His attitude these days seems to be that it is no longer worth the hassle. The fanzines have become increasingly personal and he had a bad experience when he attended his last IMUSA meeting. Apparently he made a throwaway remark, responding to a question about Rooney’s temperament, about the player’s Liverpool origins, saying that ‘They’ve all got chips on their shoulder.’ Despite an unwritten rule that whatever he said should remain private, the quote turned up in the Daily Mirror and the headlines caused a lot of embarrassment.
His last appearance at the club’s AGM, in 2002, was another chastening experience. Ferguson had agreed to a question-and-answer session and the first shareholder to raise his arm told him he had stayed on too long: ‘I’ve got the greatest respect for you and I will forever be indebted for what you have done at this club, but I wish you had retired when you said you would. You’re wearing Rock of Gibraltar’s blinkers and I’ve got news for you – you need to go back to the stable, have a clear-out and start with the biggest carthorse of them all, Juan Sebastian Veron.’
Ferguson earned a smattering of sympathetic applause when he said he would ‘not respond to that idiot’, but the grilling was not over. The next shareholder to ask a question accused him of allowing Roy Keane to become ‘bigger than the club’. Rio Ferdinand was described as ‘an average defender who cost £30 million’. United were fifth in the league at the time and Ferguson was accused of taking the club backwards.
Some supporters are never happy, of course. United won the league that year by five points, with Veron playing a bigger part than he was ever given credit for. This season, though, with the bulk of the league fixtures completed, Chelsea are so far in front that the chasing group comprises nineteen stragglers. United managed only three goals in the six games that masqueraded as their Champions League challenge and they have just been held to a scoreless draw in the FA Cup against a club 104 places below them in the ladder of English football. Set against that, the supporters are entitled to be sceptical when Ferguson says winning the Carling Cup would represent a successful season.
MICE
17.2.06
Old Trafford has mice, a whole family of them. The players have seen them running around on the pitch. Then the photographers spotted them scurrying about in the centre circle. After the newspapers had had some fun with the pictures, the Sun sent someone to ask Ferguson if the club had a problem.
‘Mice?’ he said, heaving with huge cackles. ‘I don’t know about mice, but we’ve got a bloody big problem with rats.’ He pointed at the packed pressroom. ‘And you walked straight into that one, son …’
Boom, boom.
There are signs that he might be loosening up. There has been a lot more laughter recently, a lot less aggro. The period from August to December was pretty unpleasant but he has reined in his temper now that his press conferences go out, uncut, on television and radio. He can’t swear. Not when it would be on Sky Sports within an hour. He can’t say anything that might offend the PC brigade. He has to think carefully about everything he says, has to be on his best behaviour.
Today, though, he gives Adam Leventhal, one of Sky Sports’ reporters, a blast for pestering him with questions about finance. Real Madrid have overtaken United as the club with the highest turnover in the world and Leventhal, who is at his first United press conference, is asking question after question about revenue and shirt sales.
Ferguson hates being bogged down with this kind of stuff. ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking of,’ he says. ‘Why are you coming to a football press conference and asking all these bloody business questions? Talk to David Gill if you want to know about facts and figures. But not me, OK? These other guys’ – he points at us – ‘are proper sports journalists, football fans, you understand? So let them ask about football for a change and let them get on with their jobs. Because if you’re after some kind of rare bloody interview, you’re not getting it here.’
For a few moments it looks as though he has forgotten he is being filmed. But he quickly regains his composure and he is fine for the rest of the press conference, full of good humour, smiling warmly and generally being jovial and frivolous.
Towards the end, he even starts an impromptu quiz to test our football knowledge. ‘Come on then,’ he says, picking out Tim Rich of the Daily Telegraph, ‘name the last team from outside the top division to reach an FA Cup final?’
‘Millwall, 2004,’ Rich replies instinctively.
‘Before that?’
‘Sunderland, 1992.’
‘And before that?’
‘West Ham, 1980.’
‘And before that?’
Rich is not only one of the finest writers in Fleet Street but also a human football encyclopaedia. ‘Southampton, 1976 … Fulham, 1975 … Sunderland, 1973 … Do you want me to carry on?’
Ferguson is impressed, nodding appreciatively.
‘You’re OK, son.’
CITY OF CULTURE
18.2.06
Liverpool 1
Manchester United 0
FA Cup fifth round
They despise Manchester United on Merseyside. Hate them with a passion. Yet strangely Ferguson never seems fazed by the hostility. Ask him to list the clubs he truly dislikes and he will say it is at Leeds, not Liverpool, that he actually feels the atmosphere is dangerous. At Anfield, he says, it is usually ‘good-natured stuff, never any problem’. He has a certain respect for Liverpool and the way they conduct themselves. He likes the way their crowd appreciate opposition teams that play good football and he laughs about the time he went to one match at Anfield as a spectator. ‘You Manc bastard, come to see the champions?’ was the greeting as he parked his car.
