Jim Ratcliffe is correct to show off Ferguson’s faucet, writes IAN LADYMAN

Manchester United supporters tend to cling to Sir Alex Ferguson like tired swimmers cling to rocks. As the country’s most famous football club continues to walk through quicksand the Scot – though he is 82 now – is a link to all the great things they once were.

Now that the modern United – the United of Ineos and Sir Jim Ratcliffe – have moved to marginalise him by ending his lucrative ambassadorship, there is great upset when really there shouldn’t be. Ferguson, it turns out, was being paid more than £2million a year for his duties, a deal struck by the Glazer family when he stood down as manager in 2013. That’s about £23m in all. When you look at it like that, for a club mired in Glazer debt, it has been a quite staggering arrangement.

So now Ferguson’s 19-year-relationship with the Glazers is essentially over, a marriage of inconvenience that was always complex to say the least.

Back when he was winning trophies, Ferguson was the best PR man the Americans ever had. As the Glazers sucked millions out of the club to sustain their grubby 2005 purchase of United, Ferguson’s unrivalled skills were such that he ensured the team kept winning. Between the takeover and Ferguson’s handing of the reigns to David Moyes eight years later, United won five Premier League titles, three League Cups and a Champions League. No wonder the Glazers felt like rewarding him when it was all over.

Back then, United supporters may have been angry at how their club had fallen into the hands of a family of American venture capitalists who didn’t care for them, but at least they had Ferguson’s football for comfort. It was this that kept them coming back.

They may have been decked out in green and gold – the colours of United protest – on a Saturday but they still came, putting their money into the Glazers’ pockets every single time. In their heads, many of the United rank and file may have wished to turn their backs on a club they no longer recognised. But it’s hard to ignore the glory on the field isn’t it?

Ferguson, for his part, put his head down and carried on. So did the United chief executive David Gill. Between them they built a new United era around talents like Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. Given such a chaotic financial background it was some achievement, but the truth is there were uncomfortable contradictions everywhere you looked.

Prior to the Glazers’ arrival, Gill uttered infamously that ‘debt was the road to ruin’. He still stayed, though. Ferguson, meanwhile, rarely offered anything other than platitudes about the club’s owners but did take issue with the Manchester Evening News for carrying reports on the matches of splinter club FC United, formed by fans disenfranchised by the takeover. That was a strange look for a self-proclaimed man of the people.

And then there was the great unspoken theory, the one lingering thought that nobody was ever brave enough to verbalise within Ferguson’s ear shot. There is a small section of the United fanbase that still ask to this day whether Ferguson indirectly and unwittingly sowed the seed for the Glazer takeover in the first place.

United were a prosperous publicly-owned football club two decades ago. They won games and printed money. Their majority shareholders were the racing magnates John Magnier and JP McManus.

But then, after Ferguson challenged them legally over stud rights to the racehorse the Rock of Gilbraltar in 2004, the two men put their shares on the market and the Glazers bought them. It was the first step to where we are now and the possibility of whether Magnier and McManus, knowing full well the consequences, sold simply out of spite has lingered in the air ever since.

Ferguson wasn’t to know the route his old friends would take when he took them on over the horse. As far as he was concerned, he was simply seeking what was his.

In the books he has written since his retirement, Ferguson has committed only a handful of lines to the subject. It’s almost as though it’s a period of his tenure that he would rather not think about.

Magnier, however, did tell author Chris Blackhurst last year that: ‘United was part of my life for a while but, for something that was meant to be a bit of pleasure at the start, it ended not being so pleasurable. I couldn’t get far enough away from it quickly enough.’

The truth is that the Glazer takeover was a moment of such significance that its shadow continues to hang over United to this day. It is estimated the family have taken just over £1billion out of United in their years of ownership which, by neat co-incidence, is what Tottenham paid to build their shiny new stadium in north London. How United – now led by Ratcliffe despite the Glazers’ ongoing majority ownership – could do with one of those to call their own.

He is clearly a ruthless bloke, Ratcliffe. If he doesn’t now ensure Ferguson is afforded due courtesy, hospitality and deference on match day at Old Trafford then he will be quite wrong. Had it not been for the last manager to lift a league title for them, United would not have such a large chunk of English football history to justifiably call their own. Ferguson should always have a seat and a ticket with his name on at Old Trafford.

But Ratcliffe is trying to move United forward and the Glazers’ annual payments to Ferguson only serve as a link to the past. It feels like the right time to let it all go.

Warrior success

Wigan Warriors are the first club in the modern age to win all four available trophies in a rugby league season. Matt Peet’s side beat Hull KR at Old Trafford to add the Super League title to the League Leader’s Shield, Challenge Cup and World Club Cup already clinched in 2004 and if they are not crowned Team of the Year at the BBC’s Sports Personality shindig in December then we all should give up and go home.

However it was hard not to laugh at a comment picked up on referee Chris Kendall’s mic during last weekend’s Grand Final game at Old Trafford. Chiding a Wigan player for staying down after a tackle, Kendall said: ‘Get up this isn’t football’.

Quite.

A long way back for Town

Gravity has taken its toll on Luton Town. Their ascent into the Premier League was not sustainable and now financial forces see them labouring just a place outside the bottom three of the Championship. Some fans are calling for Rob Edwards’ head and it may well be that before long another promising manager is sitting at home on the sofa.

Everybody loved Edwards last season as his enterprising team frightened a few people in the top division. He picked up a couple of manager of the month nominations along the way.

But nobody offered him a job did they? So when Luton went down he went down with them and if he wants to get himself back in to the Premier League, he will have to take a team there himself.

And we wonder why – when the FA scoured the landscape for English managers doing well at established clubs – they couldn’t find any. Thomas Tuchel, we genuinely do wish you well.