Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

At no point before the game did I accept that Chelsea would be under more pressure than us by virtue of Abramovich’s Moscow background, though he was there in the stands, gazing down on his vast investment. I didn’t see that as a factor in the game itself. Security was my main concern. Moscow is a city of great mysteries. I’ve read books on the Russian Revolution and on Stalin, who was worse than the czars, killing his own people to collectivise agriculture. We took two chefs with us, and the food was mostly fine, unlike in Rome, where it was a joke, a disgrace.

What a season Ronaldo had in that European Cup winning campaign. Forty-two goals for a winger? In some games he played centre-forward, but he was essentially a wide man in our system. In every game he would create three chances for himself. I watched him one night at Real Madrid and he had about 40 shots on goal.

Moscow was a relief, above all, because I always said Manchester United ought to be achieving more in Europe. It was our third European Cup victory and took us closer to Liverpool’s five. I always felt we would match Liverpool’s total within a reasonable stretch of time, even after the two defeats to Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, because we had earned extra respect in Europe. With a win in either of those Barcelona finals, we would have been on four, equal with Bayern Munich at the time, and with Ajax.

In our moment of triumph there was no champagne to be found at the Luzhniki Stadium. In the absence of the real stuff, staff were dispatched to a bar to buy some kind of fizzy liquid. Heaven knows what it was. ‘I can’t even offer you a glass of champagne,’ I apologised to Andy Roxburgh, who came into our dressing room to congratulate us. Whatever was in those bottles, we shook it about and made a fuss. There was a lot of hilarity and nonsense, with the players giving each other stick. You’re pleased and proud of them. I was soaked to the skin from the rain, and forced to change into my tracksuit. There was no sign of Abramovich and I don’t recall any Chelsea players coming in.

The 1999 final in Barcelona, when we beat Bayern Munich, fell on the late Sir Matt Busby’s birthday. Sometimes you hope the gods are with you, or that old Matt is looking down. I’m not a great believer in coincidences, but there is such a thing as fate, and I wondered whether it played a hand in both victories. Matt had taken our club into Europe when the English League was firmly set against it. Matt was shown to be right because English football has had some glorious nights in Europe.

With a major trophy in your possession, you should always buy players to refresh the squad and avoid the risk of stagnation. It was in the weeks after Moscow that we added Dimitar Berbatov to our squad. Berbatov had been on our target list before he moved to Spurs. He had talent in abundance: good balance, composure on the ball and a fine scoring record. He was a good age, tall, athletic. I felt we needed a bit more composure in the last third of the field, the attacking third.

But it ended up as a scrap with Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, which left us reluctant to return to Spurs for players. This was our second trip on the Big Dipper following our move for Michael Carrick. You come off dizzy. You can’t discuss both sides of the issue with Daniel. It’s about him, and Tottenham, nothing more, which is no bad thing from his club’s perspective.

eighteen

FIRST of all, you must tell them the truth. There is nothing wrong with presenting the hard facts to a player who has lost his form. And what I would say to anyone whose confidence was wavering is that we were Manchester United and we simply could not allow ourselves to drop to the level of other teams.

Faced with the need to confront a player who had performed below our expectation, I might have said: ‘That was rubbish, that.’ But then I would follow it up with, ‘For a player of your ability.’ That was for picking them back up from the initial blow. Criticise but balance it out with encouragement. ‘Why are you doing that? You’re better than that.’

Endless praise sounds false. They see through it. A central component of the manager–player relationship is that you have to make them take responsibility for their own actions, their own mistakes, their performance level, and finally the result. We were all in the results industry. Sometimes a scabby win would mean more to us than a 6–0 victory with a goal featuring 25 passes. The bottom line was always that Manchester United had to be victorious. That winning culture could be maintained only if I told a player what I thought about his performance in a climate of honesty. And yes, sometimes I would be forceful and aggressive. I would tell a player what the club demanded of them.

I tell young managers now: don’t seek confrontation. Don’t look for it, because you can bet your life it will come your way. If you seek a clash, the player is placed in a counter-attacking role, which gives him an advantage. When the former Aberdeen, United and Scotland captain Martin Buchan went to manage Burnley, he punched the captain on the first Saturday. ‘That was a good start, Martin,’ I told him.

He was a very principled guy, Martin Buchan. In his playing days, he moved to Oldham and was given a £40,000 signing-on fee, which was a lot of money back then. Struggling for form, he handed the £40,000 back to the board. He couldn’t bring himself to keep money he felt he had not earned. Imagine that happening today.

In general, across my career, people always assumed I had elaborate Machiavellian strategies. In reality I didn’t set out to master the dark arts. I did try the odd trick. Saying we always finished the campaign at a higher gallop and with heightened resolve could be classified as a mind game, and I was intrigued to see Carlo Ancelotti, the Chelsea manager, twig it, in the winter of 2009. To paraphrase, he said, ‘Alex is saying United are stronger in the second half of the season, but we are, too.’

I did it every year. ‘Wait till the second half of the season,’ I would say. And it always worked. It crept into the minds of our players and became a nagging fear for the opposition. Second half of the season, United would come like an invasion force, hellfire in their eyes. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tapping my watch was another psychological ploy. I didn’t keep track of the time in games. I kept a loose eye on it but it was too hard to work out how long might be added for a stoppage to have an accurate sense of when the game should end. Here’s the key: it was the effect it had on the other team, not ours, that counted. Seeing me tap my watch and gesticulate, the opposition would be spooked. They would immediately think another 10 minutes were going to be added. Everyone knew United had a knack of scoring late goals. Seeing me point to my timepiece, our opponents would feel they would have to defend against us through a spell of time that would feel, to them, like infinity.

They would feel besieged. They knew we never gave up and they knew we specialised in late drama. Clive Tyldesley said it, in his ITV commentary on the 1999 Champions League final, at the beginning of stoppage time: ‘United always score’, which was comparable to Kenneth Wolstenholme in the 1966 World Cup final. That’s a mind game.

There is a psychological dimension also to handling individual players. With errant behaviour it helps to look for a moment through their eyes. You were young once, so put yourself in their position. You do something wrong, you’re waiting to be punished. ‘What’s he going to say?’ you think. Or, ‘What’s my dad going to say?’ The aim is to make the biggest possible impact. What would have made the deepest imprint on me at that stage of life?

A manager’s advantage is that he knows the player wants to play. Fundamentally, they all want to be out there on the park. So when you deprive them of that pleasure you’re taking away their life. It becomes the ultimate tool. This is the greatest lever of power at your disposal.

With the incident with Frank McGarvey at St Mirren, I was consistent in telling him, ‘You’re never going to play again.’ He believed that. For three weeks he believed it. He finished up begging me for another chance. In his mind was the idea that all the power was on my side. Freedom of contract wasn’t a reality then.

People talked non-stop about my mind games. Every time I made a public utterance, a swarm of analysts would look for the hidden meaning, when 98 per cent of the time there was none. But psychological pressure has its place. Even superstitions, because everyone has one.

A woman said to me at Haydock races one day in 2010: ‘I see you on the television and you’re so serious, yet here you are laughing and enjoying yourself.’

I told her, ‘Well, do you not want me to be serious at work? My job is about concentration. Everything that goes on in my brain has to be beneficial to the players. I cannot make mistakes. I don’t take notes, I don’t rely on video evidence, and I have to be right. It’s a serious business and I don’t want to be making mistakes.’

I made plenty, of course. In a Champions League semi-final against Borussia Dortmund, I was convinced Peter Schmeichel had made an error. But at that time I wasn’t wearing my spectacles at games. Peter said: ‘It took a deflection.’

‘Deflection, my arse,’ I shouted. ‘No deflection.’

When I saw the replay later, I could see the ball had made a violent change in direction. So I started wearing my glasses to games. I couldn’t afford to make mistakes like that, to embarrass myself. If you ask a defender, ‘Why did you try to play him offside?’ and his reply is, ‘I didn’t try to play him offside,’ you need to know you’re correct in your assertion.

It makes no sense to offer players an easy chance to tell themselves, ‘The manager’s lost it.’ If they lose faith in your knowledge, they lose faith in you. That grasp of the facts must be kept at a high level, for all time. You have to be accurate in what you say to the players. Trying to be right could be fun, too. It wasn’t all a quest for the truth. A game we would play was trying to guess the opposition’s starting XI. One night I made my usual confident prediction about who would play. When the team came under the door, for a Champions League game, René announced, ‘Boss, they’ve made six changes.’

I froze, then saw my opportunity. Indignation would get me out of this hole. ‘See this?’ I barked at the players. ‘They’re taking the piss out of us. They think they can come here with their reserve team!’

An early experience was playing Coventry in the FA Cup, at Old Trafford, after we had knocked Man City out in the third round. The week before, I had been to watch Coventry play Sheffield Wednesday. You wouldn’t believe how bad Coventry were. Archie Knox and I drove home without a care. Guess what? Coventry were brilliant against us at Old Trafford. Teams who came to our ground often became a different species. Different tactics, different motivation; everything. From those early lessons, I learned always to prepare in home games for the opposition’s best team, best tactics, best performance, and make sure they were not in the game.

The better teams would always come to Old Trafford looking to give us a fright. Arsenal, especially; Chelsea, to an extent, and often Liverpool. City, when the Sheikh Mansour era started, would also arrive with noticeably enhanced ambition. Clubs managed by ex-Manchester United players would also be bold. Steve Bruce’s Sunderland, for example, were not shy on our turf.

My longevity rendered me immune in the end to the normal whispering and speculation that would envelop other managers after three defeats in a row. My success insulated me against the media calling for an execution. You saw that with other clubs but not with me. That gave me strength in the dressing room. Those benefits transferred themselves to the players. The manager would not be leaving so nor would the players. The coaches and the backroom staff would not be leaving because the manager was staying. Stability. Continuity. Rare, in the modern game. In a bad run we didn’t panic. We didn’t like it, but we didn’t panic.

I like to think, also, that we were conscious of the spirit of the game. Johan Cruyff said to me one night back in the 1990s, ‘You’ll never win the European Cup.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t cheat and you don’t buy referees,’ he said.

I told him: ‘Well if that’s to be my epitaph, I’ll take it.’

A certain toughness is required in professional football and I learned that early on. Take Dave Mackay – I played against him at 16 years old. At the time I was with Queen’s Park and playing in the reserves. Dave was coming back from a broken toe and was turning out for the reserves at Hearts, who had a great team during those years.

I was inside-forward and he was right-half. I looked at him, with his big, bull-like chest, stretching. The first ball came to me and he was right through me. In a reserve game.

I thought: ‘I’m not going to take this.’

The next time we came together I wired right into him.

Dave looked at me coldly and said, ‘Do you want to last this game?’

‘You booted me there,’ I stammered.

‘I tackled you,’ said Dave. ‘If I boot you, you’ll know all about it.’

I was terrified of him after that. And I wasn’t afraid of anyone. He had this incredible aura about him. Fabulous player. I have the picture in my office of him grabbing Billy Bremner. I took a risk one day and asked him, cheekily, ‘Did you actually win that fight?’ I was there at Hampden Park when they picked the best Scottish team of all time and Dave’s name was absent. Everyone was embarrassed.

I could criticise my team publicly, but I could never castigate an individual after the game to the media. The supporters were entitled to know when I was unhappy with a performance. But not an individual. It all went back to Jock Stein; I would question him all the time about everything. At Celtic he was always so humble. It almost became annoying. When I was quizzing him about Jimmy Johnstone or Bobby Murdoch, I’d expect him to take credit for his team selection or tactics, but Jock would just say, ‘Oh, wee Jimmy was in such great form today.’ He would never praise himself. I wanted him to announce, just once: ‘Well, I decided to play 4–3–3 today and it worked.’ But he was just too humble to do it.

Jock missed a Celtic trip to America after a car crash and Sean Fallon had sent three players home for misbehaving. ‘No, I wouldn’t have done that, and I told Sean so,’ Jock told me when I pressed him to tell me how he would have dealt with it. ‘When you do that you make a lot of enemies,’ he said.

‘But the supporters would understand,’ I argued.

‘Forget the supporters,’ Jock said. ‘Those players have mothers. Do you think any mother thinks their boy is bad? Their wives, their brothers, their father, their pals: you alienate them.’ He added, ‘Resolve the dispute in the office.’

Sometimes ice works as well as fire. When Nani was sent off in a game at Villa Park in 2010, I didn’t say a word to him. I let him suffer. He kept looking at me for a crumb of comfort. I know he didn’t try to do what he did. Asked about it on TV, I called it ‘naive’. I said he wasn’t a malicious player but that it was a two-footed tackle and he had to go. Straightforward. There was no lasting damage. I merely said he had made a mistake in a tackle, as we all have, because it’s an emotional game.

People assumed I was always waging psychological war against Arsène Wenger, always trying to cause detonations in his brain. I don’t think I set out to provoke him. But sometimes I did use mind games in the sense that I would plant small inferences, knowing that the press would see them as psychological forays.

I remember Brian Little, who was then managing Aston Villa, calling me about a remark I had made before we played them.

‘What did you mean by that?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said. I was baffled. ‘I thought you were up to your mind games again,’ Brian said. When he put the phone down, apparently, Brian couldn’t stop thinking: ‘What’s he up to? What was he trying to say?’

Though it served me well to be unnerving rival teams, quite often I unsettled opponents without even meaning to, or realising that I had.

nineteen

BARCELONA were the best team ever to line up against my Manchester United sides. Easily the best. They brought the right mentality to the contest. We had midfield players in our country – Patrick Vieira, Roy Keane, Bryan Robson – who were strong men, warriors; winners. At Barcelona they had these wonderful mites, 5 feet 6 inches tall, with the courage of lions, to take the ball all the time and never allow themselves to be bullied. The accomplishments of Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta were amazing to me.

The Barcelona side that beat us at Wembley in the 2011 Champions League final were superior to the team that conquered us in Rome two years earlier. The 2011 bunch were at the height of their powers and brought tremendous maturity to the job. In both instances I had to wrestle with the knowledge that we were a really good team but had encountered one that had handled those two finals better than us.

I wish we could have played the Rome final again the next day. The very next day. There was a wonderful atmosphere in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, on a beautiful night, and it was my first defeat in a European final, in five outings. To collect a runners-up medal is a painful act when you know you could have performed much better.

Bravery was a prerequisite for confronting those Barcelona sides. They were the team of their generation, just as Real Madrid were the team of theirs in the 1950s and 1960s, and AC Milan were in the early 1990s. The group of world-beaters who formed around Messi were formidable. I felt no envy towards these great sides. Regrets, yes, when we lost to them, but jealousy, no.

In each of those two European Cup finals, we might have been closer to Spain’s finest by playing more defensively, but by then I had reached the stage with Manchester United where it was no good us trying to win that way. I used those tactics to beat Barcelona in the 2008 semi-final: defended really deep; put myself through torture, put the fans through hell. I wanted a more positive outlook against them subsequently, and we were beaten partly because of that change in emphasis. If we had retreated to our box and kept the defending tight, we might have achieved the results we craved. I’m not blaming myself; I just wish our positive approach could have produced better outcomes.

Beating us in Rome accelerated Barcelona’s development into the dominant team of their era. It drove them on. A single victory can have that catalytic effect. It was their second Champions League win in four seasons and Pep Guardiola’s team were the first Spanish side to win the League, Copa del Rey and Champions League in the same campaign. We were the reigning European champions but were unable to become the first in the history of the modern competition to defend that title.

Yet we shouldn’t have lost that game in the Eternal City. There was a way to play against Barcelona, as we proved the year before. There is a way to stop them, even Messi. What we did, 12 months previously in the away leg, was to deploy Tévez off the front and Ronaldo at centre-forward, so we could have two areas of attack. We had the penetration of Ronaldo and Tévez to help us get hold of the ball.

We still found it hard, of course, because Barcelona monopolised possession for such long periods and in those circumstances your own players tend to lose interest. They start watching the game: they are drawn into watching the ball weave its patterns.

Our idea was that when we had any semblance of possession, Ronaldo would go looking for space and Tévez would come short to get on the ball. But they were busy spectating. I made that point to them at half-time. ‘You’re watching the game,’ I said. ‘We’re not counter-attacking at all.’ Our method was not that of Inter Milan; they defended deep and played on the counter-attack throughout. We were in attack mode in the second half.

A major inhibiting factor in Rome, I will now say, was the choice of hotel. It was a shambles. For meals we were in a room with no light; the food was late, it was cold. I took a chef there and they dismissed him, ignored him. On the morning of the game, two or three of our team were feeling a bit seedy, particularly Giggs. A few were feeling under the weather and one or two played that way. The role Giggs was assigned came with a high workload that was incompatible with the slight bug in his system. It was too big a task for him to operate on top of Sergio Busquets, Barcelona’s defensive midfielder, and then advance as a striker and come back in to cover again.

You would never think about criticising Ryan Giggs, not in any shape or form, after what he achieved at our club. It was just a pity he was below his normal energy level that night in Rome.

We started the game really well, however, with Ronaldo threatening the Barcelona defence three times: first, from a dipping free kick, then two shots from distance, which heaped pressure on Victor Valdés, their goalkeeper. But ten minutes in, we conceded a really awful goal on account of our midfield’s failure to retreat in time to stop Iniesta making a pass to Samuel Eto’o. Eto’o struck the shot and Edwin van der Sar didn’t quite deal with it as the ball slipped inside the near post.

Barcelona began with Messi wide right, Eto’o through the middle and Thierry Henry wide left. Just prior to the goal, they pushed Eto’o wider right and Messi into midfield, as a deep central striker. They changed Eto’o to the right-hand side because Evra had been breaking away from Messi, early on. Evra was racing forward persistently and they changed their shape to stop him. Afterwards Guardiola acknowledged that point. Messi had been moved to save him from having to deal with Evra.

By making that alteration, Barcelona created a position for Messi he enjoys, in the centre of the park. That’s where he played from then on, in that hole, which made life hard for the back four because they were unsure whether to push in against him or stay back and play safe.

After Eto’o’s goal, and with Messi central, Barcelona had an extra man in midfield. Iniesta and Xavi just went boomp-boomp-boomp, kept possession all night. They were superior to us at ball-circulation. I won’t waste time contesting that fact.

Conceding the ball to Guardiola’s men came at an awful price because their numerical superiority in midfield reduced you to a spectating role again. To counteract their passing game, I sent on Tévez for Anderson at half-time and watched him miss a fine chance when he went round a defender but decided to beat him a second time, pulling the ball back in and losing it. Barcelona’s clinching goal came an hour after their first: a header, unusually, by Messi, from a cross by Xavi.

Later I discussed Barcelona’s evolution with Louis van Gaal, their former Dutch coach. The basis of their philosophy was laid down by Johan Cruyff, a terrific coach who conceived their ideas about width and ball-circulation, always with an extra man in midfield. After Bobby Robson, they went back to the Dutch way, with Van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard. What Guardiola added was a method of pressing the ball. Under Pep they had this three-second drill, apparently, where the defending team would be allowed no more than three seconds on the ball.

After the win in Rome, Guardiola said: ‘We’re fortunate to have the legacy of Johan Cruyff and Charly Rexach. They were the fathers and we’ve followed them.’

What I could never quite understand is how their players were able to play that number of games. They fielded almost the same side every time. Success is often cyclical, with doldrums. Barcelona emerged from theirs and went in hot pursuit of Real Madrid. I don’t like admitting, we were beaten by a great team, because we never wanted to say those words. The biggest concession we ever wanted to make was: two great teams contested this final, but we just missed out. Our aim was to attain that level where people said we were always on a par with Europe’s best.