Leeds, he says, are different, because ‘They give us the impression that lynching would be too good for us.’ He tells a story of Eric Harrison, then his youth coach, being punched and spat at during a crowd invasion at Elland Road one year, and hot tea and other drinks being thrown over United’s directors, including Sir Bobby Charlton and his wife, Norma.
Another time, Ferguson was caught at traffic lights outside the ground. ‘This bunch of supporters, skinheads, twenty or thirty of them, they see me and go “Ferguson!” and start running across the road. The lights are still red. I’m almost shitting myself. They’re getting nearer, then the light goes to amber and’ – impersonation of a tyre-squeal – ‘I’m away.’
It is doubtful, though, whether even Leeds can replicate the hatred that is unleashed at Anfield today. Relations between Mancunians and Liverpudlians have never been very good but, as regards football, they have taken a sudden turn for the worse over recent years. There is a violent, almost evil, atmosphere. Objects are thrown on to the pitch – a couple of coins at Steven Gerrard and the same, plus a half-eaten burger, at Gary Neville. There are chants about the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, outstretched arms to mock the Munich plane crash, plus songs about Harold Shipman, George Best, Michael Shields and Emlyn Hughes – anyone, in fact, whose death or crimes can be used to score points. And for the pièce de résistance, Liverpool fans in the top tier of the Anfield Road toss plastic cups of piss and shit on to the United fans below.
Incessant hatred is a fact of football life, particularly where United are concerned. It’s out there, it’s unshakeable and anyone who cares about the club is obliged to live with it. Yet legitimate rivalry is lost today. When Alan Smith breaks his leg, blocking a shot from John Arne Riise, the Liverpool fans celebrate it like a goal. They clench their fists and punch the air, and when it is obvious he is not going to get up they dust off the old Monty Python song.
Always look on the bright side of life
Da-dah, da-dah, da-dah, da-dah
When Ferguson’s eyes flash towards the crowd, they cheerfully wave back. They make ambulance noises – nee-nah, nee-nah, nee-nah – and they change the words of the old Bruce Channel song.
John Arne Riise
I wanna know-oh-oh
How you broke his leg
> By the time the ambulance sets off for hospital, Smith’s ankle jutting out of his sock like a broken cricket stump, the final whistle has gone. Ferguson is a picture of professional misery, leaning against a wall, hands in pockets. He is reflective and solemn, and every bit as depressed as he was after the Benfica game. ‘Alan has broken his leg and dislocated his ankle,’ he says. ‘It’s a bad one, very long term. The ligaments have come right out too. He’s such a brave lad I’m sure he will be back, but it’s one of the worst injuries I’ve ever seen. It sums up our day. It’s eighty-five years since Liverpool last beat us in an FA Cup tie and I wish it had been another eighty-five years. But our first thoughts are with Alan because he’s got a bad one, a really bad one.’
Some days in football are golden, others are plain horrible. There is little doubt about which category this falls into. The FA Cup could have rescued United’s season, but Ferguson cannot even claim they have gone out of the competition with great dignity. United give the ball away with bewildering frequency. They don’t chase back. They lose the 50-50s. There is a strange going-through-the-motions vibe. They are behind from the nineteenth minute and, late on, Van Nistelrooy gives up on an overhit pass he could probably have caught with a bit more effort. Suddenly Ferguson is on the touchline, swearing at the player, throwing his arms up in the air in disgust.
He looks up at the Kop, where a large banner is being unfurled: ‘Look Alex – back on our *****ng perch’. The asterisks are in gold, to signify Liverpool’s five European Cups.
FERGIE AND THE CARLING CUP
24.2.06
Tim Rich, our resident quiz master, was invited to Carrington earlier this week to interview Ferguson for a commissioned piece to be published in the Carling Cup final programme. As he waited outside the players’ lounge, nervously wondering what mood Ferguson would be in, he was disconcerted to hear a Glaswegian voice the other side of the door.
‘Jesus Christ, what time is it? WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS TIM RICH?’
The music from Jaws was playing in Rich’s head as he knocked tentatively on the door. Yet Ferguson greeted him like a long-lost friend, offering him drinks and biscuits and asking him how his journey had been. Ferguson, he says, was ‘absolutely charming’, giving him a brilliant interview, full of good humour – until a little exchange with the photographer as he posed for some promotional pictures.
The photographer was after the classic Ferguson shot: gruff and confrontational, glowering like a pitbull. ‘Can you look just a little bit more moody?’ he was asking. ‘Come on, Sir Alex, a little bit more fierce, perhaps?’
Ferguson’s patience was wearing thin: ‘I’ve been stood here for ten minutes already and you’re asking me to look moody…’
Today is Carling Cup final press day and Ferguson is on great form again – witty, thoughtful with his answers, obviously excited about the prospect of a final at the Millennium Stadium.
‘Everyone’s fit,’ he announces, not even waiting for the first question. ‘We don’t have any injury problems, apart from Alan Smith of course. It’s a big occasion for us. Wigan are bringing a bit of romance to the day because of what they’ve achieved over the years. The whole country will be behind them, and I understand that …’
James Cooper, of Sky Sports, interrupts him in full flow. ‘You must be desperate to win the game for Alan Smith …’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Ferguson splutters. ‘I hadn’t actually finished what I was saying. You’re like a Rottweiler, aren’t you, James? Are you on an early deadline or something?’
