Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

by Alex Ferguson

  David had some of these traits. I knew his family background. His father was a coach at Drumchapel, where I played as a lad. David Moyes senior. They have a good family feel about them. I’m not saying that’s a reason to hire someone but you like to see good foundations in someone appointed to such high office. I left Drumchapel in 1957 when David senior would have been a young boy, so there was no direct crossover, but I knew their story.

  The Glazers liked David. Right away they were impressed by him. The first point they will have noticed is that he is a straight-talker. It’s a virtue to be straightforward about yourself. And to put one concern to bed, there is no way I would get in David’s way. After 27 years as manager, why would I want to involve myself on the football side? This was my time to leave that part of my life behind. Equally David would have no trouble embracing our traditions. He was a fine judge of talent and laid on some marvellous football at Everton when he was allowed to sign a higher class of player.

  I told myself I would have no regrets about retiring. That won’t change. In your seventies it’s easy to go downhill fast, physically and mentally. But I was busy from the moment I stepped aside, taking on projects in America and beyond. There was no risk of me lapsing into idleness. I was looking for new challenges.

  One great difficulty, in the days around the announcement, was telling the staff at Carrington, our training ground. I particularly remember mentioning the changes in my life and Cathy’s sister dying, and hearing a sympathetic, ‘Aaah.’ That really broke through my barriers. I felt a real jab of sentiment.

  Rumours had begun circulating the day before the official statement. At that point I had still to tell my brother Martin. It was a difficult process to manage, especially from the New York Stock Exchange point of view, so the partial leaking of the news compromised me in relation to some of the people I wanted to confide in.

  On the Wednesday morning, 8 May, I had all the football staff in the video analysis room, the main staff in the canteen and the players in their dressing room. The moment I walked into the dressing room to tell the squad we made the announcement via the club website. No mobile phones were allowed. I didn’t want anyone communicating the news before I had been given the chance to tell everyone at the training ground. With the rumours, though, they knew something big was coming.

  I told the players: ‘I hope I haven’t let some of you down, because you may have joined thinking I would stay.’ We had told Robin van Persie and Shinji Kagawa, for example, that I would not be retiring any time soon, which was correct at the point I said it.

  ‘Things change,’ I continued. ‘My wife’s sister dying was one dramatic change. Also, I want to go out a winner. And I’m going out a winner.’

  Shock could be seen in some of their faces. ‘Go to the races today and enjoy it,’ I said. ‘See you on Thursday.’ I had already given the players the Wednesday afternoon off to go to Chester. And everyone knew that. It was part of the plan. I didn’t want people thinking the players were being heartless by attending Chester races on the day I brought the curtain down, which is why I made a point the week before of confirming they would go.

  Then I went upstairs to the football staff and told them. They all applauded. ‘Glad to get rid of you,’ one or two remarked.

  Of the two main groups the players were the more dumbstruck. Immediately in those circumstances questions will have filled their minds: ‘Will the new manager like me? Will I still be here next season?’ The coaches would be thinking: ‘This could be the end for me.’ The time was approaching for me to retreat from the scene of all this announcing and explaining and gather my thoughts.

  I had decided in advance to go straight home because I knew there would be a seismic reaction in the media. I didn’t want to be leaving Carrington through a swarm of press and flashing lights.

  At home I locked myself in. Jason, my lawyer and Lyn sent texts simultaneously at the point the announcement was made. Lyn would have been sending texts consecutively for 15 minutes. Apparently 38 newspapers in the world carried the news on the front page, including the New York Times. There were 10- and 12-page supplements in the British papers.

  The range and depth of that coverage was flattering. I had my run-ins with the written press down the years but I never held grudges. I know journalists are under a lot of pressure. They have to try to beat television, the internet, Facebook, Twitter, many things, and they may have an editor on top of them all the time. It’s a hard industry.

  The coverage proved also that the media held no grudges against me, despite all our conflicts. They recognised the value of my career and what I had brought to press conferences. They even made a presentation: a cake with a hairdryer on top and a lovely bottle of wine. It was well received.

  For the Swansea game the stadium announcer played Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ and Nat King Cole’s ‘Unforgettable’. We won it the way we did so many of the 895 matches in which my teams prevailed: with a late goal, in the 87th minute, from Rio Ferdinand.

