The so-called hairdryer has nothing to do with Sir Alex Ferguson's tendency to bawl out his players from close range and everything to do with the fact that the vast majority of what he spouts is hot air.

What else could anyone conclude after his latest paranoid outburst, this time alleging a conspiracy against Manchester United in the compiling of the fixture list and, in particular, that his side have had to play away from home against nine of the ten teams who finished directly below them in the Barclays Premier League last season.

It's all so obvious now you say it, Sir Alex. I can see it all.

This is how it happened: the Fixtures Working Party got together more than a year ago and set about sifting through Fifa and Uefa dates, drawing up a provisional schedule and feeding this through randomising computer software to get a sequence for Premier and Football League fixtures. It then made changes to take into account such things as police requests and the principle that teams based in the same town or city should not play at home at the same time if possible.

Up against a hard deadline, members of the working party got their heads around the overall effect on travel infrastructure: regional rail capacity, for example, may be put under strain if two Yorkshire teams are travelling to the same area on the same day.

Heads bursting, they then set about accommodating such things as the tradition of giving derby matches an early kick-off, the requirements of broadcasters and requests from individual clubs, 80 per cent of which it managed to meet.

Oh, and then they trashed the entire, cohesive, delicate structure of the fixture list and started over, just to make United play their main rivals away from home in the first half of the season. I mean, who wouldn't want to make a complicated process infinitely more problematic just to wind up an ageing Scot?

Or perhaps not.

Ferguson apologists claim that his outburst was just a ruse to put pressure on fixture makers into giving United a better deal next time around. This may have a scrap of credibility, except that the United manager did not even notice that the schedule was unfavourable (no one from Old Trafford breathed a word when the list was circulated for comments before the start of the season) until he found his team a few points adrift at the halfway stage. Only then did the “conspiracy” emerge in the Scot's febrile mind.

But what troubles me is not so much Ferguson's advanced paranoia - shared by many other fixture-list conspiracy theorists - but what it says about his knowledge of mathematics.

As any GCSE student could tell him, random processes are bound to throw up sequences that are unfavourable (real or imagined), but the upside is that this will be balanced over a sufficiently long time frame by favourable ones.

“Noise” is the term statisticians use to refer to the random fluctuations of chance. The only noise Ferguson seems to be familiar with is the stuff that comes out of his large and increasingly erratic mouth.

Prudent Wenger proves prescient as Premier League faces crunch time

Say what you like about Arsène Wenger, but you have got to hand it to le professeur for facing up to the reality that everyone else in English football seems determined to ignore.

“At the moment, people in football are not conscious of what is facing us economically,” the Arsenal manager said as the transfer window opened. “People still think we are in a bubble, but we will be hit like anybody else in this economical crisis.” Wenger has always managed according to two key principles, the first of which is a commitment to attacking football of a kind that has made Arsenal the team of choice for neutrals.

But of equal importance is Wenger's steadfast refusal to risk his club's financial probity by splurging on transfers and wages. That may have been frustrating for fans in the boom times, but is a model of restraint that other clubs would do well to follow as English football teeters on the brink.

The problem for the Premier League is not, as many seem to believe, the plummeting value of sterling. Sure, the falling exchange rate will disadvantage English clubs in terms of importing players (and retaining English talent), but this will be mitigated by the rising value of export earnings, particularly that of overseas television rights, the most recent tranche of which went on sale last month. The collapse of sterling would also have boosted the existing overseas TV deal except that the Premier League had already hedged the currency exposure.

No, the looming calamity is that identified by Wenger: le crunch. This will hit not only corporate hospitality and sponsorship income but could also cripple clubs who have to refinance debt in the coming months. Surely nobody needs reminding that the top 20 clubs are in hock to the tune of £1.6 billion, even after subtracting the soft loans made by owners. And it is not as if there are many billionaires waiting to ride to the rescue of clubs maxed-out on credit.

But Arsenal, largely thanks to Wenger, are well placed to ride the storm. The club's debt is a sensible one, secured against growth generated by a new stadium, and they have also kept a commendably tight grip on costs. In two of the past four seasons Wenger has actually made a profit in the transfer market and has kept the wage bill just below 50 per cent of turnover, the third lowest rato in the Premier League.

Sure, Wenger has made his fair share of blunders, not least when he bought Francis Jeffers in 2001 for £9 million (yes, really), but many of the club's present on-field problems are a consequence of injuries, not least to Cesc Fàbregas, something that Wenger has promised to address in the transfer window. But taking his tenure as a whole, the Frenchman has spent with remarkable shrewdness, enabling Arsenal to compete with clubs with far greater resources.

Wenger will not budge from his twin principles of attacking fluency on the pitch and financial prudence off it. It is a pity for fans that so few club managers have seen fit to adopt the former principle. They may soon be forced to adopt the latter.

Gascogine's family dignified

Surviving Gazza, Channel 4's documentary examining the ongoing tragedy of Paul Gascoigne was neither gratuitous nor voyeuristic, as many predicted, but a powerful insight into the effects of mental illness and alcohol addiction on the fabric of family life.

The film, screened on Monday night, was less about Gascoigne and more about the four people closest to him: Sheryl, his former wife, and their three children. Some have questioned their motives in agreeing to the broadcast, an easy enough gibe. But in the event they emerged as dignified and compassionate, four innocents stretched to emotional breaking point by Gascoigne's pitiful odyssey of self-destruction.

Olympics must slash cycling

Victoria Pendleton, the gold medal-winner in the sprint in Beijing last year, has called for medal parity between men and women in the track cycling events at the Olympic Games (men have four more medals up for grabs at the moment). I agree. By slashing both to one medal event each the IOC could open room for athletes from other sports that are squeezed out by cycling's absurd over-representation.