Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

YOU’RE not the same on the battlefield as you are in church. Away from the game, Arsène Wenger is a cool customer. He’s good company and has a broad spread of conversational topics. We can talk about wine and other things in life. In UEFA gatherings he made it his business to help other managers. He is a conscientious member of our trade. But when it comes to his team – to match-day – he is a completely different animal.

I’ve always felt I could understand Arsène. I could identify with the sharp change in him when that whistle blew. There was a bit of that in me too. If we shared one characteristic it was an absolute hatred of losing. When I lost to Raith Rovers early in my career at St Mirren (they were booting lumps out of us), I refused to shake hands with Bertie Paton, the Raith Rovers manager, who was my great mate and accomplice on the pitch at Dunfermline. Well, Bertie ran after me to remonstrate. Oh, aye. Sometimes you need a wee lesson that you’re wrong, and I was wrong that day. It was a small reminder that life is bigger than the game. When you behave that way, it’s petty and lacks dignity.

By the end, Arsène and I were on very friendly terms. We had survived together and respected each other’s efforts to play good football. But we had conflicts down the years. The opening shot was him complaining about me complaining about the fixture list. A complaint about a complaint. So I fired back with a crafted put-down: ‘He’s just arrived from Japan, what does he know about it?’ Which was true.

For the next two years, it was Arsène complaining about congestion in our fixture list. A foreign coach who comes in and thinks he can play 55 games a season in our League without adjusting is kidding himself. It’s a gruelling, energy-sapping League. That’s why, in the modern game, you have to change the team to spread the load. Arsène learned to adapt to that culture. He overcame the early shock of playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday.

The first time his Arsenal side played us at Old Trafford, he came into my office. Our relationship was fine at first. The problems started when he lost a game with one of his good Arsenal sides. He found it hard to accept fault in his team and looked to blame the opponent. He would often do it by concentrating on physical challenges. It was hard for him to accept that opponents might adopt a robust approach against his men. His interpretation of physical challenges extended sometimes to the very act of tackling. He would fix in his mind the idea that no one should actually be tackling his boys.

I watched his best Arsenal teams, though, and was thrilled. I always liked watching Arsène’s sides. Playing against them presented special challenges that I burned many hours thinking about. I always felt I had to examine everything Arsenal did because they presented so many threats across the park. Chelsea presented a different set of problems. There we would be facing experienced players, who knew every trick in the book. Arsenal, on the other hand, played the right way.

They had one of the worst disciplinary records in football in Arsène’s early years, but you could never say they were dirty players or a dirty team. Steve Bould and Tony Adams would kick the life out of you – everyone knew that. They would come through the back of you all the time. But in essence, his teams were never filthy. Volatile and macho would be a more accurate term. They were a combative bunch. Bould and Adams, I’ve mentioned. Then they bought Patrick Vieira, a big competitor who could mix it, get about people. And Nigel Winterburn was a bit of a nark; always chipping away. Ian Wright, their leading striker in those early days, also had a nasty streak.

In 2010, Arsène delivered a surprising criticism of Paul Scholes, telling reporters he had a ‘dark side’. There was no reason for him to pronounce on one of my players. We were not due to play Arsenal that week, and there had been no friction between us. At that time Paul Scholes had won ten Premier League titles and a European Cup, and there was Arsène discussing his ‘dark side’. Baffling.

Players surprise you. They can surprise you in the level of performance they rise to and the levels to which they sink. Arsène struggled to accept that as a contributing factor in a defeat. Football brings out the best and the worst in people because the emotional stakes are so high. In a high-stakes game, a player can lose his nerve for a minute and he can lose his temper too. And you’re left regretting it. Arsenal had a lot of those moments, but Arsène struggled to believe that internal failings and weaknesses can sometimes cause you to lose. The explanation is sometimes within.

I’m not saying managers see everything, but we see most things, so Arsène’s stock defence after a game of, ‘I didn’t see it’ was not one I used. My preferred line was: ‘I’ll need to look at it again.’ It was the same basic message, but this one bought you time. By the next day, or soon after, it’s likely to be old news. Something else will have happened in the great churn of events to move the attention away from you.

I was sent off eight times in my career – and the last one was the most stupid, because I was the manager. An opponent had been kicking lumps out of one of our players and I said to my right-hand man Davie Provan, ‘I’m going to go on and do that guy.’ Davie said, ‘Don’t be so stupid, sit still.’

‘If he takes our boy Torrance on again, I’m on.’ And, of course, he did. ‘That’s it,’ I said, ‘I’m on.’

Two minutes later I was back off again.

In the dressing room I said: ‘If. I. Ever. Hear. A. Word. Of this getting out, you’re all dead.’ I thought the referee’s back was turned when I whacked him. He was 6 feet 3 inches, an army player.

My first clash with an Arsenal manager was with George Graham. I watched the denouement to the 1989 title race upstairs in my bedroom and told Cathy, ‘No calls, don’t put anyone through.’ When Michael Thomas scored the goal against Liverpool that won Arsenal the title, I went berserk. Two years later, Arsenal won it again, beating us 3–1 in the year we won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. I stayed with George after our Highbury game one year. He has this fantastic collection of malt whiskies. ‘Do you want one? he asked. ‘I don’t drink whisky,’ I said. So George opened a bottle of wine.

‘Which of those malts do you open for guests?’ I wondered.

‘None of them. Nobody gets a malt,’ he said. ‘I’ve got blended Bell’s here.’

‘Typical Scot,’ I said.

George laughed. ‘This is my pension.’

Our first meeting at Old Trafford was a war. Afterwards, George was persuaded by a mutual friend to come up to my office. My word, it was hard playing against his Arsenal teams at that time. When Arsène took over after Bruce Rioch’s brief spell, I didn’t know much about him.

One day I asked Eric Cantona: ‘What is Wenger like?’ Eric said: ‘I think he’s overdefensive.’ ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I thought. And the way he started at Arsenal was with five at the back. But when you see his teams now, you can’t argue for a second that his teams are defensive. Eric’s critique still makes me smile.

At the end of the 1990s, and for the first part of the new millennium, Arsenal were our challengers. There was no one else on the horizon. Liverpool and Newcastle had brief spells of prominence. Blackburn had their title-winning year. But if you look at our history prior to José Mourinho’s arrival at Chelsea, there was no consistent threat to our dominance outside of Arsenal. Chelsea were a good Cup team, but they could never quite scale the peak of the Premier League.

When Blackburn came with an assault we knew it was unlikely to last because there was no history to sustain an achievement of that magnitude. Their League title win was great for football and for Jack Walker, the benefactor who brought such fine players to the club, Alan Shearer especially. That was a tremendous time for Blackburn. Experience tells you, though, only to worry about the challengers who have a tradition of bidding for the big prizes. When Arsenal and United were locked together for so long, you knew the Gunners were sustained by history and a strong identity.