To beat Barcelona in that cycle you needed centre-backs who could be really positive. Rio and Vidić were at an age where their preference was to defend the space. Nothing wrong with that. Quite correct. But against Barcelona it’s a limited approach. You need centre-backs who are prepared to drop right on top of Messi and not worry about what is happening behind them. OK, he’ll drift away to the side. That’s fine. He’s less of a threat on the side than he is through the centre.

They had four world-class players: Piqué, the two centre-midfield players and Messi. Piqué was without doubt the most underrated player in their team. He is a great player. We knew that when he was a youngster player with us. At a European conference, Guardiola told me he was the best signing they had made. He created the tempo, the accuracy, the confidence and the penetration from that deep position. That’s what we tried to nullify by shoving our strikers on top of them and being first to the ball or forcing them to offload it. For the first 20 or 30 minutes it worked really well, but then they score. They wriggle out.

They had this wonderful talent for escapology. You put the bait in the river and a fish goes for it. Sometimes it doesn’t, though. Xavi would pass the ball to Iniesta at a pace that encouraged you to think you were going to win it. And you were not going to win it, because they were away from you. The pace of the pass, the weight of the pass, and the angle, just drew you into territory you shouldn’t have been in. They were brilliant at that form of deception.

The Premier League desperately want a more lenient policy on work permits. There would be a danger in such a laissez-faire approach. You could flood the game with bad players. But the big clubs should be granted that freedom, because they have the ability to scout the best players. That’s a bit elitist, I know, but if you want to win in Europe, one way round it is to change the work permit status in favour of the clubs. In the EU we could take players at 16.

Two years later, our clubs converged on the final again, this time at Wembley. We had the same intention as in Rome, started well, and were then just overrun in the middle of the pitch in a 3–1 defeat. We started with Edwin van der Sar in goal, Fabio, Ferdinand, Vidić and Evra across the back, Giggs, Park, Carrick and Valencia in midfield and Rooney and Hernández up front.

We didn’t handle Messi. Our centre-backs weren’t moving forward onto the ball. They were wanting to sit back. Yet the preparation for that game was the best I have seen. For 10 days we practised for it on the training ground. You know the problem? Sometimes players play the occasion, not the game. Wayne Rooney, for example, was disappointing. Our tactic was for him to raid into the spaces behind the full-backs and for Hernández to stretch them back, which he did, but we failed to penetrate those spaces behind the full-backs. For some reason, Antonio Valencia froze on the night. He was nervous as hell. I don’t mean to be over-critical.

We never really attacked their left-back, who had just come back from an illness and hadn’t played a lot of games. We thought that would be a big plus point for us – either him or Puyol playing there. Valencia’s form leading up to the final had been excellent. He tortured Ashley Cole two or three weeks before Wembley and had twisted the blood of the full-back at Schalke. You might be better going back to your box against Barcelona, but we should have been better at pushing on top of Messi. Michael Carrick was below his best too.

The first newsflash that night was that I had left Dimitar Berbatov out of the match-day squad. Instead, Michael Owen took the striker’s seat on the bench. He obviously took it badly and I felt rotten. Wembley has a coach’s room, nice and private, where I explained the reasons for my decision. Dimitar had gone off the boil a bit and wasn’t always the ideal substitute. I told him: ‘If we’re going for a goal in the last minute, in the penalty box, Michael Owen has been very fresh.’ It probably wasn’t fair but I had to take those decisions and back myself to be right.

I signed Berbatov in the summer of 2008 because he had that lovely balance and composure in the attacking areas. I thought it would balance out the other players I had in the team, but by doing so I created an impasse with Tévez, who wasn’t having it. He was sub, playing, then sub again. In fairness to Tévez, he always made an impact. He would get about the game. Yet it definitely caused that blockage and gave his camp something to bargain with at other clubs.

Berbatov was surprisingly lacking in self-assurance. He never had the Cantona or Andy Cole peacock quality, or the confidence of Teddy Sheringham. Hernández also had high confidence: he was bright and breezy. Berbatov was not short of belief in his ability, but it was based on his way of playing. Because we functioned at a certain speed, he was not really tuned into it. He was not that type of quick-reflex player. He wants the game to go slow and to work his way into the box in his own time. Or he’ll do something outside the area and link the play. His assets were considerable. Although we had a few inquiries for him in the summer of 2011, I was not prepared to let him go at that stage. We had spent £30 million on him and I was not willing to write that off just because he had missed a few big games the previous season. We might as well keep him and use him.

In training he practised getting to the ball faster. But when the play broke down he was inclined to walk. You couldn’t do that at our place. We had to regroup quickly or we would be too open, with too many players up the pitch. We needed people to react to us losing the ball so the opposition would be under pressure quickly. But he was capable of great moments. He also had a huge appetite, of Nicky Butt proportions. Head down at meal-times, and sometimes with food to take home as well.

Berbatov wouldn’t have featured in the Wembley game, even if he had been on the bench. I had been forced to take off Fábio and send on Nani, which left me with only two options. I wanted to get Scholes on because I needed an experienced player to orchestrate our passing, so Paul came on for Carrick. We had talked about Scholesy’s retirement for many months and I had tried to talk him round, to entice him with one more season, but his view was that 25 games a season were not enough. He also admitted his legs tended to be empty in the last 25–30 minutes. He had survived two knee operations and an eye problem that had kept him out for months at a time, yet he was still playing at that high level. Phenomenal.

The goal he scored at his testimonial that summer was a beauty. He gave Brad Friedel in goal no hope. It was a rocket. Eric Cantona, the visiting manager, was applauding. On Talksport later I heard a presenter say Paul wasn’t in the top four of modern English players. His assertion was that Gascoigne, Lampard and Gerrard were all better players. Absolute nonsense.

After our second Champions League final defeat to Barcelona, I had to ask: what is the problem here? Fact No. 1is that some of our players fell below the level they were capable of. A contributing factor might have been that we were accustomed to having most of the possession in games. When that advantage transferred itself to the opposition it might have damaged our confidence and concentration. There was some credence in the theory that our players were unsettled by having to play a subservient role: even a player such as Giggs, or Ji-Sung Park, who, in the quarter-final against Chelsea, tackled everybody and was up and down the pitch all day. We never saw him, in that way, against Barcelona, whose starting XI was: Valdés; Alves, Piqué, Abidal, Mascherano; Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta; Messi, Villa and Pedro.

They took the lead through Pedro from one of Xavi’s countless clever passes but Rooney equalised for us after a quick exchange with Giggs. But then the Barcelona carousel really started spinning, with Messi at the controls. He and Villa scored the goals that finished us off in Van der Sar’s last game for the club.

I made an error at half-time. I was still focusing on winning the game and told Rooney he needed to keep running into those gaps behind the full-backs. ‘We’ll win the game if you keep doing that,’ I urged him. I forgot the big issue with playing Barcelona. So many of their games were effectively won in the first 15 minutes of the second half. I should have mentioned that to my players. I might have been better assigning Park to mark Messi for the first 15 minutes and pushing Rooney wide left. If we had employed those tactics, we might just have sneaked it. We would still have been able to counter-attack. Those changes would have left Busquets free, so maybe we would have been driven back towards our box, but we’d have posed more of a threat, with Rooney attacking from a wide left position.

I had intended to replace Valencia after 10 minutes of the second half, but then Fábio was attacked by cramps again and I was forced to re-jig around his injury. My luck in finals was generally good. Favour deserted me in this one. On the balance of all those big games and the success I had enjoyed, I could hardly start pitying myself at Wembley, the scene of United’s win over Benfica in 1968.

We thought we might have a chance at corner kicks but they never came our way. As our defeat was confirmed, there was no smugness about Barcelona. Not once did they flaunt their superiority. Xavi’s first move after the final whistle was to make a move for Scholes’ jersey. Footballers should have a role model. They should be saying to themselves: ‘He’s where I want to get to.’ I had it with Denis Law. Denis was a year and a half older than me and I looked at him and said, ‘That’s what I want to be.’

In the days after that loss I began taking a serious look at the coaching in our academy. Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and I exchanged a lot of opinions. I looked at appointing another technical coach to the academy. Our club was always capable of producing great players and Barcelona’s next wave were not better than ours. No way. Thiago was on a par with Welbeck and Cleverley but there was no fear about the rest of theirs coming through.

Looking ahead is vital. We were on to Phil Jones long before that Champions League final. I tried to buy him in 2010 but Blackburn would not sell. Ashley Young was bought to replace Giggs. The goalkeeping situation was all settled in December. Granted, David de Gea had a torrid start to his United career, but he would develop. Smalling and Evans were outstanding prospects. We had Fábio and Rafael, and Welbeck and Cleverley were coming through; Nani was 24, Rooney 25. We had a nucleus of young talent.

We shed five that summer because with Jones joining it wasn’t going to be easy for Wes Brown or John O’Shea to make the starting XI. They were good servants to me. The horrible part of management is telling people who have given their all for you that there is no longer a place for them in your plans. After the Premier League title parade, in the rain, we returned to the school from where we had started the procession. I spoke to Darron Gibson and asked him how he saw his future. Perhaps it wasn’t the perfect place to begin that discussion, but he got the gist of what I was thinking. He was off on holiday that night so we needed to start the conversation. Wes Brown, I struggled to reach by telephone. It was horrible to let players of that experience and loyalty to me go.

I lost five players aged 30 and above and let Owen Hargreaves go. We were bringing back Welbeck, Cleverley, Mame Diouf and Macheda from loan spells, and signing three new players. The average age of the squad was reduced to around 24.

With Scholes and Neville, my plan was to let them roam about the place, with the youth team, academy and reserves, then the three of us would sit down for an assessment of how strong we were. I was going to place a big burden on them to shape the future, because they knew better than anyone what it took to be one of our players. It’s something I’d wanted to do for years and years: feed my top players into the stream.

Scholes was a man of excellent opinions. His assessments were brilliant. Always in one line. There were no maybes. When we had a problem with Van Nistelrooy, Paul was instantly clear that Ruud could not be allowed to cause disruption. His language was blunt. Gary asked him, ‘Are you sure, Scholesy?’ – just winding him up.

At that point, on the coaching side, we had Brian McClair, Mick Phelan, Paul McGuinness, Jim Ryan and Tony Whelan. They were all United players or academy graduates. I wanted to strengthen those areas. Clayton Blackmore and Quinton Fortune did a few bits on the development side.

After the inquest, I told myself: ‘When we play Barcelona next time in a Champions League final, I would have Jones and Smalling, or Smalling and Evans, right on top of Messi.’ I wasn’t going to let him torture us again.

twenty

THE best piece of advice I ever received on the media front was from a friend called Paul Doherty, who was then at Granada TV. Great lad, Paul. He sought me out one day and said: ‘I’ve been watching your press conferences and I’m going to point something out to you. You’re giving the game away. You’re showing your worries. Look in that mirror and put the Alex Ferguson face on.’

Appearing beleaguered is no way to handle the press. Showing your torments to them is no way to help the team or improve your chances of winning on a Saturday. Paul was right. When he gave me that advice I was displaying the strains of the job. I couldn’t allow a press conference to become a torture chamber. It was my duty to protect the dignity of the club and all that we were doing. It was important to be on the front foot and control the conversation as much as possible.

Before I went through that door to face the world, I trained myself, prepared myself mentally. Experience helped. I reached the point in my Friday press conferences where I could see the line a journalist was pursuing. Sometimes they agreed a party line, telling one another: ‘Right, you start that, I’ll go the other way.’ I could read them all. Experience gave me that. Plus, the internal mechanism starts to work faster. I loved it when a journalist asked a big long question because it allowed me time to prepare my answer. The hard ones were the short questions: ‘Why were you so bad?’

That kind of pithy inquiry can cause you to elongate your response. You stretch it out while you’re trying to think, and end up justifying your whole world to them. There’s an art to not exposing the weaknesses of your team, which is always your first priority. Always. You might have a game three days later and that, too, should be at the forefront of your thoughts when being interrogated. Winning that game is what counts, not scoring intellectual points in a news conference.

The third objective is not to make a fool of yourself by answering stupidly. Those were the considerations working away in my brain as I was being grilled. The skills, that greater awareness, took years to acquire. I remember being on television as a young player and blubbing about a six-game suspension I had received from the Scottish Football Association. I said on air: ‘Aye, that’s the Star Chamber justice they operate in Scotland.’

Right away, a letter from the SFA came flying in to the club. Thinking you have a duty to be interesting, you can say something you regret. I was right that day in Scotland but I finished up having to write a letter to explain myself. The manager asked me: ‘Where the hell did you get that one from – the Star Chamber justice line?’

I couldn’t hide the origins of my speech. ‘I was reading a book and just thought it sounded good,’ I told him.

Of course my longest and biggest media bust-up was with the BBC, which lasted seven years until I decided enough was enough in August 2011. There were many annoyances from my perspective, including an article in Match of the Day magazine, but the step too far was a documentary called Fergie and Son, broadcast on 27 May 2004, on BBC3, which featured a horrible attack on my son Jason. They looked at the transfers of Jaap Stam to Roma and Massimo Taibi to Reggina in relation to Jason’s involvement with the Elite Sports Agency. Before the broadcast went out, the United board cleared me, Jason and Elite of any wrongdoing in transfers, but decided that Jason could no longer act for the club on transfer dealings.

The BBC would not apologise and the allegations they made were not true.

In the aftermath, Peter Salmon of the BBC came up to see me and I told him, ‘You watch that programme and tell me whether it does the BBC credit.’ I wanted to sue them, but my solicitor and Jason both opposed the idea. Salmon assumed his old friendship with me from Granada TV would end the standoff.

‘The BBC’s a Manchester firm now,’ he said.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘And you need to apologise.’ No answer. His plan was to get me to address the Fergie and Son programme in an interview with Clare Balding. Why would I do that? But we did agree to differ in the end and I resumed my interviews with BBC staff. By then I had made my point.

More generally Sky television changed the whole media climate by making it more competitive and adding to the hype. Take the coverage of the Suárez biting incident in the spring of 2013. I was asked about it in a press conference. The headline on my answer was: ‘Ferguson feels sympathy for Liverpool’. They asked me a question about Suárez and I said, ‘I know how they feel because Cantona received a nine-month ban for kung-fu kicking a fan.’ My point was – never mind ten games, try nine months. Yet they ran a headline suggesting I felt sorry for Suárez.

Another headline was: ‘Ferguson says José Mourinho is going to Chelsea’. The question they had asked me was: ‘Who will be your main challenger next year?’ I replied that Chelsea would be there next season and added that if the papers were right and Mourinho was going back, it would give them a boost. The headline became: Ferguson says Mourinho’s going back to Chelsea.

I had to text Mourinho to explain. He texted back and said, ‘It’s OK, I know, I saw it.’ That headline ran every ten minutes. Mourinho did end up back at Chelsea but that’s not the point.

So there was an intensity and volatility about the modern media I found difficult. I felt that by the end it was hard to have relationships with the press. They were under so much pressure it was not easy to confide in them. When I first came to Manchester, I was wary of some but wasn’t guarded in the way I was in my final years. Characters like John Bean and Peter Fitton were decent lads. Bill Thornton. David Walker. Steve Millar. Decent guys. And I had my old friends from Scotland.

On tours we used to have a night out with the press lads. One evening we ended up back in my room and Beano was in striking form, tap-dancing on my table. Another night I was in bed, at about 11 o’clock, when the phone rang and a voice said: ‘Alex! Can you confirm or deny that you were seen in a taxi with Mark Hughes tonight?’

It was John Bean. I told him, ‘It would be very difficult, John, because he was playing for Bayern Munich tonight in a European tie.’

John said: ‘Oh yes, I watched that game.’

I banged down the phone.

John then turns up on the Friday. ‘A million apologies, Alex. I know you’ll accept my apology.’ And sat down.

Latterly we had a lot of young reporters who dressed more casually than the men I had known in my early years. Maybe it was a generational thing, but it just didn’t sit well with me. It’s a difficult job for those young reporters because they are under so much pressure from their editors. Forget off the record. It doesn’t exist any more. I banned a couple of reporters in 2012–13 for using off-the-record remarks. I banned another for saying Rooney and I never spoke in training sessions – and that everyone at the club could see it. Not true.

I didn’t read all the papers, but from time to time our media staff would point things out that were inaccurate. The process can drain you. Years ago I used to take action, but it ends up costing you money. As for an apology, 40 words tucked away on page 11 was a long way from a story with banner headlines on the back page. So what was the point?

In banning reporters I would be saying: I’m not accepting your version of events. Again, I was in a strong position, because I had been at Man United a long time and had been successful. If I had been some poor guy struggling on a bad run of results, the scenario would have been different. In most cases I felt an underlying sympathy because I knew that extrapolation or exaggeration was a product of the competitive nature of the business. Newspapers are up against Sky television, websites and other social media channels.

Any Premier League manager should have an experienced press officer, someone who knows the media and can act quickly on stories. You can’t stop them all but you can warn the author when the facts are wrong and seek corrections. As a backup, a good press officer can extricate you from trouble. Every day, for 24 hours, Sky News is rolling. A story will be repeated over and over again. Dealing with the press is becoming more and more problematic for managers.

Say Paul Lambert is having a bad time at Aston Villa. The press conference is bound to be dominated by negativity. Only someone who knows the press can train a manager for that. When I had my bad spell at United, Paul Doherty told me: ‘You’re tense, you’re bait for them. Before you get in that press conference, look in the mirror, rub your face, get your smile on, get your act together. Be sure they can’t eat you up.’

That was marvellous advice. And that is what you have to do. Most times you have to go with the flow and make the best of it. A standard question is: do you feel pressure? Well, of course you do. But don’t give them a headline. I held my press conferences before training. A lot of managers hold theirs afterwards. In that scenario, you are concentrating on your training session and not thinking about the press. For a 9 a.m. press conference I would have been briefed by Phil Townsend, our director of communications, on what might come up.

He would tell me, for example, that I might be asked about the Luis Suárez biting incident, say, or the Godolphin doping scandal in racing, or a possible move for a player such as Lewandowski. I always started by talking about players who would be available for that particular game. Then the emphasis would usually switch to issues around the game, personalities. The Sundays would often look to build a piece around one subject. Michael Carrick’s good form, for instance.

I was generally fine in press conferences. The most difficult challenge was how to address the problem of bad refereeing. I was penalised for making remarks about referees because my reference point was the standards I set for football, not match officials. I wasn’t interested in the standards referees set themselves. As a manager I felt entitled to expect refereeing levels to match those of the game they were controlling. And as a group, referees aren’t doing their job as well as they should be. They talk of refereeing now as a full-time job, but that’s codswallop.

Most start at 16 or so, when they are kids. I admire the impulse to want to referee. The game needs that. I wanted to see men such as the Italian Roberto Rosetti referee here. He’s 6 feet 2 inches tall, a commanding figure, built like a boxer, and he flies over the pitch, calms players down. He’s in control. I liked to see the top referees in action. I enjoyed observing proper authority, properly applied.

It would have been hard to get rid of a Premier League referee on grounds of incompetence or weight. They all have lawyers. The union is very strong. Plus, young referees are not coming through, so they cling to the ones they have.

Refereeing was the one area of the game where maybe I should have walked away from interviews without expressing my opinions. The following week, I might be the beneficiary of a decision in our favour; so to go overboard after one bad decision could be interpreted as selective outrage.

I support The Referees’ Association. At Aberdeen I would bring them into training to help them get fit. I like standards. I like to see a fit referee. And I don’t think that levels of fitness are high enough currently in the English game. How far they run is not the correct standard of measurement. It’s how quickly they cover the ground. If there’s a counter-attack on, can they reach the right end of the pitch in time? In fairness, if you look at our 2009 Champions League semi-final against Arsenal, when Rosetti was the referee, he was still 20 yards behind the play when we put the ball in the net. It took us nine seconds to score. So you’re asking the referee to run 100 yards in nine seconds. Only Usain Bolt could manage that.

