James Lawton: Time for Ferguson to learn from Arsenal not to defend the indefensible

Sir Alex Ferguson is right about one old thing. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the world isn't involved in some elaborate conspiracy to get you. At the very least, he is right to think that the Football Association punishment handed out to Arsenal players for their disgraceful behaviour at Old Trafford erred on the side of leniency.

Right to think it, but wrong to say it, especially in such terms of controlled venom. It will only the confirm the impression, one not restricted solely to Highbury, that he is about as dispassionately analytical as an inflamed wolverine.

Ferguson should have been big enough to see the positive result of the sentences handed down. The biggest dividend was the grovelling apology of his fiercest rivals, and their admission that the kind of outrageous conduct seen at Old Trafford could no longer be tolerated. But that would have required a wider view, a willingness to see that Manchester United and Arsenal were part of a wider - and embattled - football world and not the only self-obsessed players in some dismal points-scoring game. It needed a wider, more generous view, one that acknowledged some nodding acquaintance with the meaning of the word "league".

Of course, Arsenal and the FA made a deal. Of course, the club's reward for finally challenging the disciplinary myopia of their manager, Arsène Wenger, and accepting the charges against the club and the players, was insignificant fines and skimpy suspensions landing at a time of minimum embarrassment. But Fergie should ask himself a few important questions.

The first of them is about what he was doing when Arsenal were making their accommodation with football authority - and, not insignificantly, admitting that it was time to kick Wenger's appalling failure to control his players into touch. He was blustering his way into the middle of the Rio Ferdinand affair, at one point making the absurd statement that he was pleased with the unity displayed by Manchester United's England players, who had united behind the brainless advocacy of strike action by Gary Neville. That was a gratuitous challenge to the authority of the FA - and an insult to the country in which he has operated so long and so profitably.

Of course, a session on the rack would be no guarantee that the United manager could possibly be persuaded to see things that way. Nor is it likely that in his early sixties he will be converted to the value of diplomacy - or even a more subtle prosecution of self-interest.

One of the reasons why Ferguson is a great football manager is his inability to see through more than one red-tinted lens, but in a matter as delicate - and as profoundly important to the game's image - as the Ferdinand case, partisanship is not a help but a severe hindrance. The more he refused to accept certain realities, the more onus he was putting on the FA to take a firm line.

Arsenal's approach, after a short period of reflection, was precisely opposite. Unlike their manager, or Ferguson in the Ferdinand case, they looked up and measured the mood beyond the terraces of their own club. They saw that it was impossible to defend the indefensible.

So they held their hands up. The Arsenal chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, said that the offending players had behaved stupidly, and that punishment was required. Ferguson took the opposite view. Whereas stupidity was plainly a key element in Ferdinand's problems - as opposed to the poisonous display of malice produced by the Arsenal players who clustered around Ruud van Nistelrooy - Ferguson contented himself with rage that Ferdinand had not been presumed innocent until proved guilty. Unfortunately, Ferdinand was demonstrably guilty the moment he walked away from the drugs test.

Yesterday Ferguson was relentless of his criticism of the relationship between Arsenal and the FA. He said the leniency displayed towards Arsenal over a long period was a scandal, and he was quite right. He was also right that losing players against teams like Leicester and Portsmouth further minimised the damage to the offending club, and certainly he finds no argument here when he says that the suspensions were on the light side. Ashley Cole's escape from suspension was particularly grating on the spirit of an unbiased observer.

But where will the sniping end? Football in this country needs more than anything some sense of renewed values - and a willingness of heavyweight clubs like United and Arsenal to see that they have a duty to set some standards. However unwillingly, Arsenal have been dragged to this position by a show of strength from the FA. Without the threat of serious action, would Arsenal have sued for peace so briskly, and so soon after giving the green light to Sol Campbell's absurd claims that he was the victim of a conspiracy rather than the illegality of his own actions? It has to be extremely doubtful.

Equally questionable is the likelihood of Ferguson accepting that in all their success, and all their power, United ultimately will also be a victim if the credibility of English football continues to crumble. Yesterday he certainly didn't encourage any belief that he will ever see the good name of the game in terms other than of his own advantage.