ON JULY 14, 1789, LOUIS XVI wrote in his diary a single word: “Rien”. No doubt on September 23, 2003, Sir Alex Ferguson wrote the word “nothing” in his own diary. On the first of those dates, the Parisians stormed the Bastille, started the French Revolution and set in process the events that took Louis to the guillotine.

On the second, Rio Ferdinand failed to take a drugs test. What the two events have in common is that neither of the two nothing-men had the remotest idea that such events could affect them. They were above such things. They could not be touched. They were of such eminence that the doings of these futile little beings were nothing to them. Not so much beneath contempt as beneath consideration.

“Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?” As the Baron de Charlus rages at the Narrator in Proust, so Ferguson and the rest of the inhabitants of the Faubourg Old Trafford are now raging at the rest of the world.

For Manchester United are above such things as — well, the rest of the world. We understand this. We are serfs, we are but subjects of Manchester United. Thank you, Manchester United, for letting us play football. Thank you for letting us watch football. For all things in football — in life — we thank Manchester United.

Naturally, Manchester United are not expected to live by the same standards as us. They can do whatever they like. You can’t say Manchester United were wrong. It is like saying that God was wrong. Or the King of France. The fault is by definition with the rest of the world.

Let’s start with Ferguson. He feels that an injustice has been perpetrated: “When they left him (Ferdinand) out of the England team they condemned him,” he said. “He has had to carry that burden from the moment they banned him from playing for England.”

Fact: the Ferdinand case was not pre-judged. There was no question of whether he missed a drugs test. He missed it. This is by definition a crime in sport. It is the same as failing a drugs test. It has to be, or drug-testing can’t work. So there was not a scintilla of doubt in the Ferdinand case. The only possible way in which Ferdinand can expect to be let off is by claiming that he is a Manchester United player and, therefore, different rules apply to him. That appears to have been the basis of his defence. Shockingly, the FA commission disagreed.

Maurice Watkins, the Manchester United solicitor, said that the eight-month sentence that Ferdinand received was “savage and unprecedented”. Fact: had Ferdinand been an athlete or a weightlifter, he would have been given an automatic ban of two years.

Ferguson then turns from ranting to threatening “Whether (Ferdinand) plays for his country again or whether he wants to play is another matter,” he said. That sounds to me as if the manager of an English club is inciting an English player to refuse to play for England. Should the FA tolerate such a situation?

Fact: an England footballer represents not the FA but England. Not the blokes in suits in Soho Square but you and me. If it is Ferdinand’s ambition to court personal unpopularity the length and breadth of the land, he should do precisely as Ferguson hints that he might. Has there ever been a sporting issue handled with quite the same level of crass insensitivity? Manchester United have alienated every decent voice in football and just about everybody in sport who has a view.

The monumental corporate arrogance of Manchester United is as insufferable as that of the House of Bourbon. They have not offered the smallest hint of regret. And never, even for the slightest second, has anybody at Manchester United so much as considered the possibility that Manchester United might have done something wrong.

Yet their player was manifestly at fault. What’s more, their organisation failed to make sure he was tested. But breathtakingly, at the hearing, Manchester United attempted to demonstrate that the testers themselves were in the wrong. Unbelievable.

The FA commission punished only Ferdinand. What of his club’s part in all this? They are guilty of allowing him to fail. Was this a sin of omission? Or was it something more sinister? This may be the most important part of the entire case. As it is, we are left wondering.

Now the punishment has been handed out, there has been not a hint of regret from Manchester United. Not the slightest suggestion that anyone anywhere within Manchester United has done a thing wrong. No one in Manchester United has talked about Manchester United’s many failings in this matter. Instead, with bull-headed arrogance, they are talking about the violent counter-actions they intend to take: an appeal, and if that fails, legal redress.

Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said: “The FA have sent out a very bad message by letting (Ferdinand) carry on playing. He has done very well with what he has got. He should be careful about his appeal as his sentence could be increased.” For in real-world terms, Ferdinand’s sentence is spectacular in its leniency. If he appeals, he should be banned for two years — and so should every other footballer who misses or fails a drugs test. If you want drugs-free sport, you need a culture in which drug-testing matters.

Manchester United are now gathering bands of heavy-duty corporate lawyers. The signs are that the whole business has gone out of control. Because Manchester United did not get their way, they will drag sport into something long, vicious, stinking and expensive: out of sport and into the world of corporate greed. And it is the appalling, stinking and insufferable arrogance of Manchester United that is taking it there.

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Did Ferdinand deserve eight months? Have Manchester United overstepped the marke once too often?

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