As a rule, I felt that the Football Association tend to go after the high-profile targets because they know it will bring favourable publicity. If you look at the Wayne Rooney incident against West Ham, when he swore into the camera, we felt they pressurised the referee, and Rooney ended up with a three-match suspension. The justification was that it’s not nice for children to see a player swear into a TV camera. I can see that, but how often have you seen players swear over the years?

It was never really possible to work out who was running English football’s governing body. You would get Exeter schools having a say. Greg Dyke, the new chairman, has to reduce the numbers involved in decision-making. A committee of 100 people can’t produce sensible management. These committees are set up to honour people’s ‘contribution to the game’ rather than make the organisation run smoothly. It’s an institutional problem. Reformers go in there 6 feet 2 inches tall and come out 5 feet 4 inches.

Our behaviour in big games was generally excellent. One newspaper cited the case of the referee Andy D’Urso being harassed by Roy Keane and Jaap Stam, which we stamped on. Me saying, ‘It’s none of their business,’ evidently irked the FA. I also pointed out that this was the League Cup, not the FA Cup. I was never much impressed with the work of the FA’s compliance unit.

When I criticised Alan Wiley for his physique in the autumn of 2009, I was making a wider point about the fitness of referees. In my opinion Alan Wiley was overweight when I made that point after a 2–2 draw with Sunderland at Old Trafford. The comment that landed me in hot water was: ‘The pace of the game demanded a referee who was fit. He was not fit. You see referees abroad who are as fit as butchers’ dogs. He was taking thirty seconds to book a player. He was needing a rest. It was ridiculous.’

Later I apologised for any personal embarrassment caused to Alan Wiley and said my intention had been to ‘highlight a serious and important issue in the game’. But, 16 days after the Sunderland game, I was charged by the FA with improper conduct. I had twice been banned from the touchline, in 2003, and again in 2007 for having my say about referee Mark Clattenburg. Later I was fined £30,000 and banned from the touchline for five matches for my comments about referee Martin Atkinson in the wake of our 2–1 defeat at Chelsea. After my comments about Alan Wiley, former referee Jeff Winter suggested a ‘FIFA-style stadium ban’ might be appropriate.

By the end, I felt we hadn’t had a really top Premier League referee for a long time. I know Graham Poll had that arrogant streak, but he was the best decision-maker. He had such an ego that it detracted from his performances, and when he entered one of his stroppy moods he could be difficult for you. He was the best judge of an incident over my time at Manchester United.

When a referee is working in front of 44,000 at Anfield, or 76,000 at Old Trafford, and he gives a goal that goes against the home team, and the crowd scream, it does affect a lot of them. That’s another distinction: the ability to make decisions against the tide, against the roar of the crowd. The old saying that a referee was ‘a homer’ does apply. It’s not to say a ref is cheating, more that they are influenced by the force of emotion in the crowd.

Anfield was probably the hardest place for a match official to be objective, because it was such a closed-in, volatile environment. There is an intimidation factor, from fans to referees, not just at Liverpool but across the game.

Forty years ago, crowds were not frenzied the way they are today. So perhaps it would serve a higher purpose for the referee to attend a press conference with his supervisor alongside him and explain how he saw it. For instance, I would have found it interesting to hear from the Turkish referee who handled our Champions League tie against Real Madrid at Old Trafford in March 2013, and listen to what he had to say about Nani’s sending-off, which was appalling.

A brief referee’s press conference might have been a step forward. You can’t stop progress. Take football boots: I was totally against the modern boot, yet manufacturers were pouring money into football and therefore could not be challenged. The level of gimmickry is now very high, to get young kids to buy pink boots, orange boots. A lot of clubs use the kit manufacturers as part of the deal to sign a player: we can get you a deal with Nike or adidas, and so on. They have to get their money back, and it’s through boots.

As an audience we are never ever going to be satisfied with referees, because we are all biased towards our own teams. But full-time referees have not been successful, except in terms of man-management. It’s impossible for a person to do his normal job and still follow the kind of training programme referees are assigned. So the system is flawed. There should be full-time referees who report to St George’s Park every day. You may say – how are they going to travel from Newcastle to Burton-upon-Trent every day? Well, if we signed a player from London, we found him a house in Manchester. Robin van Persie, for example. If they want the best refereeing system, they should be as professional as the Premier League clubs, with the money the game now has.

Mike Riley, the head of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, once claimed they lacked the finance to take such steps. If he is right, it is incredible that football lacks the resources for proper professional refereeing, with £5 billion in revenues from television. That is ridiculous. Think of the sums available in parachute payments to clubs relegated to the Championship. If referees are going to be full-time, the system should reflect that. It should be done properly.

In Europe, Champions League referees have an arrogance about them because they know they won’t see you again the following weekend. I was in four finals and there was only one where the referee could be recognised as a top official: Pierluigi Collina, in the Barcelona final of 1999.

I’ve lost two important European ties to José Mourinho, not because of the performance of the players but because of the referee. The Porto game in 2004 was unbelievable. The worst decision he made that night was not the disallowed Scholes goal that would have put us 2–0 in front. When Ronaldo broke away with a few minutes to go, he was brought down by the left-back. The linesman flagged for a free kick but the referee chose to play on. Porto went up the park, got a free kick, Tim Howard parried it out and they scored in injury time. So we had plenty of experience of bad decisions against us in Europe.

I was at an AC Milan–Inter game and a senior Inter official said to me: ‘Do you know the difference between the English and the Italians? In England they don’t think a game can ever be corrupt. In Italy they don’t think a game can not be corrupt.’

In England, on the plus side, there was an improvement in man-management. That was good. The communication between match officials and players was much more constructive. People in authority have to be able to make decisions, and a lot of them lacked the ability to reach them quickly. The human element tells you a referee can be wrong. But the good ones will make the correct decisions more often than not. The ones who make the wrong ones are not necessarily bad referees. They just lack that talent for making the right calls in a tight time frame.

It was the same with players. What makes the difference in the last third? It’s your decision-making. We were on to players about it all the time. If I were starting again, I would force every player to learn chess to give them the ability to concentrate. When you first learn chess you can be three or four hours finishing a game. But when you’ve mastered it and start playing 30-second chess, that’s the ultimate. Quick decisions, under pressure. What football is all about.

twenty-one

IN the build-up to us winning our 19th English League title, there was this constant question about us beating Liverpool’s record. My view was that we would pass their haul of 18 championships at some point anyway, so there was no need to make a fuss about it in that particular season. I wanted our attention focused on the campaign itself. But it was something I always felt we needed to achieve.

The Souness–Dalglish Liverpool teams were the benchmark for English football in the 1980s, when I made my first foray into management south of the border. Those Liverpool sides were formidable. I had suffered against them with Aberdeen and brought those memories with me to Manchester. In one European tie we had lost 1–0 at Pittodrie, played really well for the first 20 minutes at Anfield, but still ended up 2–0 down at half-time. I did my usual thing in the dressing room and, as the players were leaving, one, Drew Jarvie, said, ‘Come on, lads, two quick goals and we’re back in it.’

We were 3–0 down on aggregate, at Anfield, and he was talking about two quick goals as if they were ours to take. I looked at Drew and said: ‘God bless you, son.’ Later the players would hammer Drew with the quote. They would say, ‘We weren’t playing Forfar, you know.’

When that great Liverpool side were 1–0 up against you, it was impossible to get the ball off them. It would be boomp-boomp around the park. Souness would spread the play. Hansen, Lawrenson, Thompson: whatever the combination at the back, they were comfortable on the ball. When I moved to United, they still had Ian Rush, John Aldridge, that calibre of player. Buying John Barnes and Peter Beardsley just elevated them again.

I said at the time: ‘I want to knock them off their perch.’ I can’t actually remember saying that, but the line is attributed to me. Anyway, it was a representation of how I felt, so I have no objection to it being in the newspaper cuttings. Manchester United’s greatest rival, though it changed towards the end, was Liverpool – historically, industrially and football-wise. The games were always emotionally intense events.

Our League success in 1993 opened the door, and by the turn of the century we had added a further five championships. In 2000 I looked at Liverpool and knew there was no easy way back for them. They were in for a long haul. Youth development was spasmodic. You had no feeling that Liverpool were a threat again. The impetus was all with us. On the day we reached 18 titles to match their record, I knew fine well we were going to pass them, the way our club was operating.

The weekend of our 19th coronation was an extraordinary one for the city of Manchester. City won their first trophy since the 1976 League Cup, with a 1–0 win over Stoke in the FA Cup final, and we drew 1–1 at Blackburn with a 73rd-minute penalty by Rooney. In 1986, when I arrived, Liverpool led United 16–7 in League titles won. This was the season in which Chelsea had spent £50 million on Fernando Torres and City had invested £27 million in Edin Džeko while Javier Hernández turned out to be a bargain for us at £6 million.

We went 24 games unbeaten before losing at Wolves on 5 February 2011, and finished with only four defeats. A turning point in the race was the 4–2 win at West Ham in early April, after we had been 2–0 down at the interval. I made the point that several of our players had sampled success for the first time and would want more, Valencia, Smalling and Hernández among them.

Winning the title was the most important aim that season, with the 19 as a bonus. By the time I finished we had moved on to 20, which was a number that the fans chanted with great relish. There was no evidence in my final season that Liverpool, despite some excellent performances, possessed a team who might win the League. I was coming out of the Grand National meeting with Cathy in April 2013 and two Liverpool fans came up alongside to say, ‘Hey Fergie, we’ll hammer you next season.’ They were good lads.

‘Well, you’ll need to buy nine players,’ I said.

They looked crestfallen. ‘Nine?’

One said: ‘Wait till I tell the boys in the pub that.’ I think he must have been an Everton fan. ‘I don’t think we need nine,’ said the other as he traipsed away. I nearly shouted, ‘Well, seven, then.’ Everyone was laughing.

That summer we knew Manchester City were emerging as the team we would have to beat. The danger no longer emanated from London or Merseyside. It was so close you could smell it. An owner with the means to make this a serious municipal contest stood between us and control of the city. We continued down our path of building up strength for the future and hoped it would see us through.

The big player we needed to replace was Edwin van der Sar. Although most people assumed Manuel Neuer was going to be our target (he was on our agenda), we had scouted David de Gea for a long time, right through from when he was a boy. We always thought he was going to be a top goalkeeper.

In the summer of 2011, also, Ashley Young had a year to run on his contract at Aston Villa. He was a solid buy: English, versatile, could work either side of the pitch, could play off the front, and had a decent goal-scoring record. Given that Ji-Sung Park was coming up to 31, and with Ryan Giggs’ advancing age, I thought it was a good time to move for Young. Giggs was never going to be a thrusting outside-left any more in the way he had been in the past.

We picked up Young for £16 million, which was a reasonable fee, maybe a pound or two more than we expected to pay, with him in the final year of his contract. But we concluded the deal quickly.

Ashley ran into trouble against QPR in the 2011–12 season, when Shaun Derry was sent off and our player was accused of diving. I left him out for the next game, and told him that the last thing he needed as a Manchester United player was a reputation for going down easily. It wasn’t a penalty kick against QPR and Shaun Derry’s sending-off was not rescinded. Ashley did it two weeks in a row but we stopped it. Going to ground too willingly was not something I tolerated.

Ronaldo had issues with the same tendency early in his career, but the other players would give him stick for it on the training ground. The speed he was travelling at, you had only to nudge Cristiano to knock him over. We spoke to him many times about it. ‘He fouled me,’ he would say. ‘Yes, but you’re overdoing it, you’re exaggerating it,’ we would tell him. He eradicated it from his game and became a really mature player.

Luka Modrić was an example of a player in the modern game who would never dive. Stays on his feet. Giggs and Scholes would never dive. Drogba was a prominent offender. A Barcelona game at Stamford Bridge in 2012 was the worst example. The press were never hard on him, except in that Champions League fixture. If the media had been tougher on him five years earlier, it would have been better for the game.

The purchase of Phil Jones was a long-term plan from when Sam Allardyce was Blackburn manager. When Rovers beat us in the FA Youth Cup, I called Sam the next day and said, ‘What about the boy Jones?’

Sam laughed and said, ‘No, he’ll be in the first team on Saturday,’ which he was. And he stayed there. Sam was a big fan of Jones. Blackburn wouldn’t sell him in the 2011 January transfer window because they were in a relegation battle. By the end of the season, every club was on his tail: Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea. He spoke to all four clubs but we managed to coax him to United, at 19 years of age.

At the point we signed Phil, I was unsure what his best position would be. Later I came to feel it would be at centre-back. He gave us versatility. He could play almost anywhere. In the 2011 Community Shield I took Ferdinand and Vidić off at half-time and assigned Jones and Evans to push right on top of the opposition. Evans is good at that too: breaking into the middle of the pitch. Vidić and Ferdinand were more old school. They have got good heads, understand the game well, don’t get caught out. They were a great partnership. Increasingly, though, I could apply variations at centre-back, and Jones was a major part of my thinking.

Evans, I think, needed a shake. He didn’t appreciate me signing Jones and Smalling. It caused him to question my opinion of him. But he proved himself in his own right and did increasingly well for us. It’s always gratifying when a player responds to new arrivals by redoubling his own efforts.

Tom Cleverley, another young hopeful, was the victim of a shocking tackle against Bolton early in that season, which killed his year in many ways. He came back after about a month and we played him right away against Everton. A recurrence of the injury then kept him out for about three months. The plan was to send him off for an operation, which he didn’t want. It would have kept him out for nine months. He wanted to carry on, and it worked, but by that time I had Scholes and Carrick back. I was never able to place Tom in the side regularly.

He’s a very clever player, the boy. Very intelligent. He’s mobile and a good finisher. He was in the London Olympic squad, which pleased me because he needed a challenge to lift his self-belief right up. Darren Fletcher, meanwhile, was battling a colonic illness. In the summer of 2012, it was possible he might have an operation, but he needed to be well to go under the knife. With a setback he had, he was going to be out until December. The previous season I had him with the reserves to do some coaching. He enjoyed that. Scholesy had gone back to the first team. Darren delivered a couple of half-time talks in reserves games and was impressive.

De Gea, who was 20 when we signed him for 24 million euros from Atlético Madrid, had a torrid time to begin with. It was obvious he lacked the physique of Van der Sar or Schmeichel. That part of his body needed to be developed and we devised a programme to help him add muscle mass. A complication for him was that we lost Ferdinand and Vidić in our first game of the 2011–12 League campaign: a 2–1 win at West Bromwich Albion, in which he allowed a weak shot from Shane Long to slip through. I described the battering he received in our penalty box at West Brom as his ‘welcome to England’.

Vidić was out for six weeks and Rio for three. De Gea then had Smalling and Jones playing in front of him. Young players. He did all right but was a few degrees short of infallible. There were issues with his handling of the players in front of him. By the time we played Liverpool in October, he conceded the first goal from a corner kick. He should have dealt with that better: not just him but Evans and Smalling, the centre-backs on that occasion.

Their positioning was bad, which locked De Gea in to his six-yard area, but it’s the goalkeeper who takes the blame for those rocky moments. In the decisive Premier League game against City at the Etihad Stadium the following April, Jones blocked him in and stopped him getting out to deal with the corner kick that led to Kompany’s goal. There was progress to be made on that front. As the season wore on, though, he was more and more effective and self-assured. Some of his saves were miraculous. Our instincts were correct all along. He was one of the world’s best young keepers and we were proud to have him with us, where he could develop as so many others had before. At Real Madrid, in the first leg of our Champions League round of 16 tie in February 2013, he saved brilliantly from Ronaldo, Fábio Coentrão and Sami Khedira.

David couldn’t speak the language and he had to learn to drive, another illustration of how young he was. It could never be easy for a goalkeeper coming to England from Continental Europe at 20 years of age. If you recall the big goalkeeping moves of the last two decades or so, Buffon was outstanding from the moment he arrived at Juventus as a teenager. But very few who have made a move on the scale of De Gea going to United have clicked straight away. We always looked to invest in the future, though. He will be one of the very best and I was delighted when he was named in the PFA team of the year in my last season.

Jones was unfortunate in that 2011–12 season in sustaining a succession of niggling injuries. Young could look back on an encouraging season in which he scored eight goals. For a winger, that’s not bad. He can draw on a good understanding of the game and a high stamina level. With an extra half-yard of pace, his arsenal would have been complete, but his speed was hardly deficient, and he developed a knack of slipping inside on to his right foot – his strongest foot – and delivering from there. He was excellent through the middle as well, but we were blessed with many options in that area of that field. I was very pleased with Ashley, though. He was a quiet boy and a good trainer. The three of them – Jones, Young and De Gea – were good sorts.

Briefly the idea was mooted of an England comeback for Paul Scholes, but it was never a serious possibility. Paul would tire at the end of games in his later years because he was not born with the genes of Ryan Giggs, and he had little interest in playing international football again. Scholesy still offered us a tempo and a platform for our game when he returned in January 2012. There was nobody better in the rhythm section of our team. In fairness, the FA came to accept Paul’s aversion to being recalled. Fabio Capello’s assistant approached him before the 2010 World Cup but there was no approach ahead of Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.

Michael Carrick was another interesting case study. No England manager appeared to regard him as a starting midfield player. Michael grew up sitting on the England bench and he had no desire to spend all summer in that observer’s role at Euro 2012. As it turned out, he took the opportunity to clear out his Achilles.

Michael’s handicap was, I feel, that he lacked the bravado of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. Lampard, for me, was a marvellous servant for Chelsea, but I didn’t think of him as an elite international footballer. And I am one of the few who felt Gerrard was not a top, top player. When Scholes and Keane were in our team, Gerrard seldom had a kick against us. With England, Michael Carrick suffered in the shadow of those two big personalities.

Playing Lampard and Gerrard was a nightmare for England managers because they were incompatible in a 4–4–2 formation. The team functioned better with Hargreaves in central midfield, in 2006. By the bye, in the World Cup quarter-final against Portugal in 2006, which England lost, I told Steve McClaren that he and Eriksson should have had the players celebrating and buoyant after getting to penalties with 10 men, following Rooney’s dismissal. A sense of achievement against the odds should have taken hold among Eriksson’s penalty takers. Little things like that count. It would have lifted England’s players.

I had some strange dealings on the England front. After Capello resigned, the FA wrote to me to ask me not to talk about the England manager’s job. At the time, everyone was touting Harry Redknapp as the probable successor, and all I did was endorse the popular view that Harry would be ideally suited to the role. I don’t know why they jumped on me that way. Clearly they had it in mind that Harry was not going to be the next England manager, even though everyone assumed he would.

I was offered the England job on two occasions. Adam Crozier, chief executive of the FA from 2000 to 2002, came to see me before Eriksson was appointed in 2001. The first time was before that, when Martin Edwards was chairman, around the time Kevin Keegan took the reins in 1999.

There was no way I could contemplate taking the England job. Can you imagine me doing that? A Scotsman? I always joked that I would take the position and relegate them: make them the 150th rated country in the world, with Scotland 149.

The England job requires a particular talent – and that skill is the ability to handle the press. Steve McClaren made the mistake of trying to be pally with one or two. If you cut 90 per cent out, the others are after your body. If one person gives you favourable coverage, the others will hound you. No, it wasn’t a bed of nails I was ever tempted to lie on.

twenty-two

BACK in the sanctuary of our home, Cathy said, ‘That was the worst day of my life. I can’t take much more of this.’ The afternoon of Sunday 13 May 2012 was crushing. To neutrals it was the most thrilling end to a Premier League title race in history. For us there was only the painful knowledge that we had thrown away a commanding lead. We had broken the Man United rule of not surrendering a position of power. Manchester City were England’s champions.

