Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

As for blaming the young players? He wouldn’t have aimed that accusation at Wayne Rooney, who wouldn’t have stood for it. The senior players would sort him out. Fletcher and O’Shea are the two he picked on, and they were booed as a result by our fans when we played Lille in Paris. His two spells in management proved one thing: he needs money. He spent at Sunderland and failed. He spent a lot at Ipswich and came up short.

He gave an interview to David Walsh of the Sunday Times saying I only looked after myself, and used the John Magnier/Rock of Gibraltar situation as an example. Unbelievable. That day in my office, when we clashed, I saw the anger in him. His eyes blackened. He went on about John Magnier that day as well. I never understood his obsession with the Rock of Gibraltar affair.

In the arrangement we reached on that momentous Friday, it was agreed that no one would ever talk about our fall-out. I would have honoured that agreement, but for the fact that Roy breached it first. When Roy was at Sunderland he accused United of insulting him and lying to him in the build-up to his departure. The club considered legal action against him. Roy said he would not retract the accusation. My feeling was that he was looking for a day in court to impress the fans. He was still a hero to them, after all. So my advice to David Gill was to pull the legal action. I feel we preserved our dignity.

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THE football-watching public probably saw me as an obsessive who seldom looked beyond Manchester United for entertainment. But as the demands of the job intensified, I found refuge in numerous interests and hobbies that kept my mind stretched, my book shelves packed and my cellar stocked with good wines.

Apart from my love of horse racing, this other life stayed hidden from view. It was the world I returned to when the day had run its course at Carrington, our training ground, or when the match had been played, commented upon and filed away. Over the final ten years or so, I eased myself into a range of other interests that helped me manage United more effectively. I worked just as hard but used the muscles of the mind in a more varied way. Home was a base for all my fascinations, from biographies of the dictators to documents on the John F. Kennedy assassination and files on my wine collection.

My political convictions have remained largely unchanged from my time as a shop steward in the shipyards of Govan. People’s opinions change over time with success and wealth, but in my youth I acquired not so much a range of ideological views as a way of seeing life; a set of values.

I’ve never been active in the sense of becoming a Labour Party animal who attended every dinner and popped up in every election campaign. But I always supported local Labour MPs. Cathy would say that the minute you extend yourself into politics, they will want you every time. An expectation will develop that you’re always ready and willing to give your time. Being a believer in the Labour Party and socialist principles is one thing, but becoming an active member was another. I just didn’t have the time as Man United manager to accommodate those demands. I would put my cross on the ballot paper and support them in a visual way. You wouldn’t see me sitting beside David Cameron, would you? You would see me alongside a Labour MP. That would be my impact.

I’ve always been on the left of the party, which explains my high opinion of Gordon Brown’s work. John Smith’s, too. The late John Smith would have been a fine Labour prime minister. I felt sorry for Neil Kinnock: a good guy with bad luck. I would have loved to see him in Downing Street. He had that fiery nature. I was closer to Brown in principle but accept that Blair’s more populist way was the route to get elected. He was correct in his positioning. Plus, he had charisma to go with it and was popular for a long time until the invasion of Iraq undermined the public’s view of him.

My friendship with Alastair Campbell developed through that great man, veteran Scottish football reporter and confidant of several Labour prime ministers, Jim Rodger. He called and asked me to do a piece with Alastair, who was with the Mirror at the time. Alastair and I got on well and he would send me wee letters and so on. He was a good networker. Then he became Tony’s press secretary and we became good friends through his role in the Labour Party. I had dinner with Alastair, Tony and Cherie in the Midland Hotel in Manchester the week before the 1997 election. I told Tony, ‘If you can keep your government in one room and lock the door you’ll have no problems. The problem with government is that they all fly off on their own, they have their own allies, their own journalistic contacts. Controlling the cabinet is going to be the hard part.’

Tony was receptive to that message. In any position of power there is fragility. If you’re leading the country there is vast responsibility and a certain loneliness that I could relate to. I would sit in my office in the afternoon, with my work complete, wanting company. There is a vacuum attached to the job that people don’t want to break into. Tony was a young man going into that position.

In his memoirs he wrote that he had asked my opinion on sacking Gordon Brown when he was prime minister and Gordon was next door in No. 11. My recollection is that Tony wasn’t specific about Gordon. His question was about superstars and how I dealt with them. My answer was: ‘The most important thing in my job is control. The minute they threaten your control, you have to get rid of them.’ He did say he was having problems with Gordon but didn’t ask me specifically what I thought he should do. I kept my advice general because I didn’t want to get into personality issues.

I’ve always found that you have to take the hard road all the time, whether it’s popular or not. If you have a worry about one of your staff, that tells you straight away there is a problem. It never made sense to me to go to bed every night worrying when you could do something to cut the problem away.

Power is useful if you want to use it, but I don’t think it resonates with footballers, who are mostly working-class men. But control was my aim. I could use my power if I wished, and I did, but when you reach the station I attained at United, power came with it naturally. The big decisions you make in those jobs are usually seen by outsiders as exercises in power, when control is really what it’s about.

Labour politics and the great vineyards aside, America was the source of my main intellectual interests. JFK, the Civil War, Vince Lombardi and the great American ball games: these were among my escapes from the pressures of football. New York was my entry point to American culture. We bought an apartment there, which all the family used, and Manhattan became the ideal venue for short breaks when the international calendar took the players away from Carrington.

The States always intrigued and inspired me. I fed off America’s energy and vastness, its variety. My first trip there was in 1983, when Aberdeen won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. I took the family to Florida, for a routine kind of holiday. By then, though, America and its history had already entered my blood. The killing of John Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 left its mark on me from the day I heard the news. Over time I developed a forensic interest in how he was killed, by whom, and why.

I remember the day that shook the world. It was a Friday night and I was shaving in the mirror, at the bathroom sink, before going to the dancing with my mates. My dad, who was a bit deaf, called out: ‘Is that right that John Kennedy has been shot?’