‘No,’ Cooper shoots back, ‘but we’ve got only ten minutes – I thought we’d better be quick.’
It is a good press conference. When we question Ferguson about United’s troubles, he is unusually expansive. Yes, he says, it has been a disappointing period for the club, but a manager has to be strong in times of adversity and he has no time for self-pity. He is still convinced that the club are heading in the right direction and that next season they will be able to challenge Chelsea properly. He still has reason to be optimistic when he looks round the dressing room and sees formidable young players such as Ronaldo and Rooney.
‘I’ve been watching the Champions League,’ he says. ‘At least not being involved has taken away the threat of a heart attack. But it does remind me of the level I want us to get back to. I just hope we can come back as a force next year.’
Winning the Carling Cup, he says, is a chance to salvage some pride. ‘There are only four trophies available every year and we set out at the start of each season with the intention of winning one. No matter what that trophy is you’ve got to take that as a successful season, because there are plenty of clubs who won’t win anything. Not world-renowned clubs like Manchester United perhaps, but big, big clubs.’
‘Do you think the fans will agree with that?’ someone asks. ‘When the Carling Cup was known as the Worthington Cup, didn’t the supporters nickname it the Worthless Cup?’
He is taken aback by that question but it doesn’t put him off his flow. He says, again, that the Carling Cup is an important competition. His line has been the same ever since he reached the final: ‘We know it’s not the Champions League but it’s still a competition that means a lot to this club. Winning the Carling Cup would make it a successful season.’
It’s debatable. To the average fan, winning the Carling Cup might not even represent a successful month, bearing in mind what happened at Liverpool in the FA Cup. But Ferguson has turned on the cooling sprinklers recently and there is no point antagonising him when we are in this period of reconciliation. He seems to be over that spell, just before Christmas, when he treated every question as though it were our explicit intention to dig up every little sin or defect. We want to keep it that way.
The only reminder of any underlying friction is that The Times and the Daily Express have been barred from his press conference because he is unhappy with their coverage of the club. The Times has offended him by questioning why United paid £7.2 million for Nemanja Vidic during the January transfer window when, according to the paper’s sources, he had a get-out clause in his contract at Spartak Moscow that meant he could have been signed for £4.8 million. Ferguson has taken exception to the wording of the story.
Similarly, he has taken issue with the Express because of a couple of paragraphs in Matthew Dunn’s diary column. Ferguson has a habit of fiddling with our tape recorders, probably without even realising it, while he answers questions, and he accidentally turned one off during a recent briefing. Dunn made a joke about press conferences being ‘sabotaged’ but his attempt at humour has backfired. Ferguson wants an apology printed and the Express is out in the cold in the meantime.
CARDIFF
27.2.06
Manchester United 4
Wigan Athletic 0
Carling Cup final
Some of the Sunday newspapers were reporting today that Ferguson might be sacked if United lost this match. It isn’t the first time he has faced such headlines, and it probably won’t be the last, but it can’t be nice waking up to them on the morning of a cup final. ‘You haven’t got a clue,’ he berates us before leaving the pressroom at the Millennium Stadium. It is the first time this season he has come to a post-match conference, with the exception of Champions League matches, and it ends with him walking out in disgust.
Our sin is to ask him about his future and, specifically, whether he has felt his position was under threat. There is a time and a place for these things. One guy in particular is given a crash course in how to deal with Ferguson when he starts asking him whether winning this trophy may have saved his job. Ferguson still has the taste of champagne in his mouth and is genuinely shocked. The red mist comes down and he lets us know exactly what he thinks of it.
He is probably entitled to be angry. This is the seventeenth trophy he has won for United and at the final whistle he is on the pitch, arms raised, triumphantly punching the air. He wants to embrace every single player, every single coach. It ha
s been a good day and he is determined to make the most of it, striding across the playing surface in his full-length overcoat, waving to the crowd, smiling from ear to ear.
To watch him after a victorious cup final is like peering through your fingers at a wedding as a tipsy uncle takes to the dance floor demanding more Jive Bunny or ‘YMCA’. Ferguson is certainly not one of those managers who prefers to stand to the side and let the players milk the moment. He is right in the thick of things, jubilant and euphoric. When MUTV grab him for an interview he treats them to an impromptu chorus of ‘Flower of Scotland’. Fatboy Slim booms out and he starts swaying to the thump, thump, thump of the beat. He does a one-man Mexican wave with the trophy and enfolds Queiroz in a bear-hug.
He is led to the media centre by an entourage of stewards-cum-bouncers wearing yellow blazers. The place is packed and he marches through the door like a newly elected senator, his winner’s medal round his neck. The cameras flash and his face shines.
He says he wants to congratulate his players. He never devalued the Carling Cup, he says, and it is a wonderful day for everyone at the club.
This is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius Page 13