I felt pretty ragged myself, but I could see the distress in my wife. ‘Cathy,’ I began, ‘we have a great life, and we’ve had a fantastic period of success.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I’m not going out. There are too many City fans in the village.’

Sometimes you forget that setbacks can affect your family more than you. My three sons grew used to the cycle of triumph and disaster. The grandchildren were too young to understand it. Naturally it was worse this time because Man City were the ones celebrating at our expense. And worse, because we’d had the League in our grasp and thrown it away. Of all the setbacks I endured, nothing compared to losing the League to City.

I had faced 14 Man City managers since 1986, starting with Jimmy Frizzell. Finally a manager from across town had beaten me to the line in a title race. A year later, Roberto Mancini became the 14th City manager to lose or leave the job before I stood down. Roberto went after the FA Cup final defeat by Wigan Athletic in May 2013. By then we were League champions again, for the 20th time. We had turned the tables on City. But I would not be taking them on again.

At the start of the 2011–12 campaign, I felt it was between us, City and Chelsea. After a really good start, one of our best, I found myself having to change the team a lot to accommodate injuries. Our 8–2 victory over Arsenal was their heaviest defeat since 1896, when they lost 8–0 to Loughborough Town. It could have been 20. It actually reached the point where I felt – please, no more goals. It was a humiliation for Arsène. The climate at Arsenal was hardly serene to begin with. But we played some fantastic football that day. With the missed chances on either side, it might have been 12–4 or 12–5.

Arsenal played a young boy in midfield; I had hardly heard of him – Francis Coquelin – and he barely played again. He was completely out of his depth. The player who really disappointed me that day was Arshavin, who could have been sent off for two terrible tackles, over the top of the ball. There had been a change in Arshavin. You make a mental note when a player who usually gets whacked by everybody else turns it round and starts hunting down opponents. His behaviour shocked me. Arshavin contributed nothing to that game. It’s disappointing, even as an opposing manager, to see this. Eventually Arsène took him off and sent on a younger replacement. They had players missing, obviously, and were not the same without Fàbregas and Nasri.

For that reason I had discounted Arsenal as title challengers. For me, Per Mertesacker, the centre-back, wasn’t a major signing. We’ve seen plenty of that type of player in Germany over the years. I didn’t think he would be a handicap, but nor did I believe he would lift Arsenal to a higher tier. They needed players who could directly influence their performances and results.

I saw this theme developing in Arsenal’s transfer trading. We watched Marouane Chamakh, the Arsenal striker, at Bordeaux. We had good scouts in France but they never rated him. Olivier Giroud was another purchase. Arsène seemed willing to buy French players of that standard and I felt he might be overestimating French football.

After the 8–2 win over Arsenal came the farce of a 6–1 home defeat to City. We battered them for 40 minutes in that game. Absolutely battered them. We should have been three or four up. The referee allowed Micah Richards to boot lumps out of Ashley Young, overlooking five fouls in a row. At half-time we were really controlling the game. Then we had a man sent off just after the break. If you watch it again, Mario Balotelli pulls Jonny Evans first, but our centre-back then brought him down and was dismissed.

So at 2–0 down I made a change and brought on Phil Jones, who kept flying forward. We dragged it back to 3–1 and the crowd went crazy. A famous comeback was on the cards. Fletcher had scored a wonderful goal, so we began attacking, and then conceded three goals in the last seven minutes. Suicide.

It looked humiliating but it was actually self-annihilation. There was never a point in the game when City looked a superior side to us. At 3–0 up they were in a comfort zone, that’s fair to say, but they were not playing a style of football that was tearing us apart.

The last passage of play was a disgrace. It was comedy. And it led me to lean on Rio Ferdinand not to gamble any longer with his pace, which had declined. At his quickest, Rio would show the attacker where to knock the ball and then take it off him. Now he was trying that with David Silva and wasn’t able to beat him in the sprint. That game was a watershed for Rio.

De Gea was shell-shocked. Six goals flew past him and he didn’t have a hand in any of them. We also lost Welbeck, who was becoming a useful asset for us.

After the final whistle, I informed the players they had disgraced themselves. Then we set about fixing our attention on the defensive part of the team. There was a leak in there that we needed to correct. That remedial work led us into a period of stability where we were strong at the back. We worked on players coming back into the right positions, on concentration and on taking the defending more seriously.

We fell nine points behind Man City with that 6–1 defeat, but by New Year’s Day the gap was down to three points. Losing to Blackburn Rovers at home was a real shocker, especially as it coincided with my 70th birthday, though that was nothing new to me. On my 50th we were beaten 4–1 by Queens Park Rangers. I’d suspended Evans, Gibson and Rooney for having a big night out and turning up for training dishevelled. Carrick and Giggs were injured. All of which forced me to play Rafael and Ji-Sung Park in the middle of the pitch. Blackburn played well that day. We pulled it back to 2–2 and they received a corner kick, which De Gea didn’t handle properly, and Grant Hanley grabbed the winner.

In the meantime, United managed to name a stand after me without me knowing anything about it. When I walked onto the pitch, the two teams lined up to mark my 25 years as United manager, which was really nice. The Sunderland players, O’Shea, Brown, Bardsley and Richardson, all former United men, were smiling broadly and very appreciative. I felt proud of that. I was told to walk to the centre circle to meet David Gill, who had an object at his feet. I assumed he was going to make a presentation to me. But as I reached him, David turned me towards the South Stand. Apparently only he and the company who did the work were aware of what was going on. It was all carried out under a cloak of absolute secrecy.

David made a speech and then turned me round to see the lettering. You get some churning moments in your life when you feel, ‘I don’t deserve this.’ This was one. David had worked hard to think of an appropriate acknowledgement of the 25 years. That’s what it was about. David threw me off by saying, ‘We want to build a statue of you, but do you think we should wait until you’ve finished the job?’ His last words during that conversation were, ‘We must do something, but we’re not sure what it should be.’ The answer he came up with was humbling. I had been United manager for 1,410 games. The moment didn’t cause me to think any more deeply about retirement. But after the last game of the season in 2011–12, I said to my boys, ‘That may be it. One more season and then that’s me,’ because it did take a lot out of me. That last minute took it all out of me.

Going out of the Champions League in the group stage was my fault. I took the competition for granted. We had come through previous group stages comfortably and looking at this one I felt it would be straightforward, though of course I never said that publicly.

I rested players: two or three when we played Benfica away. We came away with a draw and played quite well. Then, against Basel, we were 2–0 up and cruising, but ended up drawing 3–3. They had won their first game so it put them two points in front of us already. We won our next two games against Cluj, but Benfica and Basel were still in the chase.

We played well but only drew at home with Benfica, which meant that if we lost in Basel we would be out. The pitch was very soft in Switzerland and we lost Vidić in the first half to a serious injury. They had a couple of good forwards in Frei and Streller and won the game 2–1. Against Basel at home, the players had been complacent defensively, not getting back to the ball.

In the Carling Cup we were eliminated by Crystal Palace, who prepared well against our young players. The League Cup is always regarded now as a bonus tournament. We were also knocked out of the FA Cup in the fourth round after beating Man City earlier in the competition. Because the focus was now on the Premier League, we didn’t make much headway in the Europa League, going out to Athletic Bilbao in early March with a 3–2 defeat at home. I wanted to win the Europa League and represent us in the right way. But our home record in Europe was poor: one win from five games.

At that point the malaise hits you. You’ve been knocked out of the Champions League group stage, you’ve had a 6–1 defeat to Man City and you’re out of the Carling Cup, at home to Crystal Palace. You have a challenge ahead. But we were good at those. We had the energy and wherewithal to concentrate fully on the League. Our form after that, apart from the Blackburn Rovers result, was terrific. Between January and early March, we beat Arsenal and Tottenham away, defeated Liverpool and drew with Chelsea.

In February the Suárez–Evra affair blew up again when Suárez refused to shake Patrice’s hand in a game at Old Trafford. I brought the players together on the Tuesday of the game and told them, ‘I think you need to be big.’ They were not inclined to be nice about it. I stuck to my theme: you need to be bigger than them. Gradually they changed their minds and came round to the idea of a handshake. Ferdinand, the most experienced player, also had the incident with John Terry and Anton Ferdinand in his thoughts. By the Friday they were fine with it. There would be a handshake from Evra’s side.

I’ve watched the footage several times. Suárez seemed to quicken as he passed Patrice. Perhaps he thought no one would notice that. As Suárez passed him, Evra was annoyed and said something to him. It was all over very quickly, but the repercussions lingered.

When Kenny Dalglish gave his initial pre-match TV interview, he gave the impression that Suárez had agreed to shake Evra’s hand. A club of Liverpool’s stature should have done something about that, but he played in the game all the same. I called Suárez a ‘disgrace to Liverpool’ and said they would be wise to ‘get rid’ of him. I also reprimanded Patrice for celebrating too close to Suárez as the players walked off the pitch.

The whole saga had started at Anfield with Patrice sitting in the corner looking aggrieved. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘He called me a black —,’ Patrice said.

I told him he would first have to report it to the referee. I went into the referee’s room with Patrice and told the match official, ‘Look, Patrice Evra says he’s been racially abused.’

Phil Dowd, the fourth official, began writing everything down. The referee, Andre Marriner, told me he thought something had happened, but had no idea what it might have been. Patrice said it happened several times. Then they called in Kenny Dalglish. Later, when we were having a drink, John Henry also came in. He was introduced to me but didn’t say much. Steve Clarke’s son was pouring the drinks. One or two from the old school came in to join us.

But nothing more was said. Then it exploded in the papers. Later, Liverpool wore those T-shirts supporting Suárez, which I thought was the most ridiculous thing for a club of Liverpool’s stature. I felt we handled it well, mainly because we knew we were in the right. The FA asked us severaltime not to discuss it, but Liverpool could not leave the subject alone. David Gill would not have allowed any manager to handle it that way. Nor would Bobby Charlton. They are experienced people who know about life. There seemed nobody at Liverpool willing to pull Kenny’s horns in.

Suárez came to the hearing and said he had called Evra ‘Negrito’. The specialist said yes, you can call your friend Negrito, but you can’t call a stranger that, in an argument. Then it becomes racist.

I left Evra out of the Europa League game at Ajax five days after the non-handshake at Old Trafford because it was a trying time for him and he needed a break. He’s a strong wee guy. I checked on his state of mind regularly and he would say: ‘I’m fine, I have nothing to be ashamed of, I feel I’ve done the right thing. It’s disgraceful what he said to me.’

He also said he was doing it purely for himself, on a point of principle, and was not trying to fight a larger political battle on behalf of black players.

I think Kenny was falling back on the old chip on the shoulder. The problem, I felt, was that there was no Peter Robinson at Anfield. Peter Robinson would never have allowed the Suárez situation to be handled the way it was. The young directors there idolised Kenny and there was no one to say, ‘Hey, behave yourself, this is out of order, this is Liverpool Football Club.’ Equally, no one could ever overstate Kenny’s dignified and statesmanlike handling of the Hillsborough tragedy, which earned him a level of respect that no later political difficulty could nullify.

After the grandstand unveiling of the statue, another great honour was the FIFA Presidential Award for 2011. At the ceremony I was sitting beside Pep Guardiola and right in front of Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. The three musketeers. I felt privileged to be in that company. As I sat there on my own, the three made their way towards me to shake my hand. Xavi said: ‘How’s Scholes?’ In his own victory speech, Messi said his Ballon d’Or award should go to Xavi and Iniesta. ‘They made me,’ he said. Messi is such a humble lad.

It was a really pleasurable night. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, had been very kind with his words and there were video messages from Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, José Mourinho, Eric Cantona, Ronaldo and David Beckham. The point of the award was to recognise my 25 years at Manchester United. I said it was an honour in the ‘twilight of my life’. If you could have seen me at the end of that season, you’d have thought I was right.

I didn’t use mind games with City because I felt we were in control. Patrick Vieira, however, did claim it was a sign of weakness for us to bring Scholes back from retirement in January 2012. In that campaign we had great momentum until we were beaten at Wigan, where we really didn’t play well. The one that killed us was the home fixture against Everton on 22 April. With seven minutes to go, we’re winning 4–2, Patrice Evra hits the post and Everton go and score. Instead of 5–2, it becomes 4–3. When we drew that game 4–4, I felt we had lost the League. City won comfortably at Wolves to reduce our lead to three points, with the Manchester derby at City’s ground to come. It was self-destruction. I knew the City game away was bound to be tough and I thought they would play to kill the game, slow the pace down, give fouls away in our half and move the ball to Nasri and Silva to dribble with. By then, City were versed in such clever tactics.

At the Etihad Stadium we wanted the two wide players to come in all the time to support Rooney, on his own, and play Ji-Sung Park in Yaya Touré’s area to work him all the time. There was nobody better at that than Park. Physically he was not in the same league as Touré, who was in outstanding form, but I needed to try and negate the threat he posed on those marauding runs of his. But I made a mistake. Nani was terrible that night. We brought Valencia on, who did a lot better, but City went 1–0 up and killed the game. Smalling was caught out by a David Silva corner for the Vincent Kompany header just before half-time. It was hard to take.

For the first 20 minutes we were fine. Our possession of the ball was good and we had a couple of half-chances. What we decided to do was keep the channels tight. Zabaleta kept getting to the by-line and winning corner kicks. Nothing came from Clichy’s side. It was all Zabaleta. And it was a corner kick that did for us.

If we had made it to half-time at 0–0 we would have won the game. We had a plan for the second half, a way to play, that involved Welbeck coming on for Park. But Nigel de Jong did him straight away through the back, and that was Danny out for the rest of the season until he played for England. De Jong was only booked for the tackle down Welbeck’s ankle.

Roberto Mancini was badgering the fourth official through the whole game: it was Mike Jones, who I feel is not one of the stronger officials. When De Jong landed that tackle on Welbeck, Mancini came rushing out to protect his player. I told Mancini where to go. That’s what our little clash was about. Roberto tried to dominate the fourth official and I had seen enough. He wanted the referee to come over to him and speak to him so he could get the home crowd going. Andre Marriner left it to Mike Jones to sort out. Yaya Touré was the one who made the difference, no doubt about that. He was the best player against us in the 1–0 game. He was brilliant.

There was no animosity later. Roberto and I had a drink. With the exception of Frank Sinatra, just about everyone was in the office where we tried to talk. The place was mobbed. I said to Mancini, ‘This is ridiculous, how can we have a chat with all these people in the room?’

The one surprise about Mancini in his time as City manager was his stance over Carlos Tévez. He had a chance to make a stand over player power and I felt he should have thrown him out. Instead, after their clash at a Champions League game in Germany, Tévez went to Argentina for three months, playing golf, and then came back saying he wanted to fight to win the League for them.

Taking him back showed desperation. Or perhaps Sheikh Mansour intervened to end the standoff. I do remember Mancini saying, ‘He’ll never play for me again.’ Say Edin Džeko or Balotelli were not happy and had disappeared for three months: would they have been treated differently from Tévez? Mancini made a rod for his own back. In terms of his prestige as a manager, he let himself down.

I was told that some of the players and staff didn’t like him, but he was not there to be liked. Results backed up his methods. He chose his players well, with a good balance and age range. I believe he wanted to avoid players over 30 and those under 24. His players were mostly in that band of 24 to 28. Most of them were at their peak, which, in theory, gave him two to three years with that squad.

Tactically you saw his Italian instincts. As soon as City went in front, he would often play five at the back. He had that defensive mentality: give nothing away. That costs you some games.

Goal difference was still a factor, though. In our two remaining games, against Swansea and Sunderland, we attempted to close the gap. Against Swansea, Smalling and Giggs missed chances. We could have gone in at half-time five up. We only scored one in the second half, in which Rooney and Cleverley both missed sitters. If we had won 5–0, we would have been five goals adrift. In the Sunderland game, their goalkeeper was out of this world. Simon Mignolet. His saves were incredible. We hit the post twice, Rooney hit the bar; we could have won 8–0. What a way that would have been to win the League: on goal difference.

In the event, Rooney’s 34th goal of the season from a Valencia cross was our only mark on the scoreboard. Our fans were wonderful. I kept looking at the young boy from Sky, and he was saying it was still 2–1 at City. How long to go? Five minutes added time. But I knew. City scored twice in 125 seconds, through Džeko and Agüero. Džeko’s was timed at 91minutes 15 seconds, then Agüero went right through QPR’s defence, exchanging passes with Mario Balotelli, and struck the shot that won them the title for the first time in 44 years. The clock showed 93 minutes 20 seconds.

We were champions for 30 seconds. When our whistle blew we were champions. In fairness to our players, they knew they had ballsed it up. There were no excuses.

I told them, ‘You walk out of that door with your heads up. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t show any weakness.’ They understood that message. Their interviews were all positive. I did what I had to do: congratulate City. I had no problem with that.

There is no point torturing yourself over what might have been in the City–QPR game. In my career at Manchester United we came back time and time again and we would do it again. The question in my mind that summer was: would City get better? They had the confidence from winning the League; there were no boys in their team and they were a very experienced side, in that mid-twenties range. Money was not an object, but the size of the playing staff and the wage bill were, in the context of the Financial Fair Play regulations. I asked of us: could we get through the following campaign with a better injury record?

There was a young Paul Scholes missing from our team. We needed that kind of playmaking influence. People spoke about Modrić but we were reluctant to deal with Spurs after the Berbatov carry-on.

Rafael was developing into a really, really good player, but he made mistakes. Some players can never stop making mistakes, it’s hereditary, but others learn by them. Rafael was sent off against Bayern Munich and then improved his disciplinary record dramatically. He’s such a competitive boy, quick and aggressive, and he believes in himself. He has a really positive attitude to the game. One thing we lacked was cover at left-back, where Patrice Evra had been averaging 48–50 games a season. We needed to fill that breach.

I said in a press conference, to our fans: you’d better get used to this, because we’re going to be seeing a lot of this new Man City. There will be a lot of games between us and they will all be like this. I would love to have been in their Champions League group the following term, because it would have made us alive to it. For the 2012–13 campaign, I resolved to leave no man behind and take the group stage much more seriously, to win the group.

Before the final round of Premier League games, Mick Phelan and I had been to Germany to see the German cup final, to watch Shinji Kagawa, Robert Lewandowski and Mats Hummels and I had told him: ‘Mick, the only way City will beat us tomorrow is if they score late on. They’ll have a hard game against Queens Park Rangers. I wouldn’t be surprised if QPR get a result, but if City score late on, we’ll lose the League.’

We finished with 89 points: the highest total ever for a runner-up. The general feeling was that we lacked a bit of stability in the defensive positions, particularly with the injury to Vidić, but once Evans and Ferdinand formed a partnership, we shot up the table. Our goal difference was good and 89 points was a healthy return. But those early departures from League Cup, FA Cup and Champions League obliged us to mark it down as a bad season.

I was sad but not demoralised. I felt I had a core of players who were sure to improve. Rafael, Jones, Smalling, De Gea, Cleverley, Welbeck, Hernández. I had a nucleus who would be good for the long haul. The challenge was replacing Scholes. I don’t know where you find those players. A fit Anderson would make up part of the gap. We were planning to sign Kagawa and the young boy, Nick Powell, from Crewe. We had five natural centre-backs. Plus Valencia and Nani. Young would give us plenty of options wide. We knew where the challenge was: the noisy neighbours. It would suit us, I decided, if they fared better in Europe and grew distracted.

On the Tuesday we were down to go to Belfast to play in Harry Gregg’s testimonial. It was hard to lift the players, but it turned out to be quite inspiring, because Harry Gregg has been a great servant and the support was wonderful. It helped us push the disappointment through the system.

A postscript to that painful denouement was a medical scare. I travelled to Berlin to see the Dortmund–Bayern German Cup final, then to Sunderland, then back to Manchester, then to Belfast for Harry Gregg’s testimonial and then back home, and on to Glasgow, where I was supposed to speak at a Rangers function, with a flight booked to New York on the Saturday.

