Sir Alex Ferguson: 'TV has too much power over football'

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has expressed his belief that "the devil" of television has too much power over football in the UK.

In an interview airing on BBC North West Tonight this evening, Ferguson will say that TV is able to control aspects of the English game because of the vast revenues it brings.

Ferguson, who ended his long-running boycott on speaking to the BBC last month, claims that clubs have lost control over the scheduling of fixtures and this has hurt the teams competing in Europe.

"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God at the moment," he will say.

"It shows itself quite clearly because when you see the fixture lists come out now, they can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television.

"You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves and there'd be no chance."

Ferguson also believes that clubs in the English top flight are not getting the money they deserve from television deals, particularly those struck overseas.

The Premier League sells its product to 200 countries around the world, but Ferguson argues that "when you think of that I don't think we get enough money".

When it was last renewed in February 2009, the Premier League's domestic TV rights deal with Sky was worth in excess of £1.6bn to show five 23-game packages from 2010 to 2013.

Setanta paid £159m for rights for the remaining matches over the three years, but this allocation was taken over by ESPN in 2009 after the Irish broadcaster collapsed in the UK market.

Each club is understood to earn on average £4.3 million for each game shown live on TV.

In April, Ferguson blamed the "powerful" TV companies for the lack of a winter break in the English football schedule, which he said is detrimental to players' fitness.