Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

‘Nuisance, that’s what you are,’ he would answer.

The other players would sit there listening to my interventions and assume I was about to be killed for insubordination. But it was just that I could always make a decision. I don’t know where it comes from, but I know that as a boy I was an organiser, an instructor, a picker of teams. My father was an ordinary working man, very intelligent, but not a leader of any description, so I was not copying a parental example.

On the other hand there is a part of me, I know, that is solitary, cut off. At 15, playing for Glasgow schoolboys, I came home after scoring against Edinburgh schoolboys – the greatest day of my life – to be told by my father that a big club wanted to talk to me. My response surprised us both: ‘I just want to go out. I want to go to the pictures.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said.

I wanted to separate myself. I don’t know why. To this day I don’t know why I did that. I had to be on my own. My father had been so proud and delighted and my mother was dancing, saying, ‘It’s so great, son.’ My gran was going off her head. Scoring against Edinburgh schoolboys was a big deal. Yet I had to escape into my own wee vacuum, you know?

From there to here is such a vast distance. When I started at Manchester United in 1986, Willie McFaul was the manager of Newcastle United. Manchester City had Jimmy Frizzell and George Graham was in charge at Arsenal. I like George: good man, great friend. When I was having problems with Martin Edwards over my contract, Sir Roland Smith was the chairman of the Plc. The Plc could cause complications at times. You would have to wait for issues to be addressed. One day Sir Roland suggested that Martin, Maurice Watkins, the club solicitor, and I should go over to the Isle of Man to sort out my new deal. George was on double my salary at Arsenal.

‘I’ll give you my contract, if you like,’ George said.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ I said.

So over to the Isle of Man I went, with George’s contract. Martin was a good chairman for me. He was strong. The problem was, he thought every penny was his. He paid you what he wanted to pay you. Not just me – everyone.

When I showed him George’s contract, he wouldn’t believe it. ‘Phone David Dein,’ I suggested. So he did, and David Dein, the Arsenal chairman, denied that George was being paid the sum on the contract. It was a farce. George had given me his documentation, signed by David Dein. Had it not been for Maurice and Roland Smith I would have left the job that day. I was close to leaving anyway.

There was a moral there, as in all of my 39 years on the front line. You have to stand up for yourself. There is no other way.

three

ON the sofa that night of Christmas Day 2001, I had nodded off while watching television. In the kitchen a mutiny was brewing. The traditional assembly room of our family home was the scene for a discussion that would change each of our lives. The chief rebel came in and kicked my foot to wake me. In the frame of the door I could pick out three figures: all my sons, lined up for maximum solidarity.

‘We’ve just had a meeting,’ Cathy said. ‘We’ve decided. You’re not retiring.’ As I weighed this announcement I felt no urge to resist. ‘One, your health is good. Two, I’m not having you in the house. And three, you’re too young anyway.’ Cathy did all the early talking. But our sons were right behind her. The gang was united. ‘You’re being stupid, Dad,’ the boys told me. ‘Don’t do it. You’ve got a lot to offer. You can build a new team at Manchester United.’ That’ll teach me to nod off for five minutes. It ended with me working for 11 more years.

One of the reasons I had decided to stand down in the first place was in reaction to a remark Martin Edwards had made after the 1999 European Cup final in Barcelona. Martin had been asked whether there would be a role for me after I surrendered the manager’s job and had replied: ‘Well, we don’t want a Matt Busby situation.’ I wasn’t impressed by that answer. The two periods could not be compared. In my era, you needed to factor in the added complications brought on by agents, contracts, the mass media. No sensible person would want to be embroiled in those activities once he had finished serving his time as manager. There was not the slimmest chance I would want to be involved in the games themselves or the complexities of the football trade.

What else made me intend to retire in the first place? There was always a sense after that magical night in Barcelona that I had reached the pinnacle. Previously my teams had fallen short in the European Cup and I had always chased that end of the rainbow. Once you’ve achieved your life’s ambition, you ask yourself whether you can achieve such a high again. When Martin Edwards made his remark about avoiding the Matt Busby syndrome, my first thought was ‘Nonsense’. My second was: ‘Sixty is a good age to walk away.’

So three factors wormed away in my mind: the disappointment of Martin raising the Matt Busby spectre, the imponderable of whether I could win a second European Cup, and that number, 60, which assumed a haunting quality. I had been a manager from 32 years of age.

Reaching 60 can have a profound effect. You think you’re entering another room. At 50, a pivotal moment has arrived. Half a century. But you don’t feel 50. At 60, you say: ‘Christ, I feel 60. I’m 60!’ You come through that. You realise it’s a notional change, a numerical alteration. I don’t feel that way now about age. But back then, 60 was a psychological barrier in my head. It was an obstacle to me feeling young. It changed my sense of my own fitness, my health. Winning the European Cup enabled me to feel I had completed the set of dreams and could now step away fulfilled. That was the catalyst in my thinking. But when I saw Martin casting me as an annoying ghost on the shoulder of the new manager, I muttered to myself, ‘What a joke.’

It was a relief to me, of course, to perform a full U-turn, but I still had to argue the practicalities with Cathy and the boys.

‘I don’t think I can reverse it. I’ve told the club.’

Cathy said: ‘Well, don’t you think they should show you some respect in terms of allowing you to change your mind?’

‘They may have given it to someone by now,’ I said.

‘But with the job you’ve done – don’t you think they should give you the chance to go back on it?’ she persisted.

The next day I phoned Maurice Watkins who laughed when I told him about my U-turn. The head-hunters were due to meet a candidate to succeed me the following week. Sven-Göran Eriksson was to be the new United manager, I believe. That was my interpretation, anyway, though Maurice never confirmed it. ‘Why Eriksson?’ I asked him, later.

‘You may be wrong, you may be right,’ Maurice said.

I remember asking Paul Scholes one day: ‘Scholesy, what’s Eriksson got?’ but Scholesy could shed no light. Maurice’s next move was to make contact with Roland Smith, the then chairman of the Plc, whose response to me when we spoke was: ‘I told you. Didn’t I tell you how stupid you were? We need to sit down to discuss this.’

Roland was one of those wise old birds. He had lived a rich life, a complete life. All kinds of interesting experiences had passed his way and he could unfurl a marvellous array of stories. Roland told us a tale of Margaret Thatcher being at a dinner with the Queen. Her Majesty wanted the royal plane to be refurbished. Roland came rolling along and noticed the two of them with their backs to one another.