Shaving in Glasgow, I noticed a drip of blood. Then another and another. I just couldn’t stop the flow and ended up in hospital, where they cauterised it. The doctor thought I would be all right to fly, but it didn’t stop bleeding for two days, so we cancelled the New York trip. The doctor came round on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was painful but eventually settled down.

I used to get nosebleeds as a player, mainly from knocks. But this was an especially bad one. The cause was diagnosed as too many flights, too much cabin pressure.

It was a wee warning. If you do too much, you’re inviting trouble.

twenty-three

SHE always waited up for me. Even if I came through the door at two or three in the morning, Cathy would be there to greet me. ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ I would say to her over the phone as we travelled home. ‘No, no,’ she would say, ‘I’ll wait till you get back.’ For 47 years she maintained this line.

I could go about my work in football knowing family life was completely taken care of. Cathy is a remarkable person. David Gill was a genius to persuade her to unveil a statue of me at Old Trafford. There is no way I could have coaxed her into the light like that.

The truth about Cathy is that she has never changed. She’s a mother, a grandmother and a housewife. That is her life. She doesn’t court friendships. It’s not that she discourages them, more that she prefers the company of family and a few close friends. She almost never went to the football. When I married her we would go to dances at weekends, with friends from Glasgow. She was always comfortable in Glaswegian company. But after our move to United, she wasn’t a social animal at all. She displayed no inclination to go out on the circuit and I would go to most functions and dinners on my own.

A house with gates is useful for when Tory politicians come canvassing. Cathy would hear the local Conservatives announce themselves through the Tannoy and say, ‘Sorry, Mrs Ferguson is out, I’m the cleaner.’ In all respects she is faithful to her roots.

When I stopped playing at 32 and had pubs in Glasgow and managed St Mirren, my day started at Love Street, where I would be until 11 o’clock, and then to the pub, until 2.30 p.m. Sometimes I would go home and sometimes directly to Love Street for training. Then it was back to the pub, then home.

So the children seldom saw me at that very early age. Cathy brought them up. By the time they reached manhood, they were closer to me, but have always had the utmost love and respect for their mum.

Going to Aberdeen was a blessing because I didn’t have the pubs and there was more of a family life for the five of us. I was there all the time unless we had a game. Darren was a ball boy and Mark would go to the games with his pals. Cathy would take Jason, who wasn’t hugely interested in football at this stage.

But at 13 or 14 he took up playing and ended up representing Scotland Boys Club against Wales. He wasn’t a bad player. He was a late developer who was interested in books. He’s a very clever boy. When we moved to Old Trafford he stayed in Aberdeen to continue his studies. Then he joined us in Manchester, where he played for our B team a few times.

Darren was always a natural, with a left foot of great quality. Mark was a very good player who appeared for Aberdeen reserves a few times. He went to college and polytechnic in Sheffield for a land economy degree. Mark became a great success in the City. All my sons have done well. They are all driven people, as is Cathy, who is clever and has a determination about her.

People used to say I was like my dad. But people who really knew me said I was more like my mother, who was a very determined woman. My father was too, but was much quieter. My mother, like all good mothers, was the boss. She ran the family. Cathy made all the family decisions in our house, too, which was fine by both of us.

When Darren was 14, Brian Clough called and said he wanted to sign him for Nottingham Forest. Brian was full of contradictions. He would never answer the phone to me. It was always Ron Fenton, Clough’s assistant, who picked up the receiver. At Aberdeen I went south to see Forest play Celtic in the UEFA Cup on rock-hard frosty ground. I knew Ron Fenton reasonably well. As I entered the directors’ lounge, Ron said, ‘Alex, have you met the boss?’ I hadn’t, and was quite looking forward to making his acquaintance.

Ron introduced me and Brian said, ‘What did you think of the game?’

My opinion was that Celtic had deserved to win. I then told him Forest would beat them at Celtic Park. ‘Well young man, I’ve heard enough,’ said Brian. And walked out. Archie Knox burst out laughing.

In the event, Darren stayed with us at United. The problem was keeping him in the first team. Cathy never forgave me for selling him. He started the first 15 games in the year we won the League for the first time. But, in a Scotland U-21s game, he sustained a really bad hamstring tear that kept him on the sidelines for three months. That was him out until February, and by that time Bryan Robson was back fit. Neil Webb, Mick Phelan and Paul Ince were also on the scene. Then Roy Keane became available for £3.75 million. That killed Darren as a first-team player.

He came to see me and said it wasn’t working for him. He said he would need to move. He was also sensitive to the difficulties for me. So we sold him to Wolves, a club in turmoil, with big expectations and a large fan base.

I watched Darren play there a lot. He was easily the best footballer, but they changed manager so many times after Graham Turner was sacked. Graham Taylor, Mark McGhee, Colin Lee. When McGhee came in, his appearances started to dwindle.

He then moved to Sparta Rotterdam and once more did well. They changed the coach while he was away on holiday and the new man didn’t want him. He then came back to Wrexham and became settled there. As his playing career wound down, Barry Fry called from Peterborough and asked what Darren was doing. He ended up as manager there and got them promoted to the Championship, where they punched well above their weight. Tensions crept in with the chairman and he resigned and went to Preston, which was a disaster, before a second stint at Peterborough displayed his qualities again.

Darren’s approach is to play penetrating football with players who pass the ball and move. That’s hard when you’re bottom of the League because teams down there tend to be desperate. It was poignant for me to see Darren face the struggles I encountered in my early years, with budgets and chairmen and players. I reminded him all the time about that motto of ours: ‘Sweeter after difficulties’. My advice to any young coach is to be prepared. Start early. Don’t leave it until you are 40 to acquire your coaching badges.

I was totally opposed to fast-tracking coaches. It is a disgrace. In Holland and Italy it might take four or five years for you to receive your badges. The reason they need to go through that intense, prolonged scrutiny is to protect them from what’s to come in management. It cost Darren £8,000 to earn his badges at the Warwick Business School. By fast-tracking big names, the FA rode roughshod over all the people who scraped together to get their qualifications the proper way.

I didn’t torture myself about being away a lot or consumed with work during the boys’ childhoods. The reason was that we were all very close, regardless, and the boys themselves were very tight-knit. They are in constant contact with us. They are all busy lads. Even I couldn’t always get hold of Mark, who was in a business where you have to keep your eye on the ball. His is a world of tiny fractions, where you could miss a buy or a sell in seconds, the way the markets move.

All my sons are a credit to Cathy, who was always there for them, and for me, whatever time I turned the key in the door.

twenty-four

IT was August 2004 and we had just played Everton. Bill Kenwright was crying. Sitting in my office, crying. Present were David Moyes, David Gill, Bill and me. As we studied the Everton chairman in his sorrow, he announced that he would like to make a call. Through his tears, Bill said: ‘I’ll need to phone my mother.’

‘They’re stealing our boy, they’re stealing our boy,’ he said down the line. Then he passed the phone to me. ‘Don’t you dare think you’re getting that boy for nothing. That boy’s worth fifty million pounds,’ said a female voice. Wonderful. ‘This is a trick, this,’ I laughed. ‘Is this a game?’ But it was real. You had only to mention Everton to Bill to turn his taps on. He was a very likeable guy and unapologetically emotional.

David Moyes was giving me the eyes. For a minute I thought it was a get-up, a performance. Bill’s background was in theatre, after all. It occurred to me while all this was going on that I ought to check Wayne’s medical records. Was there something physically wrong we had missed? Was this a ruse to push the price up? My God, it was funny. Did the boy have one leg? Was I being lured into a gigantic sting?

The negotiations to buy England’s most promising young talent were protracted, to say the least. Bill knew the value of the boy. David Moyes was the more combative party – as I would have been, in his position. David was realistic. He knew the club were about to receive a healthy fee and that Everton were hardly awash with money. The official price was just over £25 million with add-ons. Everton needed that injection. When the tears had dried and the talking was over, Wayne signed on the line seven hours short of the deadline on 31 August 2004.

By the time he joined us, he hadn’t played for 40-odd days and had trained for only a couple of sessions. We thought the Champions League tie at home to Fenerbahçe would be a suitable introduction, 28 days after he had become a Manchester United player. This tentative approach yielded a spectacular return: a Rooney hat-trick in a 6–2 victory.

After that dramatic introduction his fitness level dropped a bit and we had some work to do to bring him to the level of the other players. Understandably there was no repeat of the Fenerbahçe performance for several weeks.

None of this stifled my enthusiasm for him. Wayne possessed a marvellous natural talent and was entitled to be given time to make the transition from boy to man. He was a serious, committed footballer with a hunger for the game. At that point in his development, Wayne needed to train all the time, and did so willingly. He was never the sort who could take days off. He needed to train intensively to be on the sharp edge of his game. Whenever he was out for a few weeks with an injury, Wayne’s fitness would drop quite quickly. He has a big, solid frame, and broad feet, which may partly explain his metatarsal injuries in that period.

I knew straight away that he was the player our intuition said he would be. Courageous, reasonably two-footed – though he uses his left foot less than he could. We signed players at 24 thinking they would peak at 26, and Wayne’s progress with us from a much earlier age supported my conviction that he would be at his best around that age. With the kind of physique he had it was always hard to imagine him playing into his mid-thirties, like Scholes or Giggs, but I developed an expectation when he re-signed for us, in October 2010, that he might end up as a midfielder.

All our intelligence about Wayne Rooney as an Evertonian schoolboy could be condensed into a single phrase. This was a man playing in under-age football.

The reports at our academy were always glowing and the club tried to acquire him at 14, when there is a loophole in the last week of May that allows you to sign a boy from another academy. But Wayne wanted to stay at Everton. We tried again at 16 before he signed his academy forms and again he wasn’t interested. Everton were in his blood.

Geoff Watson and Jim Ryan were our two academy men who had monitored Rooney’s progress and been so impressed with him in games between the clubs. He played in the FA Youth Cup final at 16 against Aston Villa.

When Walter Smith joined me as assistant he said: ‘Get that Rooney signed.’ Walter was unequivocal. He described him as the best he had ever seen. That confirmed everything we knew of him. Then came Wayne’s debut, at 16, and his wonder goal against Arsenal.

At Everton he also became the youngest player to win a full England cap, in a game against Australia, and was then picked by Sven-Göran Eriksson for the vital World Cup qualifier against Turkey. He scored his first international goal at 17 years and 317 days. So he was already on the national map by the time he came to us.

My first meeting with him contradicted my expectation that he would have an assertive personality. He was a shy boy. But I think there was an awe about him that reflected the large transfer fee and all the attention it was bringing. He soon stopped being shy. On our training ground he gave everybody hell. Everybody. The referee, the other players. The poor refs – Tony Strudwick, or Mick or René – would all say to me, ‘You’re the only one with the authority – you should ref these games.’

My reply was: ‘There’s no way I’m refereeing these matches.’

I remember Jim blowing his whistle mildly for a foul on a day when Roy Keane was in one of his dark moods, giving everyone stick. His team, our team, the ref, any living creature he could find. Jim turned to me with his whistle and said: ‘I hope Roy’s team wins.’

‘That’s ridiculous, that,’ I said, trying not to laugh.

‘Yeah, but the grief I’ll get in that dressing room,’ Jim said. At one point we even discussed hiring referees.

I admit I gave Wayne a few rollickings. And he would rage in the dressing room when I picked him out for criticism. His eyes would burn, as if he wanted to knock my lights out. The next day he would be apologetic. When the anger subsided, he knew I was right – because I was always right, as I liked to tease him. He would say: ‘Am I playing next week, boss?’

‘I don’t know,’ I would say.

In my opinion, he was not the quickest learner but what he had was a natural instinct to play the game, an intuitive awareness of how football worked. A remarkable raw talent. Plus, natural courage and energy, which is a blessing for any footballer. The ability to run all day is not to be undervalued. In a training ground exercise he wouldn’t absorb new ideas or methods quickly. His instinct was to revert to type, to trust what he already knew. He was comfortable in himself.

In those early years I seldom had to be dictatorial with him. He made some daft tackles in games and there were flashpoints on the pitch. Off the field, though, he caused me no anxiety. My problem was that, being a centre-forward myself, I was always harder on the strikers than anyone in the team. They were never as good as me, of course. I’m sorry, but none was as good as I was in my playing days. Managers are allowed such conceits and often inflict them on players. Equally, the players think they are better managers than the men in charge – until they try it, that is.

If I saw attackers not doing the things I believe I used to do, it would set me off. They were my hope. I looked at them and thought: you are me. You see yourself in people.

I could see myself in Roy Keane, see myself in Bryan Robson, see bits of me in Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt and the two Nevilles, Gary and Phil. Teams reflect the character of their manager. Never give in: that’s a great religion, a great philosophy to have. I never gave in. I always thought I could rescue something from any situation.

Something was always happening at Man United. There was always a drama. It was routine to me. When Wayne Rooney’s personal life was exposed in the News of the World, and a sense of crisis was brewing in his world in the late summer of 2010, there was no council of war in my office, no pacing of the room.

I didn’t phone him the morning after the story broke. I know he would have wanted me to. That’s where my control was strong. He would have been looking for a phone call from me, an arm round his shoulder. To me that wasn’t the way to deal with it.

When these sorts of allegations surfaced the first time, he was 17 years old, and allowances were made for his youth, but this time we were seven years on. Coleen, his wife, had her head screwed on. She always struck me as a stabilising force.

I certainly felt under pressure in relation to him during that World Cup in South Africa. I knew there was something bugging him at the 2010 World Cup. I could see it. Although he had been named PFA Player of the Year and Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year that season he was in a strange mood in South Africa. ‘Nice to see your home fans boo you,’ he said into a TV camera after England’s goalless draw with Algeria in Cape Town. England went out in the second round and there were no goals in four matches for Wayne.

I needed to get his attention. Yet the best way to achieve that was by not saying anything to him – not offering consolation – to force him to think. When I left him out away to Everton in September, to protect him from abuse by the crowd, he was relieved, because he knew I was doing the right thing by him. Your job is to make an impact on each personality with the best possible output in terms of performance.

We can all moralise but everyone will commit indiscretions. I was never going to moralise with Rooney. On 14 August 2010 Wayne informed us that he would not be signing a new contract at United. This was a shock, as the plan had always been to sit down after the World Cup to discuss a new contract.

As the drama gathered pace, David Gill called me to say that Wayne’s agent, Paul Stretford, had been to see him to say that Wayne wanted away. The phrase he had used was that he didn’t think the club were ambitious enough. We had won the League Cup and the League the year before and reached the final of the Champions League.

David said that Wayne would be coming to see me. At that meeting, which was in October, he was hugely sheepish. I felt he’d been programmed in what he was trying to say. The basis of his complaint was that we were not sufficiently ambitious.

My response was to ask Wayne: ‘When have we not challenged for the League in the last 20 years? How many European finals have we been to in the last three or four years?’

I told him that to say we weren’t ambitious was nonsense.

Wayne said that we should have pursued Mesut Özil, who had joined Real Madrid from Werder Bremen. My reply was that it was none of his business who we should have gone for. I told him it was his job to play and perform. My job was to pick the correct teams. And so far I had been getting it right.

We had a European tie the following day. Two hours before we played Bursaspor, on 20 October, Wayne issued the following statement: ‘I met with David Gill last week and he did not give me any of the assurances I was seeking about the future squad. I then told him that I would not be signing a new contract. I was interested to hear what Sir Alex had to say yesterday and surprised by some of it.

‘It is absolutely true, as he said, that my agent and I have had a number of meetings with the club about a new contract. During those meetings in August I asked for assurances about the continued ability of the club to attract the top players in the world.

‘I have never had anything but complete respect for MUFC. How could I not have done, given its fantastic history and especially the last six years in which I have been lucky to play a part?

‘For me its all about winning trophies – as the club has always done under Sir Alex. Because of that I think the questions I was asking were justified.

‘Despite recent difficulties, I know I will always owe Sir Alex Ferguson a huge debt. He is a great manager and mentor who has helped and supported me from the day he signed me from Everton when I was only 18.

‘For Manchester United’s sake I wish he could go on forever because he’s a one-off and a genius.’

I wasn’t sure what he meant by this statement but I assumed he was trying to build some bridges with me and the fans. I hoped it meant he’d changed his mind and was happy to stay with us.

The press conference after that game, when all the media were there, gave me an opportunity to say what I wanted to say, which was that Wayne was out of order.

I told the press: ‘As I said, three Premier League titles in a row is fantastic and we were within one point off a record fourth. It didn’t happen for us and we didn’t like that and we want to do something about it. We’ll be OK – I’ve got every confidence in that. We have a structure at the club which is good, we have the right staff, the right manager, the right chief executive, he’s a brilliant man. There’s nothing wrong with Manchester United, not a thing wrong with it. So we’ll carry on.’

And I said on television: ‘I had a meeting with the boy and he reiterated what his agent had said. He wanted to go. I said to him, “Just remember one thing: respect this club. I don’t want any nonsense from you, respect your club.” What we’re seeing now in the media is disappointing because we’ve done everything we can for Wayne Rooney, since the minute he’s come to the club. We’ve always been there as a harbour for him. Any time he’s had a problem, we’ve given advice. But you do that for all your players, not just Wayne Rooney. That’s Manchester United. This is a club which bases all its history and its tradition on the loyalty and trust between managers and players and the club. That goes back to the days of Sir Matt Busby. That’s what it’s founded on. Wayne’s been a beneficiary of this help, just as Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and all the players have been. That’s what we’re there for.’

In a conference call with the Glazers, the future ambitions of the club were discussed and Wayne was made one of the highest-paid players in the country, I would imagine. The next day he came in to apologise. I told him: ‘It’s the fans you should be apologising to.’

There was a mixed reaction from the players. Some were put out; others were not bothered by him. It was a sorry episode for Wayne because it portrayed him as a money man who had dropped his grievance the minute his salary was raised. That’s the way it was presented, but I don’t think it was Wayne’s intention to make it a financial issue. It blew over quickly. With the fans, however, there was a residue of mistrust.

He was fine so long as he was scoring, but in fallow times there was perhaps a stirring of the old resentment. Players can underestimate the depth of feeling for a club among fans. In the most extreme cases it leads supporters to think they own the club. Some of them have stood behind the club for 50 years. They’re there for life. So when a player is deemed to have shown disloyalty to a club, there is no messing about with them.

Very few players want away from Manchester United. We had a generation of players who had pledged their whole careers to our club – Giggs, Scholes, and so on – and it was alien to our supporters to see a player agitating for a move or to hear him criticising transfer policy.

In the winter of 2011, I did have to take disciplinary action after Wayne, Jonny Evans and Darron Gibson had a night out. They went across to Southport to a hotel to celebrate our 5–0 Boxing Day win against Wigan. They came into training the next day weary. I went into the gymnasium where they were doing their exercises and told them they would be fined a week’s wages and not considered for selection against Blackburn on the Saturday.

Wayne needed to be careful. He has great qualities about him but they could be swallowed up by a lack of fitness. Look at the way Ronaldo or Giggs looked after themselves. Wayne needed to grasp the nettle. It was not wise for England to give him a week’s holiday before Euro 2012 because he might lose his edge. If he missed a couple of weeks for United, it could take him four or five games to get his sharpness back. The Ukraine game was over a month after his last game for us.

He would receive no leniency from me. I would hammer him for any drop in condition. It was quite simple – he wouldn’t play. That’s the way I always dealt with fitness issues, regardless of the player involved, and I saw no reason to change in the final years of my career.

