Nice guys have never been Reds successes
THERE is an uncanny parallel in the managerial appointments after the Busby and Ferguson eras.
For instance take the following comparisons Frank O’Farrell – David Moyes, Tommy Docherty – Louis van Gaal and Ron Atkinson – Jose Mourinho.
Obviously there were five managers between Sir Matt Busby retiring and Sir Alex Ferguson being appointed but we now come to the saddest comparison.
It is not a new idea to appoint a manager who knows the way United should play, as Busby was succeeded by ex-player Wilf McGuinness who was a Busby Babe.
It did not turn out well with his reign lasting just 18 months, his win rate being just more than 36 per cent.
The comparisons with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer are all too obvious. An ex-player and a nice guy but completely out of his depth to manage one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Great players and nice guys do not always make great managers
– as Sir Bobby Charlton found out.
The motto for the next manager should be, ‘no more Mr Nice Guy.’ Jack Haynes, Swinton
Do we need male pill?
WHY does the medical profession keep trying to create a male contraceptive pill?
Would any woman really trust their partner with that responsibility? After all, their partner won’t end up pregnant.
Most blokes get shouted at for forgetting to lift the loo seat, let alone that level of liability!
A nice idea in principle, but nobody will ever use them.
Paul Moody, Littleborough
Leave night to darkness
DIGITAL billboards are becoming ever more prominent in Manchester, adding to the everincreasing amount of light pollution in our city.
The change from halogen to LED street lamps has also resulted in the loss of the warm orange glow associated with the urban night. Instead, we are illuminated with an ugly whiter LED light.
Undoubtedly, LED lamps reduce energy waste, but digital LED billboards do not (compared with traditional billboards) and furthermore they contribute to the rapid decline of insect populations, now associated with artificial light.
Please let’s have no more flashing adverts constantly trying to sell us things through the night.
Leave the night to darkness.
Iain Hepworth, Hulme
Trump should read Isaiah
PRESIDENT Trump is a few thousand years too late in his rejection of ‘the perennial prophets of doom,’ when referring to Greta Thunberg.
The apocalyptic predictions of the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah have great pertinence to the extreme weather event of today’s climate emergency.
Geoff Naylor, via email
Blackmail of traffic fines
ON the evening of December 28, I ventured into Manchester with my wife by car, to visit the new cinema at Home.
I took a wrong turning in the dark and apparently entered a bus lane on Oxford Road (Charles Street to Brancaster Road).
This has now cost me £60 or £30 if I use the easy option and pay quickly. This is tantamount to blackmail.
There are no grounds for appeal if you did not see the warning signs (if there are any). If you want to view footage of the incident you have to make a request to so do at a council office of your choosing (?) but magnanimously this is free of charge!
Why this is not available online I have no idea.
In future I will be confining my visits to the cinema to either the Trafford Centre or Didsbury, Home’s loss.
Manchester city centre obviously does not want my custom.
T. Singer, via email