centre billboard, Ferguson dismissed their chances of reaching even the top four this season.

And he claimed that their new £25million striker, Emmanuel Adebayor, had actually been offered to United and Chelsea after he had agreed the deal to leave Arsenal for City, whom he believes are attracting players mainly because they are paying big wages.

Ferguson’s attack on City came in an interview during United’s four-match Far Eastern tour which ends with a game in China today. United believe the thousands of fans who have been flocking even to watch them train confirms that they are still the biggest club in the world, despite the riches now available to City manager Mark Hughes after the takeover by Sheik Mansour.

More pics of City’s arrogant here …



Calling City’s decision to plaster one side of a building on Manchester’s central Deansgate with a huge poster of Tevez proclaiming ‘Welcome to Manchester’ – United’s stadium is sited in the adjacent Borough of Trafford – ’stupid and arrogant’ Ferguson said: ‘It’s City isn’t it? They are a small club, with a small mentality. All they can talk about is Manchester United, that’s all they’ve done and they can’t get away from it.

‘It is a go at us, that’s the one thing it is. They think taking Tevez away from Manchester United is a triumph. It is poor stuff. I thought he would go to City a long time ago.’

Ferguson agrees that City’s spending has added spice to the coming season, but he claims that Mark Hughes’s expensively assembled team will still struggle to break up the big four of United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal. He picks out the Gunners, however, as the club most likely to concede ground.

‘City will want to be challenging for the top four, but it won’t be easy,’ said Sir Alex. ‘That top four has been established for quite a while.