Wayne had a gift for producing great moments in games. In my final year, when he was left out a few times, and replaced in games, I felt he was struggling to get by people and had lost some of his old thrust. But he was capable of making extraordinary contributions. That pass to Van Persie in the win over Aston Villa that secured the title for us was marvellous, as was his overhead kick against Man City. Those flashes guaranteed his profile. But as time wore on, I felt he struggled more and more to do it for 90 minutes, and he seemed to tire in games.

I took him off in that Aston Villa game because Villa were a very fast young side, full of running, and their substitute was running past Wayne. He came into my office the day after we won the League and asked away. He wasn’t happy with being left out for some games and subbed in others. His agent Paul Stretford phoned David Gill with the same message.

All players are different. Some are happy to stay at the same club their whole careers; others need fresh challenges, as Van Persie felt when he joined us from Arsenal. The urge to fight and flourish would not be extinguished in Wayne. I left him to discuss his future with David Moyes, hoping to see many more great performances from him at Old Trafford.

twenty-five

WE were hardly strangers to majestic individual talent, but it took us a while to understand just how good Robin van Persie is. The quality of his runs was not immediately apparent to even our cleverest players. Even Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick, two of the best passers I ever had, had trouble at first picking up the speed of his movements.

Robin was the leading light of my final season as Manchester United manager, in which we were the first team to win 25 of their first 30 top-flight fixtures. The prize at the end of it was the club’s 20th League title. We regained the Premier League trophy from Manchester City with four matches still to play. Van Persie was my final major transfer buy and his goals, some of them spectacular, brought an extra Cantona-esque quality to an already very good side.

If we had a bad habit going into the 2012–13 season, it was overpassing in the middle of the pitch: players circulating the ball to acquire a feel of it. With Van Persie, we learned in time, you needed to look for that early pass to split the opposition defence. Until we grasped those possibilities, we could not make the most of Robin’s marvellous mobility and killer instinct.

But we learned the lesson in time to make it pay. If Wayne Rooney received possession in an attacking midfield position, he could be sure Van Persie would be on the move, hunting, spearing into gaps. Robin was exactly what I wanted him to be. His pre-season with Arsenal had consisted of 21 minutes’ playing time against Cologne, in Germany, so his match fitness was slightly lacking. The right type of conditioning was already there but we needed to get him into a match-fit state. I was deeply impressed with him from the start.

I said to Robin quite early: ‘Don’t be afraid to instruct the other players. You were the leader at Arsenal and if you don’t get fed, get into them.’ He was quieter than I expected, but with a vicious left foot that would freeze goalkeepers with its force. People asked why I allowed him to take corners as a centre-forward. He would take them from the right-hand side, not the left, when he would be in the penalty box. The answer is that his corner-taking from the right was terrific. Howard Wilkinson remarked to me that season that a study he had overseen had showed a decrease in the number of goals from set pieces. Yet we had scored ten from corners in the first half of 2011–12.

The existing squad didn’t see Robin as any kind of outsider: an Arsenal player creeping onto their territory. Mine were a very welcoming bunch who asked only that the new arrival commit himself to the cause and respect the traditions of our dressing room. I always remember Verón arriving at the club and all the players leaving the training session to shake his hand. They were always good like that. Perhaps the greeting is always warmest for the player who might win you a tight game, an indispensable asset at the very highest level.

Like everyone in the business, I had been reading that Van Persie’s contract was about to expire, but I felt sure Arsenal would reach a deal to stop him leaving. Towards the end of the 2011–12 season, however, I sensed increasingly that he would not be staying in north London.

His agent contacted us. By then he had already been talking to Man City, but the message was that Robin would be very, very interested in having a discussion with us. Eventually City were advised that he would not be joining them, so it appeared to be between us and Juventus; the club had, I gathered, offered him an immense salary to move to Turin.

My thinking was: there are two reasons why a player wants to move. 1. For the glory, and 2. For the money. I could see why he might have wanted to join Juventus – a fine team – for an astronomical reward. The package we could offer was good enough to show him how much we respected him. Our invitation was backed up with great enthusiasm.

Next, we began talking to Arsenal about a possible transfer fee. David Gill phoned Ivan Gazidis, the Arsenal chief executive, a number of times, starting in April, but was told that Arsenal believed they could persuade him to sign a new deal. This carried on for a while until David suggested I should call Arsène directly as he would clearly have the final say on any transfer. By then it had become apparent the boy was leaving.

Arsène’s attitude, understandably, was: why should we sell to Manchester United when we could get £30 million off Man City or Juventus? My response was to point out that the player had no desire to go to our Manchester rivals. Arsène’s counter-argument was that Robin’s view of it might change if City made him a further offer he could not refuse.

It was certainly possible.

These discussions, I should say, were amicable. There was no hint of hostility. We were two experienced managers confronting reality. The sticking point was that Arsène hoped to receive £30 million or more for his best player. It continued to drag on for several weeks, during which time I phoned Arsène two or three more times.

In time we all arrived at the point where Arsenal knew Robin was not going to re-sign and accepted that. Their options were Juventus or United. Arsenal were trying to sell him abroad, but the player only wanted to join us. My understanding is that Van Persie sat down with Arsène and told him United was his preferred destination. Our offer, from David Gill to Gazidis, was £20 million. I warned Arsène that we would never get to £25 million.

Arsène was incredulous. He could not believe that Manchester United would refuse to stretch to £25 million for such a player.

I told him again: I wouldn’t go to £25 million. Arsène asked what my best offer would be. Answer: £22 million. The reply was that Arsenal would take £22.5 million and a further £1.5 million if we won the Champions League or Premier League during the period of his contract.

Deal done.

My intuition was that Arsène was relieved not to be selling Van Persie to Man City, who had already taken Kolo Touré, Gaël Clichy, Emmanuel Adebayor and Samir Nasri from his team. Perhaps he is not a fan of City’s ownership model. And although we had many battles over the years, I think he respected the way Manchester United was run. He said that to me on occasions. I always remember Arsène saying to me about Van Persie: ‘You don’t realise what a good player you’re getting.’

I thought of Cantona and Ronaldo and Giggs. But Arsène was right. Robin’s movement and the timing of runs were mesmerising. He was also blessed with a formidable physique.

Van Persie took a lower, but still fantastic, wage from us to come to a place where he believed he could be most successful. At his unveiling he said his inner child had been ‘screaming for United’. He told me later that in Holland every kid dreams of playing for Man United.

He knew I had been to see him when he was 16. Arsenal beat us to him when he was emerging as a star at Feyenoord but he stressed what a dream it was for Dutch kids to wear the United crest. He was impressed with the youth of our team. We had Giggs and Scholes but we also had Chicharito and the two Da Silvas, Evans, Jones and Smalling, Welbeck. Carrick, at 31, was having his best-ever season for us. It dawns on some players, when they perform at their best, just how important they are to the team, and in turn it makes them grow, as it did with Carrick.

Robin knew he was coming to a settled club. City had been terrific the previous season, but you would not call them a settled organisation. There was always an issue, with someone setting off fireworks or falling out with the manager; Tévez wanting to play golf in Argentina. City had won the League largely through the efforts of four top performers: Yaya Touré, Sergio Agüero, Vincent Kompany and Joe Hart. Plus David Silva for the first half of the season, though he trailed away somewhat after Christmas.

I say this all the time about strikers. Cantona, Andy Cole: if they are not scoring they think they are never going to score again. In his brief dry spell in the March of that season, Van Persie wasn’t playing as well and it affected him. But from the minute he scored against Stoke on 14 April, he was on fire again.

Over the years I witnessed some immortal Manchester United goals. Cantona treated the crowd to two or three wonderful chipped finishes. Rooney’s bicycle kick against City took some beating. The execution was incredible. It’s not as if that unforgettable overhead finish was delivered from the six-yard line. He was 14 yards from goal. It also took a deflection as he was running in. Nani’s cross veered off a City player, so Wayne was forced to make an amazing mid-air adjustment. That was the best one, for my money.

But Van Persie’s against Aston Villa in the 3–0 win that secured us the title on 22 April was special too: an over-the-shoulder volley from a long drilled ball by Rooney. A normal player would try that trick a hundred times in training and score once. Van Persie could do it regularly. Shoulder down, head down, eyes down, through the ball. The same mastery of technique brought him a goal of similar quality for Arsenal against Everton. He was a wonderful signing who finished the season with 26 League goals: 12 at home and 14 away. He struck 17 times with his left foot and eight with his right, plus once from a header. Those figures earned him the Golden Boot, awarded to the Premier League’s top scorer, for the second consecutive year.

At the other end of the age scale, we continued to place our faith in youth. Nick Powell, who joined in July 2012, had been in our sights since November 2011. Crewe brought him into their team at outside-left when he was 17 and still a bit gangly. Our academy staff had drawn a ring round his name and we scouted for him regularly. Jim Lawlor went to look at him and said he was interesting, though he was not sure what his best position would be and thought he might be a wee bit laidback.

So I sent out Martin to watch him twice. Martin’s view was that he definitely had something but was not the full package yet. Then Mick Phelan went to examine him in a couple of fixtures. Finally it was my turn. Crewe v. Aldershot. After five minutes in the stands, I told Mick, ‘He’s a player. Mick, he’s a player.’ It was his touch on the ball and his vision.

At one point in the game I saw he got a half-run on the opposition’s defence, had a wee look over his shoulder and just lofted the ball to the centre-forward to have a shot on goal. Then he showed us a header, then a turn of pace. Coming away I said to Mick: ‘I’m going to phone Dario Gradi,’ now director of football at Crewe.

‘I see you were at the game yesterday,’ said Dario.

‘The boy Powell,’ I said. ‘Now don’t get carried away. What’s your ballpark figure?’

Dario said: ‘Six million.’

Laughing, I told him where to go. But we constructed a potential deal in that direction with add-ons for first-team and England appearances. Powell was not told until after that season’s play-offs. He is an absolute certainty to be in the England team one day. He could play anywhere: off the front, even through. He’s quick as hell, has two good feet and shoots from outside the box. In the winter of 2012 he picked up a virus and his girlfriend had a nasty car accident. He’s quite a detached figure – good at switching off – but he’s a player, believe me.

Shinji Kagawa was another good catch that summer. We elected not to move for him after his first season in German football, because sometimes a player rises a notch and you want to be sure he can sustain it. He played in a very good Dortmund team, which I considered capable of winning the 2013 Champions League. In the event they reached the final but lost to Bayern Munich. The first thing I noticed was Shinji’s sharp football brain. Mick and I flew to Berlin for the German cup final in the summer of 2012 and I found myself sitting next to the Mayor of Dortmund and his wife. He was wearing trainers. Angela Merkel was nearby, along with Joachim Löw, the German coach. Introduced to Mrs Merkel, the German chancellor, I thought to myself: ‘My word, I’ve come a long way.’

There was no way I could hide in that seat – but everyone knew I was going anyway.

That summer the Glazers were perfectly happy to go for Van Persie or Robert Lewandowski and Kagawa. In many of our greatest phases we could call on four fantastic strikers. Making sure they all felt valued could be problematic. It required a range of diplomatic skills. Dortmund, however, refused to sell Lewandowski, who has a wonderful physique and has good lines of running.

The other signing was Alexander Büttner, from Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem. We had allowed Fábio to go to Queens Park Rangers on loan and we had a couple of young left-backs with potential. But we needed experience in that area and backup for Evra. Büttner was flagged up. He was always taking the ball, having shots, taking on defenders: a bargain at 2.5 million euros. He was an aggressive boy, determined, quickish and a good crosser of the ball.

There were times in the first half of that season when we couldn’t have defended a sandcastle. We conceded way too many times for my liking before tightening up from January onwards. The goalkeeping position was complicated. De Gea developed a tooth infection and needed an operation to remove his two rear molars. He missed a couple of games on that account and Anders Lindegaard didn’t do anything wrong in the No. 1 spot. He had a good game at Galatasary and against West Ham. My message to De Gea was that I needed to be fair to Anders. But after our narrow 4–3 win at Reading on 1 December, De Gea came back in and did well throughout the second half of the season, especially in the 1–1 draw at Real Madrid in February, where he was brilliant.

I still had high hopes for Javier Hernández. The issue with Chicharito was freshness. For three seasons in a row he played all summer with his country. Despite that we cooperated well with Mexico. The presidents of their FA and Olympic association came over, with their coaches, for a meeting with me. I showed them the medical file. Under discussion was whether he could play in two World Cup qualifiers as well as the Olympics.

Chicharito said, ‘I’d rather miss the other two games and play in the Olympics because I think we’ll win it.’ I thought he was joking.

He went on, ‘If we don’t get Brazil in the quarter-finals, we’ll win it.’

Meanwhile we had invested heavily in a marvellous new medical centre for Carrington. We can now do everything on site, apart from operations. We had a chiropodist, dentist, scanners, everything. The benefit was that, apart from having it all on site, injuries would not become instant public knowledge. In the past we might send a player to hospital and rumours would flash round the city. This told you we weren’t standing still. It might have been one of our best buys.

A major incident from that season requires a mention: the allegation, later dismissed by the authorities, that referee Mark Clattenburg had used racist language against Chelsea players in our 3–2 victory at Stamford Bridge on 28 October. A word about the game, first: against Di Matteo’s Chelsea we needed to work out how we would operate against Juan Mata, Oscar and Eden Hazard. Those three were hammering teams and turning on the style. The two sitting midfielders, Ramires and Mikel, were bombing on. We elected to load the right side to attack the areas they had vacated by attacking us, and squeeze Mata’s space.

It was a thrilling game until the shenanigans at the end of the match. When Fernando Torres was sent off, Steve Holland, one of Di Matteo’s assistants, blamed me. I looked at him, bemused. Mike Dean, the fourth official, could make no sense of Holland’s accusation. Torres should already have been sent off in the first half for a tackle on Cleverley.

When Hernández scored the winning goal, half a seat came on and hit Carrick on the foot, along with lighters and coins.

I still wonder whether the Clattenburg allegation was a smokescreen to obscure the crowd trouble.

Twenty minutes after the game, I went in with my staff for a drink, and in that wee room were Bruce Buck, the Chelsea chairman, Ron Gourlay, the chief executive, Di Matteo and his wife. You could sense an atmosphere. Something wasn’t right. We stood in the doorway and thought it wise to leave them to it.

The food was covered and the wine was uncorked. They said, ‘Help yourselves,’ and left the room.

My own staff had seen Mikel fly into the referee’s room with John Terry and Di Matteo. Whoever told Mikel that Clattenburg had said something inflammatory was making a big call. It was also a big move by Chelsea to inform the press pretty much straight away that an alleged incident had been reported. A lawyer might have sat back and said, ‘Let’s wait until tomorrow.’

The Branislav Ivanović sending-off in that game was perfectly straightforward. Torres went down easily but Evans did catch him. When you see where Clattenburg was, you can why he sent him off for simulation. He took one step, then went down. A toe is enough to fell a player moving at speed, but Torres did go over softly. I’ve no idea why Holland thought I had forced Clattenburg to send him off. A few days later, Di Matteo announced that I had too much power with referees.

I had run-ins with match officials all my life. I was sent off eight times as a player. I was sent to the stands three or four times as a manager in Scotland. I was fined so many times in England. I always had disputes of one sort or another. But I called it as I saw it. I never went out of my way to drop a referee in the soup.

There is no way, in my mind, that a top referee would be racist to a player. I called Mark Clattenburg and said, ‘I’m just sorry we are the other team involved in this.’ I was poised for someone in authority to bring us into the inquiry, which fortunately never happened. I had no knowledge of it until we boarded the plane back to Manchester. The FA took a hell of a long time to reach the decision that Mark was innocent. It could have been concluded in two days.

From January 2013 we really motored on in the League, piling pressure on Man City all the way. For me, knowing I was standing down, the sense of release and relief was delayed until the night we beat Aston Villa to win the title. We were going to win it anyway, but to finish the job in April, on our own ground, was immensely comforting. I would go out with a bang. I continued to make my team talks and prepare for games properly. The professionalism of Manchester United remained intact.

The only disappointment, of course, was losing our Champions League round of 16 tie to Real Madrid, in a game that featured a ludicrous sending-off for Nani by Cüneyt Çakir, the Turkish referee, for an innocuous challenge. In Spain in the first leg we had been terrific, weathering a 20-minute storm at the start of the match. We could have won by six. I held no fear of facing José Mourinho’s team again at home. Our preparation was perfect. We devised a good plan for the game, our energy was terrific and we forced three or four great saves from their goalkeeper. David de Gea barely made a stop.

Nani was sent off in the 56th minute for leaping to meet the ball and making slight contact with Álvaro Arbeloa, and for ten minutes we were up against it. We were in shock. On came Modrić for Real to equalise Sergio Ramos’s own goal and then Ronaldo finished us in the 69th minute. But we might have scored five in the last ten minutes. It was an absolute disaster.

I was particularly upset that night and gave the post-match press conference a miss. If we had beaten Real Madrid, there would have been every reason to imagine we could win the competition. I left Wayne out of that second leg because we needed someone to get on top of Alonso and play off him. The Ji-Sung Park of earlier years would have been perfect for that job. Andrea Pirlo’s passing rate for Milan had been 75 per cent. When we played them with Ji-Sung Park in the hounding role we reduced Pirlo’s strike rate to 25 per cent. There was no better player in our squad to keep on top of Alonso than Danny Welbeck. Yes, we sacrificed Wayne’s possible goal-scoring, but we knew we had to choke Alonso and exploit that gain.

Ronaldo was wonderful in those two games. In the Madrid leg he made his way into our dressing room to sit with our players. You could tell he missed them. After the Old Trafford game, as I was watching the video of the sending-off, he came in to sympathise. The Real players knew the sending-off had been absurd. Mesut Özil confessed to one of our players that José’s team felt they had got out of jail. Cristiano declined to celebrate his goal, which is just as well, because I would have strangled him. There were no issues with him at all. He’s a very nice boy.

My final thought on Man City losing the title to us was that they couldn’t call on enough players who understood the significance of what they had achieved by winning the League for the first time for 44 years. Evidently it was enough for some of them to have beaten Manchester United in a title race. They settled down into a sense of relief. Retaining a title is the next hard step and City were not in the right state of mind to defend what they had won on the most dramatic closing day in Premier League history.

When I won the League for the first time in 1993, I didn’t want my team to slacken off. The thought appalled me. I was determined to keep advancing, to strengthen our hold on power. I told that 1993 side: ‘Some people, when they have a holiday, just want to go to Saltcoats, twenty-five miles along the coast from Glasgow. Some people don’t even want to do that. They’re happy to stay at home or watch the birds and the ducks float by in the park. And some want to go to the moon.

‘It’s about people’s ambitions.’

SENIOR PLAYING CAREER

1958–60 Queen’s Park

Games 31

Goals: 15

1960–64 St Johnstone

Games: 47

Goals: 21

1964–67 Dunfermline Athletic

Games: 131

Goals: 88

Played for Scottish League (0) v. Football League (3) at Hampden Park, 15 March 1967.

Scottish FA XI summer tour 13 May–15 June 1967: scored 10 goals in seven appearances against Israel, Hong Kong Select, Australia (three matches), Auckland XI, Vancouver All Stars.

1967–69 Rangers

Games: 66

Goals: 35

Played for Scottish League (2) v. Irish League (0) in Belfast, 6 September 1967. Scored one goal.

1969–73 Falkirk

Games: 122

Goals: 49

1973–74 Ayr United

Games: 22

Goals: 10

Total

Games: 415

Goals: 218

(Scottish League, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup and European competitions only)

MANAGERIAL CAREER

JUNE–OCTOBER 1974 East Stirlingshire

OCTOBER 1974–MAY 1978 St Mirren

Finished fourth in Division One in 1975–76; Division One champions 1976–77; finished eighth in Premier Division 1977–78.

