I believe, however, as all the talk – and the headlines – swirled around the question of who would succeed Ron Atkinson, that my role on the board as an ex-player, as someone who knew the importance of a manager who could truly lead a squad of players, was a significant factor in the argument.
Soon enough – and despite the fact that some of his early signings were not greeted as great successes, and that we had to wait until his fifth season to land a major trophy – I was convinced there would be no regrets. Alex Ferguson showed something you can’t teach and can’t learn. It is something you are born with, some determination that is established not in a football stadium but in the womb. He assumed a right to victory in every match – and if it didn’t happen, you knew his resolve would not fade but redouble.
For me, and more of my colleagues in the boardroom than a lot of reports suggested, there was never any question of firing the manager before the great logjam of frustration was swept away. However, there was a strong belief within football that the Ferguson regime was in danger of going down at the turn into 1990; indeed, the day of his fall was nominated with great certainty in many news papers. It was supposed to be the inevitable consequence if we were defeated in the third round of the FA Cup at Nottingham Forest. I would have fought any move to dismiss the manager with all the resources of argument I had, but my sense, anyway, was that Alex Ferguson’s D-Day beside the River Trent was largely a creation of the media. It all became increasingly academic, however, when Mark Robins scored the goal that sent us into the fourth round – and a series of away ties – before the final replay victory over Crystal Palace.
The rest, stretching all the way to the spring of 2007 when Alex Ferguson delivered his ninth Premiership title, has been an infrequently interrupted passage of glory – a series of triumphs for both the will and the energy of the most passionately committed football man I have known.
Now, looking back, the impression may be of a seamless process, a series of decisions which, like building blocks, created an edifice of success which became inevitable. But of course each change of direction, each commitment to a new player or groups of them, required nerve and judgement, and the instinct of someone who could never be content with any kind of fleeting success.
From my position on the board, I watched fascinated – and supported as well as I could – the work of a man who was developing and underpinning everything that I had strived for, and believed in, in my days as a Manchester United player.
Sometimes we played a little golf together and Alex would talk about an idea he had, a possible move into the transfer market perhaps, but he did it gently; it was as though he was probing to see what kind of reaction he would get in the boardroom whenever he tabled a new plan. It may be something of a surprise to those who haven’t worked with him closely, but the Ferguson style of combativeness vanishes when he is away from the field of action. In more than twenty years of working alongside him, and attending board meetings, I have never heard a raised voice or an angry gesture. But then, on the other hand, I have never seen such decisiveness at the helm of a great football club.
Of course the outline of the Ferguson years is imprinted in the awareness of everyone who takes an interest in football, but even now, and as someone who saw the trends developing and the style of leadership unfolding from close up, I find the scale of the achievement quite stunning.
Consider the extraordinary milestones: the breaking up of the championship-winning team of Paul Ince and Mark Hughes, the cornerstone signings of Roy Keane, Eric Cantona and Peter Schmeichel, the explosion of youth represented by a nineties version of the Busby Babes, the titles, the Doubles, the climactic Champions League victory that brought a unique treble, the decision to sell David Beckham to Real Madrid, the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney and the regaining of the title from Chelsea … all of it forms an amazing body of work which has taken United into a dimension which no one could have dreamed of when we shuddered, shook our heads and contemplated the challenge that faced us in the ashes of Munich.
For so many years I was at the heart of Manchester United’s effort to maintain its place in football – and in all the triumphs and the disappointments, and the tragedy, there was always one great hope: the return to greatness of my beloved club. To my mind, it has been my last and great privilege in football to have been given a ringside view of the Ferguson years when that great hope became a reality.
Sometimes I sit in the great stadium and marvel all over again at the progress that has been made. I recall the time when a bus-load of fans from the other side of Rochdale arrived one close-season morning to see the first Old Trafford floodlights going up, explaining that they couldn’t stay away any longer, and I relate that innocent time to the more recent one when, after meeting the new owners of Manchester United, the Glazer family, I walked across the same stretch of car park to be confronted by supporters in an entirely different frame of mind. They believed that their club had been sold beneath them, that the links with the old United had been snapped. I understood their concerns, but I also pointed out that the world had changed along with football. I said the moment the club turned itself into a plc, it had exposed itself to such possibilities of foreign ownership.
I was, frankly, a little ambushed by the occasion. I had left the boardroom with the Glazer sons, Joel and Avram, and other board members and club officials, imagining we were all leaving the ground at the same time, but when I stepped out of the stadium I saw the fans – and that I was all alone. What could I say? Only that as someone who cared very much for Manchester United, I had been assured that the club would move forward along the old way: getting the best players, and pursuing every ambition. I believed Alex Ferguson would be able to continue as before – that he would have the necessary budget to maintain United’s position, and also the freedom of action and authority that should naturally be given to one of the most successful managers in the history of the game. The Glazer operation had been depicted as an asset-stripping enterprise, but the fact was that they were in control, quite legally, and it was also true that in Florida their Tampa Bay NFL team had won a Super Bowl. They knew how big-money sport worked.
