Royals captain criticises Ferguson

Reading captain Jobi McAnuff has criticised Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson for this treatment of Rio Ferdinand.

The 70-year old Scotsman said previously in the week that all of players would be wearing the ‘Kick it out’ shirt during the warm up, but Rio chose not to. This agitated Ferguson and vowed to ‘punish’ the England defender, but has since said the incident has been resolved.

McAnuff, who opted to wear the shirt, blasted the Manchester United manager by saying: “It`s not anyone else`s position to say if players should or shouldn’t wear it, or that it`s an embarrassment. I respect Jason`s decision. That is his prerogative.’

‘When you`ve got other managers getting involved, you just think if they took the time to sit down with Jason and have a chat, he`s got an inside track on that. So for people that don`t know the inside and the background, it was out of order to comment.”

Many other high-profile players, including Royals striker Jason Roberts, chose not to wear the shirt that promotes a campaign against racism. Those players choosing not to wear slogan feel as if not enough work is being done to combat the problem of racism in football.