1978–86 Aberdeen

Season 1978–79

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: fourth

Scottish Cup: semi-final

Scottish League Cup: finalists

European Cup Winners’ Cup: second round

Season 1979–80

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: champions

Scottish Cup: semi-final

Scottish League Cup: finalists

UEFA Cup: first round

Season 1980–81

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: runners-up

Scottish Cup: fourth round

Scottish League Cup: fourth round

European Champion Clubs’ Cup: second round

Drybrough Cup: winners

Season 1981–82

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: runners-up

Scottish Cup: winners

Scottish League Cup: semi-final

UEFA Cup: quarter-final

Season 1982–83

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: third

Scottish Cup: winners

Scottish League Cup: quarter-final

European Cup Winners’ Cup: winners

Season 1983–84

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: champions

Scottish Cup: winners

Scottish League Cup: semi-final

European Cup Winners’ Cup: semi-final

European Super Cup: winners

Season 1984–85

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: champions

Scottish Cup: semi-final

Scottish League Cup: second round

European Champion Clubs’ Cup: first round

Season 1985–86

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Final position: fourth

Scottish Cup: winners

Scottish League Cup: winners

European Champion Clubs’ Cup: quarter-final

Season 1986–87 (August–1 November 1986)

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Scottish League Cup: fourth round

European Cup Winners’ Cup: first round

SUMMARY

ABERDEEN’S EUROPEAN CAMPAIGNS DURING ALEX FERGUSON’S MANAGERSHIP

Season 1978–79 Cup Winners’ Cup

Round 1 Marek Dupnitsa (Bulgaria) (a) 2–3, (h) 3–0, Agg: 5–3

Round 2 Fortuna Düsseldorf (West Germany) (a) 0–3, (h) 2–0, Agg: 2–3

Season 1979–80 UEFA Cup

Round 1 Eintracht Frankfurt (West Germany) (h) 1–1, (a) 0–1, Agg: 1–2

Season 1980–81 European Cup

Round 1 Austria Memphis (Austria) (h) 1–0, (a) 0–0, Agg: 1–0

Round 2 Liverpool (h) 0–1, (a) 0–4, Agg: 0–5

Season 1981–82 UEFA Cup

Round 1 Ipswich Town (a) 1–1, (h) 3–1, Agg: 4–2

Round 2 Argeş Piteşti (Romania) (h) 3–0, (a) 2–2, Agg: 5–2

Round 3 SV Hamburg (West Germany) (h) 3–2, (a) 1–3, Agg: 4–5

Season 1982–83 Cup Winners’ Cup

Preliminary round Sion (Switzerland) (h) 7–0, (a) 4–1, Agg: 11–1

Round 1 Dinamo Tirana (Albania) (h) 1–0, (a) 0–0, Agg: 1–0

Round 2 Lech Poznań (Poland) (h) 2–0, (a) 1–0, Agg: 3–0

Quarter-final Bayern Munich (West Germany) (a) 0–0, (h) 3–2, Agg: 3–2

Semi-final Waterschei (Belgium) (h) 5–1, (a) 0–1, Agg: 5–2

Final (Gothenburg, Sweden) Real Madrid (Spain) 2–1 (aet)

Season 1983–84 Super Cup

SV Hamburg (West Germany) (a) 0–0, (h) 2–0, Agg: 2–0

Cup Winners’ Cup

Round 1 Akranes (Iceland) (a) 2–1, (h) 1–1, Agg: 3–2

Round 2 SK Beveren (Belgium) (a) 0–0, (h) 4–1, Agg: 4–1

Quarter-final Újpest Dózsa (Hungary) (a) 0–2, (h) 3–0 (aet), Agg: 3–2

Semi-final Porto (Portugal) (a) 0–1, (h) 0–1, Agg: 0–2

Season 1984–85 European Cup

Round 1 Dinamo Berlin (East Germany) (h) 2–1, (a) 1–2, Agg: 3–3 (Lost 5–4 on penalties)

Season 1985–86 European Cup

Round 1 Akranes (Iceland) (a) 3–1, (h) 4–1, Agg: 7–2

Round 2 Servette (Switzerland) (a) 0–0, (h) 1–0, Agg: 1–0

Quarter-final IFK Gothenburg (Sweden) (h) 2–2, (a) 0–0, Agg: 2–2 (Lost on away-goals rule)

Season 1986–87 Cup Winners’ Cup

Round 1 Sion (Switzerland) (h) 2–1, (a) 0–3, Agg: 2–4

HONOURS

EUROPEAN CUP WINNERS’ CUP

Winners: 1983

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION

Champions: 1980, 1984, 1985

SCOTTISH CUP

Winners: 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986

SCOTTISH LEAGUE CUP

Winners: 1985–86

EUROPEAN SUPER CUP

Winners: 1983

DRYBROUGH CUP

Winners: 1980

OCTOBER 1985–JUNE 1986 Scotland

FULL INTERNATIONALS

RESULTS

October 1985 East Germany (friendly, home) 0–0

November 1985 Australia (World Cup play-off, home) 2–0

December 1985 Australia (World Cup play-off, away) 0–0

January 1986 Israel (friendly, away) 1–0

March 1986 Romania (friendly, home) 3–0

April 1986 England (Rous Cup, away) 1–2

April 1986 Netherlands (friendly, away) 0–0

June 1986 Denmark (World Cup, Mexico City) 0–1

June 1986 West Germany (World Cup, Querétaro) 1–2

June 1986 Uruguay (World Cup, Mexico City) 0–0

1986–2013 Manchester United

Season 1986–87

THE TODAY LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

United’s record up to Alex Ferguson’s arrival

United’s record under Alex Ferguson

Final position: 11th

FA Cup: fourth round

Season 1987–88

BARCLAYS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: fifth round

League Cup: fifth round

Season 1988–89

BARCLAYS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

Final position: 11th

FA Cup: sixth round

League Cup: third round

Season 1989–90

BARCLAYS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

Final position: 13th

FA Cup: winners

League Cup: third round

Season 1990–91

BARCLAYS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

Final position: sixth

FA Cup: fifth round

League Cup: finalists

European Cup Winners’ Cup: winners

FA Charity Shield: joint winners

Season 1991–92

BARCLAYS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: fourth round

League Cup: winners

European Cup Winners’ Cup: second round

European Super Cup: winners

Season 1992–93

FA PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: champions

FA Cup: fifth round

League Cup: third round

UEFA Cup: first round

1992–93 FA PREMIER LEAGUE

Season 1993–94

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: winners

League Cup: finalists

European Champion Clubs’ Cup: second round

FA Charity Shield: winners

1993–94 FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Season 1994–95

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: finalists

League Cup: third round

UEFA Champions League: first group phase

FA Charity Shield: winners

Season 1995–96

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: winners

League Cup: second round

UEFA Cup: first round

1995–96 FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Season 1996–97

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: fourth round

League Cup: fourth round

UEFA Champions League: semi-final

FA Charity Shield: winners

1996–97 FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Season 1997–98

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: fifth round

League Cup: third round

UEFA Champions League: quarter-final

FA Charity Shield: winners

Season 1998–99

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: winners

League Cup: fifth round

UEFA Champions League: winners

1998–99 FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Season 1999–2000

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: did not enter

League Cup: third round

UEFA Champions League: quarter-final

Intercontinental Cup: winners

FIFA Club World Cup: third in first-round group

1999–2000 FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Season 2000–01

FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: fourth round

League Cup: fourth round

UEFA Champions League: quarter-final

2000–01 FA CARLING PREMIERSHIP

Season 2001–02

BARCLAYCARD PREMIERSHIP

Final position: third

FA Cup: fourth round

League Cup: third round

UEFA Champions League: semi-final

Season 2002–03

BARCLAYCARD PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: fifth round

League Cup: finalists

UEFA Champions League: quarter-final

2002–03 BARCLAYCARD PREMIERSHIP

Season 2003–04

BARCLAYCARD PREMIERSHIP

Final position: third

FA Cup: winners

League Cup: fourth round

UEFA Champions League: first knock-out phase

FA Community Shield: winners

Season 2004–05

BARCLAYS PREMIERSHIP

Final position: third

FA Cup: finalists

League Cup: semi-final

UEFA Champions League: first knock-out phase

Season 2005–06

BARCLAYS PREMIERSHIP

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: fifth round

League Cup: winners

UEFA Champions League: first group phase

Season 2006–07

BARCLAYS PREMIERSHIP

Final position: champions

FA Cup: finalists

League Cup: fourth round

UEFA Champions League: semi-final

2006–07 BARCLAYS PREMIERSHIP

Season 2007–08

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: champions

FA Cup: sixth round

League Cup: third round

UEFA Champions League: winners

FA Community Shield: winners

2007–08 BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Season 2008–09

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: champions

FA Cup: semi-final

League Cup: winners

UEFA Champions League: finalists

FIFA Club World Cup: winners

FA Community Shield: winners

2008–09 BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Season 2009–10

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: third round

League Cup: winners

UEFA Champions League: quarter-final

Season 2010–11

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: champions

FA Cup: semi-final

League Cup: fifth round

UEFA Champions League: finalists

FA Community Shield: winners

2010–11 BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Season 2011–12

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: runners-up

FA Cup: fourth round

League Cup: fifth round

UEFA Champions League: first group phase

UEFA Europa League: second knock-out phase

FA Community Shield: winners

Season 2012–13

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Final position: champions

FA Cup: sixth round

League Cup: fourth round

UEFA Champions League: first knock-out phase

2012–13 BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

SUMMARY

FIFA CWC – FIFA Club World Cup

IC – Intercontinental Cup

Super Cup – UEFA Super Cup

Matches at neutral venues are included as away games

MANCHESTER UNITED IN GLOBAL TOURNAMENTS DURING ALEX FERGUSON’S MANAGERSHIP

Season 1999–2000 Intercontinental Cup

(Tokyo, Japan) SE Palmeiras (Brazil) 1–0

FIFA Club World Championship

Group stage (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Club Necaxa (Mexico) 1–1, CR Vasco da Gama (Brazil) 1–3, South Melbourne (Australia) 2–0 (Finished third in group)

Season 2008–09 FIFA Club World Cup

Semi-final (Yokohama, Japan) Gamba Osaka (Japan) 5–3

Final (Yokohama) LDU Quito (Ecuador) 1–0

MANCHESTER UNITED’S EUROPEAN CAMPAIGNS DURING ALEX FERGUSON’S MANAGERSHIP

Season 1990–91 Cup Winners’ Cup

Round 1 Pécsi Munkás (Hungary) (h) 2–0, (a) 1–0, Agg: 3–0

Round 2 Wrexham (h) 3–0, (a) 2–0, Agg: 5–0

Quarter-final Montpellier (France) (h) 1–1, (a) 2–0, Agg: 3–1

Semi-final Legia Warsaw (Poland) (a) 3–1, (h) 1–1, Agg: 4–2

Final (Rotterdam, Netherlands) Barcelona (Spain) 2–1

Season 1991–92 UEFA Super Cup

Red Star Belgrade (Yugoslavia) (h) 1–0

Cup Winners’ Cup

Round 1 Athinaikos (Greece) (a) 0–0, (h) 2–0 (aet), Agg: 2–0

Round 2 Atlético Madrid (Spain) (a) 0–3, (h) 1–1, Agg: 1–4

Season 1992–93 UEFA Cup

Round 1 Torpedo Moscow (Russia) (h) 0–0, (a) 0–0, Agg: 0–0 (Lost 4–3 on penalties)

Season 1993–94 UEFA Champions League

Round 1 Kispest Honvéd (Hungary) (a) 3–2, (h) 2–1, Agg: 5–3

Round 2 Galatasaray (Turkey) (h) 3–3, (a) 0–0, Agg: 3–3 (Lost on away-goals rule)

Season 1994–95 UEFA Champions League

Group phase IFK Gothenburg (Sweden) (h) 4–2, Galatasaray (Turkey) (a) 0–0, Barcelona (Spain) (h) 2–2, Barcelona (a) 0–4, IFK Gothenburg (a) 1–3, Galatasaray (h) 4–0 (Finished third in group)

Season 1995–96 UEFA Cup

Round 2 Rotor Volgograd (Russia) (a) 0–0, (h) 2–2 (Lost on away-goals rule)

Season 1996–97 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Juventus (Italy) (a) 0–1, Rapid Vienna (Austria) (h) 2–0, Fenerbahçe (Turkey) (a) 2–0, Fenerbahçe (h) 0–1, Juventus (h) 0–1, Rapid Vienna (a) 2–0 (Finished second in group)

Quarter-final Porto (Portugal) (h) 4–0, (a) 0–0, Agg: 4–0

Semi-final Borussia Dortmund (Germany) (a) 0–1, (h) 0–1, Agg: 0–2

Season 1997–98 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Košice (Slovakia) (a) 3–0, Juventus (Italy) (h) 3–2, Feyenoord (Netherlands) (h) 2–1, Feyenoord (a) 3–1, Košice (h) 3–0, Juventus (a) 0–1 (Finished second in group)

Quarter-final Monaco (France) (a) 0–0, (h) 1–1 (Lost on away-goals rule)

Season 1998–99 UEFA Champions League

Qualifying round 2 ŁKS Łódź (Poland) (h) 2–0, (a) 0–0, Agg: 2–0

Group phase Barcelona (Spain) (h) 3–3, Bayern Munich (Germany) (a) 2–2, Brøndby (Denmark) (a) 6–2, Brøndby (h) 5–0, Barcelona (a) 3–3, Bayern Munich (h) 1–1 (Finished second in group)

Quarter-final Internazionale (Italy) (h) 2–0, (a) 1–1, Agg: 3–1

Semi-final Juventus (Italy) (h) 1–1, (a) 3–2, Agg: 4–3

Final (Barcelona, Spain) Bayern Munich 2–1

Season 1999–2000 UEFA Super Cup

(Monaco, France) Lazio (Italy) 0–1

UEFA Champions League

First group phase Croatia Zagreb (Croatia) (h) 0–0, Sturm Graz (Austria) (a) 3–0, Marseille (France) (h) 2–1, Marseille (a) 0–1, Croatia Zagreb (a) 2–1, Sturm Graz (h) 2–1 (Finished first in group)

Second group phase Fiorentina (Italy) (a) 0–2, Valencia (Spain) (h) 3–0, Bordeaux (France) (h) 2–0, Bordeaux (a) 2–1, Fiorentina (h) 3–1, Valencia (a) 0–0 (Finished first in group)

Quarter-final Real Madrid (Spain) (a) 0–0, (h) 2–3, Agg: 2–3

Season 2000–01 UEFA Champions League

First group phase Anderlecht (Belgium) (h) 5–1, Dynamo Kiev (Ukraine) (a) 0–0, PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) (a) 1–3, PSV Eindhoven (h) 3–1, Anderlecht (a) 1–2, Dynamo Kiev (h) 1–0 (Finished second in group)

Second group phase Panathinaikos (Greece) (h) 3–1, Sturm Graz (Austria) (a) 2–0, Valencia (Spain) (a) 0–0, Valencia (h) 1–1, Panathinaikos (a) 1–1, Sturm Graz (h) 3–0 (Finished second in group)

Quarter-final Bayern Munich (Germany) (h) 0–1, (a) 1–2, Agg: 1–3

Season 2001–02 UEFA Champions League

First group phase Lille (France) (h) 1–0, Deportivo La Coruña (Spain) (a) 1–2, Olympiacos (Greece) (a) 2–0, Deportivo La Coruña (h) 2–3, Olympiacos (h) 3–0, Lille (a) 1–1 (Finished second in group)

Second group phase Bayern Munich (Germany) (a) 1–1, Boavista (Portugal) (h) 3–0, Nantes (France) (a) 1–1, Nantes (h) 5–1, Bayern Munich (h) 0–0, Boavista (a) 3–0 (Finished first in group)

Quarter-final Deportivo La Coruña (a) 2–0, (h) 3–2, Agg: 5–2

Semi-final Bayer Leverkusen (Germany) (h) 2–2, (a) 1–1, Agg: 3–3 (Lost on away-goals rule)

Season 2002–03 UEFA Champions League

Qualifying round 3 Zalaegerszegi TE (Hungary) (a) 0–1, (h) 5–0, Agg: 5–1

First group phase Maccabi Haifa (Israel) (h) 5–2, Bayer Leverkusen (Germany) (a) 2–1, Olympiacos (Greece) (h) 4–0, Olympiacos (a) 3–2, Maccabi Haifa (a) 0–3, Bayer Leverkusen (h) 2–0 (Finished first in group)

Second group phase Basel (Switzerland) (a) 3–1, Deportivo La Coruña (Spain) (h) 2–0, Juventus (Italy) (h) 2–1, Juventus (a) 3–0, Basel (h) 1–1, Deportivo La Coruña (a) 0–2 (Finished first in group)

Quarter-final Real Madrid (Spain) (a) 1–3, (h) 4–3, Agg: 5–6

Season 2003–04 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Panathinaikos (Greece) (h) 5–0, VfB Stuttgart (Germany) (a) 1–2, Rangers (a) 1–0, Rangers (h) 3–0, Panathinaikos (a) 1–0, VfB Stuttgart (h) 2–0 (Finished first in group)

Quarter-final Porto (Portugal) (a) 1–2, (h) 1–1, Agg: 2–3

Season 2004–05 UEFA Champions League

Qualifying round 3 Dinamo Bucharest (Romania) (a) 2–1, (h) 3–0, Agg: 5–1

Group phase Lyon (France) (a) 2–2, Fenerbahçe (Turkey) (h) 6–2, Sparta Prague (Czech Republic) (a) 0–0, Sparta Prague (h) 4–1, Lyon (h) 2–1, Fenerbahçe (a) 0–3 (Finished second in group)

First knock-out round AC Milan (Italy) (h) 0–1, (a) 0–1, Agg: 0–2

Season 2005–06 UEFA Champions League

Qualifying round 3 Debrecen (Hungary) (h) 3–0, (a) 3–0, Agg: 6–0

Group phase Villarreal (Spain) (a) 0–0, Benfica (Portugal) (h) 2–1, Lille (France) (h) 0–0, Lille (a) 0–1, Villarreal (h) 0–0, Benfica (a) 1–2 (Finished fourth in group)

Season 2006–07 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Celtic (h) 3–2, Benfica (Portugal) (a) 1–0, FC Copenhagen (Denmark) (h) 3–0, FC Copenhagen (a) 0–1, Celtic (a) 0–1, Benfica (h) 3–1 (Finished first in group)

First knock-out round Lille (France) (a) 1–0, Lille (h) 1–0, Agg: 2–0

Quarter-final Roma (Italy) (a) 1–2, (h) 7–1, Agg: 8–3

Semi-final AC Milan (Italy) (h) 3–2, (a) 0–3, Agg: 3–5

Season 2007–08 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Sporting Lisbon (Portugal) (a) 1–0, Roma (Italy) (h) 1–0, Dynamo Kiev (Ukraine) (a) 4–2, Dynamo Kiev (h) 4–0, Sporting Lisbon (h) 2–1, Roma (Italy) (a) 1–1 (Finished first in group)

First knock-out round Lyon (France) (a) 1–1, (h) 1–0, Agg: 2–1

Quarter-final Roma (Italy) (a) 2–0, (h) 1–0, Agg: 3–0

Semi-final Barcelona (Spain) (a) 0–0, (h) 1–0, Agg: 1–0

Final (Moscow, Russia) Chelsea 1–1 (Won 6–5 on penalties)

Season 2008–09 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Villarreal (Spain) (h) 0–0, Aalborg BK (Denmark) (a) 3–0, Celtic (h) 3–0, Celtic (a) 1–1, Villarreal (a) 0–0, Aalborg BK (h) 2–2 (Finished first in group)