There was one overwhelming point I wanted to make to these fervent supporters of Manchester United. It was that I shared their feelings for the club – to the point where, if something was done in the boardroom that was fundamentally wrong, and I truly thought went against the long-term interests of United, I would walk away. In the meantime, I would work as hard as I could to maintain the success of the club. I would maintain my support of Alex Ferguson, the man who I still believed was capable of producing the drive and the vision that had turned a club which was worth barely £13 million in the late eighties into one whose value at one point was touching a billion, and which remains one of the most desirable properties in all of professional sport.
Every great football man has a defining moment; the Old Man had his in Wembley in 1968, Alex Ferguson’s came in the Nou Camp in 1999. In the end United won their second European Cup – against Bayern Munich – because, even without Roy Keane and Paul Scholes, their appetite and their professional honesty were overwhelming. They were qualities built into the team down the years, and when the winning goals of Teddy Sheringham and Ole Solskjaer went in after the colours of Bayern had been attached to the trophy, and Alex Ferguson ran along the touchline with tears in his eyes and his arms outstretched, you could see the source of the effort which would never be forgotten by anyone who saw it.
It was the kind of performance which can only come from a team when everything is right about their approach, when the dressing room is free of any disharmony, and when each player knows precisely what is expected of him. Down the years this has been the Ferguson bedrock. When the manager decided that for one reason or another players who had previously performed great service – stars like Ruud van Nistelrooy and, most wrenchingly of all, I’m sure, Roy Keane – were no longer able to help in the shaping of team
spirit and motivation, the hard decision was invariably made.
Alex Ferguson could have walked away from Old Trafford at any point after delivering the treble of league, FA Cup and Champions League on that astonishing night in Barcelona and been given all the acclaim and the honour that went to the Old Man when he decided that he had done enough in the game. However, when he announced that he was doing so four years ago, I was shocked. It seemed such a waste of a unique competitive intensity which was still not staunched in any way. But then what could I say? If ever a football manager had earned the right to go in what he considered his own good time, it was surely this one. He announced that he had talked it over with his wife Kath and his sons and had decided it was time to sip his vintage wine, pursue his racing interests, and step back from the football life in which he had immersed himself so passionately for so long.
Was it really time to begin the search for the right man to pick up the baton? No, I didn’t really think so. Certainly there was no shortage of impressive candidates, stretching from Martin O’Neill in Glasgow to such Italian coaching giants as Ferguson’s friend Marcello Lippi – but who knew more about the needs of the club, and who was more capable of meeting them, than the man who had already done so quite brilliantly and, it seemed to me, was still at the peak of his powers?
It was a conviction I nursed and was determined to express at some time when I felt he might be most receptive to my arguments; perhaps when it had truly dawned on him that the great adventure of his life could be coming to a close.
Finally, when his departure as manager was accepted as a formality, with the speculation on his successor raging up to ever new levels, I felt it was getting close to the time when the case against his abdication had to be made with some force.
It was thus something of a relief when we met in the Old Trafford lift one morning and he said, ‘I’ve had a chat with Kath and I’ve decided I’m staying on …’
I smiled, contentedly, and said, ‘Surprise, surprise …’
26
THE VERY BEST OF MANCHESTER UNITED
IN ANY GREAT tide of football achievement there is always going to be something that most warms the heart of an old player, something that stands on its own in his affection and respect, and of course it is invariably another player. He may not have one overwhelming skill, he may not be without flaw, but there is something in him that relights the fire that once burned so strongly inside yourself. He is a player who reminds you what it was about football that first filled you with so much passion. He is a player whose love of the game, and his commitment to it, glows in every stride he makes out on the field. He has a purity about his game, an understanding of it and a talent for it, which you wish everyone could share. He makes you feel young again – and aching to play as you once were able to do, with the freedom that comes with trust in your body and the belief that if you put enough into it you can achieve anything.
As I approach my seventieth birthday, I have no hesitation in putting a name to such an embodiment of all that I believe is best about football: Paul Scholes.
In these pages I have had the chance to discuss so many great players who have worn the shirt of Manchester United: players I worshipped, then lost with my youth at Munich; players like Denis Law and George Best who I enjoyed so much as team-mates in my maturity; and now, finally, players that I have watched closely in every surge of the Ferguson era. Assessing and grading them all precisely is a difficult, maybe impossible job, but if I am honest I have to admit that in so many ways Scholes is my favourite.
I know that Jimmy Murphy would have loved him. No doubt, he would have tried to improve his tackling – which is enthusiastic enough, but technically is not much better than was my own excuse for the art – but he would have embraced him for all his heart, and for his innate knowledge of how to shape a game from midfield.
I love both his nous and his conviction that he will find a way to win, to make the killer pass or produce the decisive volley with such instant authority and nerve. When a game reaches a vital phase, these qualities seem to come out of his every pore. Long ago he became part of United history, but in the season of 2006–07, when United won their first title in four years, when he came back from career-threatening eye problems, it was as though he became the very heart of Old Trafford.
