Arsene Wenger tips Sir Alex Ferguson for return to football

 ARSENE WENGER believes that Sir Alex Ferguson may yet return to football at the end of the season

At a time when Manchester United are struggling following his departure, such speculation will only serve to increase the pressure on successor David Moyes.

But the Arsenal manager is adamant that, after more than three decades in the hot seat, Ferguson was never going to find it easy just to walk away.

“Will Sir Alex ever come back?” he was asked. “In six months we’ll know more about that,” said Wenger. “You cannot rule it completely out.

“It’s difficult to take a drug for 30 years and suddenly get rid of it.”

If Ferguson is bitten by the bug again, there is no guarantee he would return with United and Wenger could see a return to international football, something the 71-year-old flirted with in 1986, when he took Scotland to the World Cup following the death of Jock Stein.

This week, the furore surrounding his autobiography has thrust Ferguson back into the spotlight, though Wenger claimed to be 'too busy" to have read it.

"At least, not yet," he added.

Wenger thinks that Ferguson had been planning his warts-and-all expose for some time, but was quick to dismiss suggestions that he should pen his own account of his life.

"No," he shot back emphatically. "Well, I say no at the moment. Maybe one day I will be inspired to do that, but at the moment I do not have that need at all.

"The past is history and history has to be written. In France we say it is not only important to make history, but also to write the history.

"It looks like Ferguson prepared his book while he was managing. I suspect he had written some of it at home at night, remembering things and thinking: 'that goes into my book...'

"It is good at least that we have a legacy of his career. That is important, especially in England where he was a manager at Manchester United for 27 years ."

In the meantime Wenger is concentrating on carrying out his own job, starting with Arsenal's visit to Crystal Palace at lunchtime.

They will be under the watch of caretaker manager Keith Millen after former manager Ian Holloway cited 'tiredness" as the reason for departing this week by mutual consent, and Wenger can empathise.

"Defeat after defeat, when you want absolutely everything to win, it can drain you," he said. "That can happen to everybody and when you are older you can deal with it a bit better.

"But the real killer is to lose a succession of games, that is difficult to swallow."

{express}