First knock-out round Internazionale (Italy) (a) 0–0, (h) 2–0, Agg: 2–0

Quarter-final Porto (Portugal) (h) 2–2, (a) 1–0, Agg: 3–2

Semi-final Arsenal (h) 1–0, (a) 3–1, Agg: 4–1

Final (Rome, Italy) Barcelona (Spain) 0–2

Season 2009–10 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Beşiktaş (Turkey) (a) 1–0, VfL Wolfsburg (Germany) (h) 2–1, CSKA Moscow (Russia) (a) 1–0, CSKA Moscow (h) 3–3, Beşiktaş (h) 0–1, VfL Wolfsburg (a) 3–1 (Finished first in group)

First knock-out round AC Milan (Italy) (a) 3–2, (h) 4–0, Agg: 7–2

Quarter-final Bayern Munich (Germany) (a) 1–2, (h) 3–2, Agg: 4–4 (Lost on away-goals rule)

Season 2010–11 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Rangers (h) 0–0, Valencia (Spain) (a) 1–0, Bursaspor (Turkey) (h) 1–0, Bursaspor (a) 3–0, Rangers (a) 1–0, Valencia (h) 1–1 (Finished first in group)

First knock-out round Marseille (France) (a) 0–0, (h) 2–1, Agg: 2–1

Quarter-final Chelsea (a) 1–0, (h) 2–1, Agg: 3–1

Semi-final Schalke 04 (Germany) (a) 2–0, (h) 4–1, Agg: 6–1

Final (Wembley) Barcelona (Spain) 1–3

Season 2011–12 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Benfica (Portugal) (a) 1–1, Basel (Switzerland) (h) 3–3,

Oţelul Galaţi (Romania) (a) 2–0, Oţelul Galaţi (h) 2–0, Benfica (h) 2–2, Basel (a) 1–2 (Finished third in group)

UEFA Europa League

Round of 32 Ajax (Netherlands) (a) 2–0, (h) 1–2, Agg: 3–2

Round of 16 Athletic Bilbao (Spain) (h) 2–3, (a) 1–2, Agg: 3–5

Season 2012–13 UEFA Champions League

Group phase Galatasaray (Turkey) (h) 1–0, CFR Cluj (Romania) (a) 2–1, Braga (Portugal) (h) 3–2, Braga (a) 3–1, Galatasaray (a) 0–1, CFR Cluj (h) 0–1 (Finished first in group)

Round of 16 Real Madrid (Spain) (a) 1–1, (h) 1–2, Agg: 2–3

HONOURS

EUROPEAN CHAMPION CLUBS’ CUP/UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Winners: 1999, 2008

Finalists: 2009, 2011

EUROPEAN CUP WINNERS’ CUP

Winners: 1991

FA PREMIER LEAGUE

Champions: 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013

Runners-up: 1995, 1998, 2006, 2010, 2012

FA CUP

Winners: 1990, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2004

Finalists: 1995, 2005, 2007

FOOTBALL LEAGUE CUP

Winners: 1992, 2006, 2009, 2010

Finalists: 1991, 1994, 2003

INTERCONTINENTAL CUP

Winners: 1999

FIFA CLUB WORLD CUP

Winners: 2008

EUROPEAN SUPER CUP

Winners: 1991

FA CHARITY/COMMUNITY SHIELD

Winners: 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011

Joint winners (with Liverpool): 1990.

MANCHESTER UNITED PLAYERS UNDER ALEX FERGUSON

Listed here is the name of every player to appear in a senior competitive fixture for Manchester United during Alex Ferguson’s time as manager, up to the end of season 2012–13

Albiston, Arthur

Amos, Ben

Anderson

Anderson, Viv

Appleton, Michael

Bailey, Gary

Bardsley, Phil

Barnes, Michael

Barnes, Peter

Barthez, Fabien

Beardsmore, Russell

Bébé

Beckham, David

Bellion, David

Berbatov, Dimitar

Berg, Henning

Blackmore, Clayton

Blanc, Laurent

Blomqvist, Jesper

Bosnich, Mark

Brady, Robbie

Brazil, Derek

Brown, Wes

Bruce, Steve

Butt, Nicky

Büttner, Alexander

Campbell, Fraizer

Cantona, Eric

Carrick, Michael

Carroll, Roy

Casper, Chris

Chadwick, Luke

Chester, James

Clegg, Michael

Cleverley, Tom

Cole, Andy

Cole, Larnell

Cooke, Terry

Cruyff, Jordi

Culkin, Nick

Curtis, John

Davenport, Peter

Davies, Simon

Davis, Jimmy

Diouf, Mame Biram

Djemba-Djemba, Eric

Djordjic, Bojan

Donaghy, Mal

Dong, Fangzhuo

Dublin, Dion

Duxbury, Mike

Eagles, Chris

Ebanks-Blake, Sylvan

Eckersley, Adam

Eckersley, Richard

Evans, Jonny

Evra, Patrice

Ferdinand, Rio

Ferguson, Darren

Fletcher, Darren

Forlán, Diego

Fortune, Quinton

Foster, Ben

Fryers, Zeki

Garton, Billy

Gea, David de

Gibson, Colin

Gibson, Darron

Gibson, Terry

Giggs, Ryan

Gill, Tony

Gillespie, Keith

Goram, Andy

Gouw, Raimond van der

Graham, Deiniol

Gray, David

Greening, Jonathan

Hargreaves, Owen

Healy, David

Heinze, Gabriel

Hernández, Javier

Higginbotham, Danny

Hogg, Graeme

Howard, Tim

Hughes, Mark

Ince, Paul

Irwin, Denis

Johnsen, Ronny

Johnson, Eddie

Jones, David

Jones, Phil

Jones, Ritchie

Kagawa, Shinji

Kanchelskis, Andrei

Keane, Michael

Keane, Roy

Keane, Will

King, Joshua

Kléberson

Kuszczak, Tomasz

Laet, Ritchie de

Larsson, Henrik

Lee, Kieran

Leighton, Jim

Lindegaard, Anders

Lynch, Mark

McClair, Brian

McGibbon, Patrick

McGrath, Paul

Macheda, Federico

McKee, Colin

Maiorana, Giuliano

Manucho

Marsh, Phil

Martin, Lee A.

Martin, Lee R.

May, David

Miller, Liam

Milne, Ralph

Moran, Kevin

Morrison, Ravel

Moses, Remi

Mulryne, Philip

Nani

Nardiello, Daniel

Neville, Gary

Neville, Phil

Nevland, Erik

Nistelrooy, Ruud van

Notman, Alex

Obertan, Gabriel

O’Brien, Liam

O’Kane, John

Olsen, Jesper

O’Shea, John

Owen, Michael

Pallister, Gary

Park, Ji-Sung

Parker, Paul

Persie, Robin van

Phelan, Mick

Pilkington, Kevin

Piqué, Gérard

Poborský, Karel

Pogba, Paul

Possebon, Rodrigo

Powell, Nick

Prunier, William

Pugh, Danny

Rachubka, Paul

Ricardo

Richardson, Kieran

Robins, Mark

Robson, Bryan

Roche, Lee

Ronaldo, Cristiano

Rooney, Wayne

Rossi, Giuseppe

Saha, Louis

Sar, Edwin van der

Schmeichel, Peter

Scholes, Paul

Sealey, Les

Sharpe, Lee

Shawcross, Ryan

Sheringham, Teddy

Silva, Fábio da

Silva, Rafael da

Silvestre, Mikaël

Simpson, Danny

Sivebaek, John

Smalling, Chris

Smith, Alan

Solskjaer, Ole Gunnar

Spector, Jonathan

Stam, Jaap

Stapleton, Frank

Stewart, Michael

Strachan, Gordon

Taibi, Massimo

Tévez, Carlos

Thornley, Ben

Tierney, Paul

Timm, Mads

Tomlinson, Graeme

Tosic, Zoran

Tunnicliffe, Ryan

Turner, Chris

Twiss, Michael

Valencia, Antonio

Vermijl, Marnick

Verón, Juan Sebastián

Vidić, Nemanja

Wallace, Danny

Wallwork, Ronnie

Walsh, Gary

Webb, Neil

Webber, Danny

Welbeck, Danny

Wellens, Richie

Whiteside, Norman

Whitworth, Neil

Wilkinson, Ian

Wilson, David

Wilson, Mark

Wood, Nicky

Wootton, Scott

Wratten, Paul

Yorke, Dwight

Young, Ashley

Aberdeen FC

AF at

referees

Abramovich, Roman

AC Milan

Adams, Tony

Agüero, Sergio

Ajax

Aldridge, John

Allardyce, Sam

Alonso, Xabi

Anastasi, Pietro

Ancelotti, Carlo

Anderson: language problems

signs to Manchester Utd FC

2008 Champions League

2009 Champions League

Anelka, Nicolas

Anfield

Arsenal FC

Arsène Wenger

players

Robin van Persie

2003 FA Cup

2003–04 UEFA Champions League

2005 FA Cup final

2008–09 UEFA Champions League

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

Arshavin, Andrey

Aston Villa FC

Athletic Bilbao

Atkinson, Martin

Atkinson, Ron

Atlético Madrid

Babel, Ryan

Balotelli, Mario

Barcelona

2008–09 Champions League

2010–11 Champions League

Barthez, Fabien

Basel

Bayer Leverkusen

Bayern Munich

BBC

Bean, John

Bébé

Beckenbauer, Franz

Beckham, David

and AF

and bad games

as a celebrity

FA Youth Cup

injuries

LA Galaxy

Manchester Utd FC

1998 World Cup

Real Madrid

talent

Bellamy, Craig

Bellion, David

Benfica, SL

Benítez, Rafael ‘Rafa’

at Chelsea FC

at Liverpool FC

2011–12 Champions League

Berbatov, Dimitar

Bergkamp, Dennis

Best, George

Birmingham City FC

Birtles, Garry

Blackburn Rovers FC

Kenny Dalglish

Phil Jones

Ruud van Nistelrooy

Blackmore, Clayton

Blair, Tony

Blanc, Laurent

Blatter, Sepp

Borussia Dortmund

Bosnich, Mark

Bould, Steve

Brown, Gordon

Brown, Terry

Brown, Wes

Bruce, Steve

injuries

and Peter Schmeichel

at Sunderland FC

BSkyB

Buchan, Martin

Buffon, Gianluigi

Busby, Sir Matt

Bushell, Dave

Busquets, Sergio

Butt, Nicky

Büttner, Alexander

Cahill, Tim

Çakir, Cüneyt

Calderón, Ramón

Cambiasso, Esteban

Campbell, Alastair

Campbell, Davie

Campbell, Gordon

Cantona, Eric

marks AF’s 25 years as Manchester Utd FC manager

popularity

receives nine-month ban

signs to Manchester Utd FC

talent

view of Arsène Wenger

and Vinnie Jones

Capello, Fabio

resigns from England

2010–11 UEFA Champions League

Carling Cup

Carlos, Roberto

Carragher, Jamie

Carrick, Michael

injuries

positions

Robin van Persie

signs to Manchester Utd FC

2007–08 UEFA Champions League

2010–11 UEFA Champions League

2012–13 season

Carrington

Carroll, Andy

Carter, Jimmy

Cartmel, Brian

Case, Jimmy

Ĉech, Petr

Celtic FC

Jock Stein at

signs Roy Keane

Chamakh, Marouane

Champions League see UEFA Champions League

Charlton, Bobby

after retirement

appearance record

Hillsborough commemoration

talent

view of AF

Chelsea FC

and José Mourinho

players

rumours of racism against

signs Torres

2004–05 UEFA Champions League

2007–08 UEFA Champions League

Cheyrou, Bruno

Clattenburg, Mark

Clegg, Mike

Cleverley, Tom

injuries

returns to Manchester Utd FC

2009–10 UEFA Champions League

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

Clough, Brian

Cluj, CFR

Cohen, Frank

Cole, Andy

and Dwight Yorke

goal-scoring

Cole, Ashley

Collymore, Stan

Community Shield (2011)

Connor, Frank

Coquelin, Francis

Corrigan, Martin

Coventry City FC

Crewe FC

Crozier, Adam

Cruyff, Johan

Cruyff, Jordi

Crystal Palace FC

Cunningham, Willie

Dalgarno, Les

Dalglish, Kenny: at Blackburn

at Liverpool FC

Suárez/Evra incident

Dallek, Robert

Davies, Norman

Davis, Jimmy

Dein, David

Derry, Shaun

Desmond, Dermot

Di Canio, Paolo

Di Matteo, Roberto

Diouf, El Hadji

Djemba-Djemba, Eric

Doherty, Paul

Donachie, John

dope testing

Downing, Stewart

Drogba, Didier

Drumchapel Amateur FC

D’Urso, Andy

Dyke, Greg

Džeko, Edin

East Stirlingshire FC

Eckersley, Richard

Edwards, Martin

as CEO

signs Mark Bosnich

view of AF

view of Jim Lawlor

Anderson

Eintracht Frankfurt

Elite Sports Agency

England

AF offered manager’s job

Euro 2012

2002 World Cup

2010 World Cup

Eriksson, Sven-Göran

Essien, Michael

Eto’o, Samuel

Euro 2012

Europa League (2012)

European Cup: 1991

1999

2004

2005

2008

2009

2011

Evans, Jonny: AF suspends

at Manchester Utd FC

2011 Community Shield

2011–12 Champions League

2012–13 season

Everton FC

Evra, Patrice: disciplined by FA

first goal in Europe

signs to Manchester Utd FC

Suárez saga

William Prunier

2008–09 UEFA Champions League

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

FA (Football Association)

coaching

Mark Clattenburg incident

Suárez/Evra incident

suspends Rio Ferdinand

FA Cup: 1990

1995

2003

2004

2005

2011

FA Youth Cup

Fàbregas, Cesc

Fallon, Sean

Fashanu, John

Fayed, Mohammed

FC United of Manchester

Fenton, Ron

Fenway Park

Ferdinand, Anton

Ferdinand, Les

Ferdinand, Rio

AF’s retirement

celebrity status

eight-month suspension

injuries

and John Terry incident

joins Manchester Utd FC

2011 Community Shield

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

and UNICEF

views of

Fergie and Son (BBC)

Ferguson, Alex: Aberdeen FC

and Arsène Wenger

BBC bust-up

and Cathy Ferguson

charged with improper conduct

and David Beckham

Drumchapel Amateurs FC

East Stirlingshire FC

family life

final season with Manchester Utd FC

friendship with Bill McKechnie

game plans

Harmony Row Youth Club

health problems

horse racing

interest in America

interest in JFK

interest in wine

and John Magnier

joins Manchester Utd FC

and the Labour Party

management style

manager–player relationships

Managing My Life

Manchester Utd FC takeover

and the media

offered England manager job

outside interests

Queens Park Rangers FC

receives fines

retirement u-turn (2001)

retires from Manchester Utd FC

rivalry with Mourinho

Roy Keane

runs pubs

is sent off during matches

St Mirren FC

25 years as Manchester Utd FC’s manager

Wayne Rooney

Ferguson, Alexander (AF’s father)

Ferguson, Cathy (AF’s wife): AF lets Phil Neville go

AF’s retirement (2013)

AF’s retirement u-turn (2001)

family life

horse racing

Manchester City FC win (2012)

marries AF

runs pubs

and son Darren’s football career

Ferguson, Darren (AF’s son)

career

childhood

football career

Ferguson, Jason (AF’s son)

career

childhood

Fergie and Son

interest in football

Ferguson, Mark (AF’s son)

career

childhood

interest in football

Ferguson, Martin (AF’s brother)

AF’s retirement

2002 World Cup

Ruud van Nistelrooy

works in pubs

FIFA Presidential award (2011)

FIFA World Cup: 1998

2002

2006

2010

Figo, Luis

Fitzpatrick, Tony

Fletcher, Darren: illness

positions

and Roy Keane

2011–12 Champions League

Football Association (FA)

coaching

Mark Clattenburg incident

Suárez/Evra incident

suspends Rio Ferdinand

football boots

Forlán, Diego

Fortune, Quinton

Frizzell, Jimmy

Fry, Barry

Fulham FC

Gaal, Louis van

Gallagher, Gary

Gascoigne, Paul

Manchester Utd FC tries to sign

talent

Gattuso, Gennaro ‘Rino’

Gazidis, Ivan

Gea, David de

illness

signs to Manchester Utd FC

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

2012–13 season

Gerrard, Steven

Gibson, Darron

Gibson, Steve

Giggs, Ryan

AF’s retirement

and celebrity world

character

Class of ’92

FA Youth Cup

injuries

2002 season

2003 season

2007–08 UEFA Champions League

2008–09 UEFA Champions League

2010–11 UEFA Champions League

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

2012–13 season

Gill, David

Carlos Tévez

Gabriel Heinze

marks AF’s 25 years as Manchester Utd FC’s manager

Michael Carrick

Nani

Owen Hargreaves

resigns as CEO

Robin van Persie

Ronaldo

Roy Keane

Ruud van Nistelrooy

Suárez/Evra incident

Tom Cleverley

Ruud van Nistelrooy

Wayne Rooney

Gillespie, Keith

Giroud, Olivier

Gladwell, Malcolm

Glazer, Avi

Glazer, Joel: AF retires

Manchester Utd FC takeover

Glazer, Malcolm

goalkeeping

Golden Boot (2013)

Gouw, Raimond van der

Gradi, Dario

Graham, George

Grant, Avram

Grant, John

Gregg, Harry

Greig, John

Guardiola, Pep

Halberstam, David

Halsey, Mark

Hamann, Dietmar

Hannover ’96

Hansen, Alan

Hargreaves, Owen

and England team

2007–08 UEFA Champions League

Harmony Row Youth Club

Harper, Joe

Harrison, Eric

Hazard, Eden

Hazard, Oscar

Heinze, Gabriel

Helsingborgs IF

Henderson, Jordan

Hendry, Tommy

Henry, John

Henry, Thierry

Herbert, Harry

Hernández, Javier ‘Chicharito’

2010–11 UEFA Champions League

2012–13 season

Highclere Syndicate

Hillsborough tragedy

Hodgkinson, Alan

Hodgson, Roy

Hogg, Graeme

Holland, Steve

Houllier, Gérard

Howard, Tim

Hyypiä, Sami

Iceland

Ince, Paul

Iniesta, Andrés

Inter Milan

Irwin, Denis

Ivanović, Branislav

Jarvie, Drew

Johnsen, Ronny

Johnson, Seth

Johnstone, Jimmy

Jol, Martin

Jones, Mike

Jones, Phil

signs to Manchester Utd FC

2011 Community Shield

2011–12 UEFA Champions League

Jones, Vinnie

Jong, Nigel de

Joorabchian, Kia

Juventus

Kagawa, Shinji

Keane, Roy

at Manchester Utd FC

fall-out with Verón

injuries

joins Celtic FC

leaves Manchester Utd FC

as manager

and Mick McCarthy

MUTV interview

relationship with AF

relationship with team-mates

suspensions

as TV critic

2003–04 UEFA Champions League

Keegan, Kevin

Kennedy, John F

Kennedy, Michael

Kenwright, Bill

Kenyon, Peter

leaves Manchester Utd FC

signs Ronaldo

Kershaw, Les

Kick It Out

Kidd, Brian

Kinnock, Neil

Kléberson

joins Manchester Utd FC

Knox, Archie

Kompany, Vincent

Kuyt, Dirk

LA Galaxy

Labour Party

Laffin, Lyn

Lambert, Paul

Lampard, Frank

Larsson, Henrik

Law, Denis

Law, Di

Lawlor, Jim

Lawrence, Lennie

Lawrenson, Mark

Lee, Paddy

Leeds United FC

Levy, Daniel

Lewandowski, Robert

Lindegaard, Anders

Lineker, Gary

Linse, Rodger

Little, Brian

Liverpool FC