The more I watched him, the more I thought, ‘This lad is Manchester United through and through …’ He’s always on the ball, always turning on goal, always looking to bring other people into the action, and if he loses possession you have to think he must be ill.
I first saw him play in a youth match at Sunderland. He had touched the ball only a few times before I realised the hairs on my neck were standing up. I concluded, ‘It doesn’t matter how big he is, he has the ability, he has the vision.’ Most impressively of all, he had the talent to pass the ball through the eye of a needle, the most vital of assets when you are trying to break down a packed defence. In his maturity, Scholes does it so well that he reminds me of the player who I always thought had mastered the art more completely than anyone I had seen: Michel Platini of France.
Paul is so good now that it is always the greatest disappointment for me when I do not see his name on the team-sheet. His absence makes me despondent as I wonder, ‘Who is going to do the clever stuff, the short, acute passing that cuts open a defence?’ Young stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney have displayed brilliant natural talent in recent seasons, of course, but the key to a great career is a deepening understanding of your own skills, and a consistent ability to produce them at times of maximum pressure. In this, Cristiano and Wayne have the perfect example in Paul Scholes.
His emergence, along with David Beckham, the Neville brothers and Nicky Butt was the most spectacular reward for Ferguson’s immediate attention to the scouting department when he first came down from Scotland. He saw what I had seen in that reserve match at Bramall Lane, Sheffield; there had been no planting, so how could we hope for a harvest?
Ryan Giggs, prised away from Manchester City, came on a year earlier than the rest of the pack. I will never forget the first time I saw him. Alex had invited me to the training ground to watch the summer trialists and, when I arrived, I couldn’t see the manager. ‘Oh, he’s down on pitch eleven, watching some kid he really likes the look of,’ I was told. As I walked down, I saw from a distance something quite extraordinary. A small, slim, dark-haired boy went on an irresistible run, then provoked a brilliant save from the goalkeeper. When I got to the touchline I asked Ferguson, ‘Who is that little lad?’ His eyes narrowed and then glinted with a small smile. ‘His name is Ryan Wilson – and we signed him this morning.’
Because of family troubles, Ryan Wilson changed his name to Ryan Giggs – but, down the years, nothing else has changed beyond the inevitable loss of a little pace. He is still as fresh and as ambitious to play outstanding football as he was on that summer morning when he made me catch my breath.
The fact that Alex Ferguson was able to show such a hand of youth, one which so quickly won a title under the influence of the talisman Eric Cantona, will maybe prove in the long run to be his supreme achievement. At a time when any other club had every reason to congratulate itself if it brought through an outstanding young player once every two years, here was an explosion. Gary Neville was smart and versatile, his brother Phil a tremendous force wherever you played him, and if Nicky Butt suffered at times from a loss of concentration in his passing, he was tough and aggressive, a fact which he announced to me quite dramatically in a game at Chelsea. On one run he was hit with a series of crunching tackles, but he never gave an inch and he kept hold of the ball.
And then there was David Beckham. When he came to my soccer school, the first thing I thought about him was that I had probably never seen a lad who wanted to be a footballer quite so much. He just couldn’t get enough of the ball, and in this he reminded me of myself at his age. He was small and polite and I thought he had special skill – though when I expresse
d this opinion to one of the staff coaches, who also scouted for a First Division club, he said, ‘I don’t rate him. He’s not big enough, not strong enough.’
I didn’t agree, but I could see the point. Though he had good pace, and could always turn a game with a free kick or a spectacular shot on goal, he needed to develop his passing game because it was clear he lacked the capacity of a conventional winger to get by a full back. Really, it was the only flaw in his game, but he compensated marvellously. He learned ways of controlling the ball that were quite exceptional, and as he progressed through the United youth team the range of his talent became increasingly obvious.
His graduation to the first team was natural – and almost immediately he made his splash. His goal against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park announced ambition without limits. When he saw the goalkeeper off his line, he struck the ball home so beautifully, from such a distance, there was no doubt that here was more than a gifted young footballer. He announced an extraordinary presence, and it was something that, I noticed, struck Cantona powerfully. When the Frenchman offered his congratulations, the expression on his face was quite eloquent. It said, ‘I wouldn’t have minded doing something like that myself.’
David Beckham could do everything in a game, it seemed, except dribble and tackle and be content with the idea of being just another leading footballer. On the field he had demonstrated an ambition to be spectacular – when he scored that goal at Selhurst Park, you had to wonder, ‘Where did he get the nerve to try that?’ – and off the pitch he was obviously carrying some of the same feeling.
His eventual break with Manchester United was about one basic point of difference between him and Alex Ferguson. Beckham thought that a celebrity lifestyle, being drawn increasingly into the showbiz world of his wife Victoria, was compatible with the regime of a professional footballer. His manager did not.
My Manchester United Years: The Autobiography Page 31
