Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

‘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.