  My speech on the pitch was all off the cuff. I had no script. All I knew was that I was not going to praise any individual. It was not about the directors, the supporters or the players: it was about Manchester United Football Club.

  I urged the crowd to get behind the next manager, David Moyes. ‘I’d like to remind you that we’ve had bad times here,’ I said over the PA. ‘The club stood by me. All my staff stood by me. The players stood by me. So your job now is to stand by our new manager. That is important.’

  Had I not mentioned David, people might have asked: ‘How about that, I wonder whether Ferguson wanted Moyes?’ We needed to show our unconditional support for him. The club has to keep on winning. That was the wish that bound us all. I’m a director of the club. I want the success to go on as much as anyone. Now I can enjoy games the way Bobby Charlton has been able to since he retired. You see Bobby after a victory and his eyes are blazing, he’s rubbing his hands. He loves it. I want that. I want to be able to attend European ties and tell people: I’m proud of this team, this is a great club.

  In the event I found myself picking out Paul Scholes. I knew he would hate it but I couldn’t stop myself. Paul was retiring as well. I also wished Darren Fletcher all the best in his recovery from a colonic illness, which few picked up on.

  At an airport a few days later, a guy walked up to me with an envelope, saying: ‘I was going to post this to you.’ It was an article from an Irish paper arguing that I had left the club the way I had managed it: on my terms. Typical Ferguson, the author wrote. I enjoyed that piece. That was how I saw my time in charge of United and I was proud to see it described that way.

  As I slipped out of the picture, David brought in three of his own staff – Steve Round, Chris Woods and Jimmy Lumsden. He also added Ryan Giggs and Phil Neville, which meant that René Meulensteen, Mick Phelan and Eric Steele lost their jobs. It was David’s call. I told him that if he kept my staff I would be delighted, but it was not for me to interfere or prevent him bringing in his own assistants.

  Jimmy Lumsden had been with David a long time. I knew him from my Glasgow days. Jimmy was born about a mile from me, in the next district along from Govan. He is a good wee lad and a fine football man. It was just a disappointment that good men lost their jobs, which happens in football. But it was handled well. I told the three of them how sorry I was that they would not be staying. Mick, who was with me for 20 years, told me I had nothing to apologise for, and thanked me for all the great times we had shared together.

  As I looked back I focused not only on the triumphs but also the defeats. I lost three FA Cup finals, to Everton, Arsenal and Chelsea. I lost League Cup finals to Sheffield Wednesday, Aston Villa and Liverpool. And two European Cup finals to Barcelona. That is part of the tapestry of Manchester United too: the recovery. I always kept in mind that it was not all victories and open-top parades. When we lost the FA Cup final to Everton in 1995 I said: ‘That’s it, I’m making changes here.’ And we made them. We brought i
n the young players, the so-called Class of ’92. We couldn’t hold them back any longer. They were a special group of lads.

  Losing football matches at Manchester United resonates with you. Mulling it over for a while and then carrying on in the same old way was never an option for me. When you lose a final it affects you deeply, especially if you have 23 shots on goal and the opposition have two, or you end up losing a penalty shoot-out. My first thought was always: ‘Think quickly about what you should be doing.’ My mind went straight to the business of improvement and recovery. It was an asset for me to be able to make quick calculations when it would have been easier just to be disheartened.

  Sometimes defeats are the best outcomes. To react to adversity is a quality. Even in your lowest periods you are showing strength. There was a great saying: It’s just another day in the history of Manchester United. In other words fighting back was part of our existence. If you are lackadaisical about defeats you can be sure there will be more to come. Often we would drop two points in a game by the opposition equalising with the last kick of the ball and then go on a six- or seven-game winning run. It was no coincidence.

  For the fan there is a culture of going to work on the Monday assailed by emotion from the weekend’s game. A guy wrote to me in January 2010 and said: ‘Can you please refund me the £41 I paid for my ticket on Sunday? You promised me entertainment. I did not get entertainment on Sunday. Can I have my £41 back?’ That was a fan. My idea was to write back saying: ‘Can you please debit the £41 from my profit over the last 24 years?’

  You win all these games against Juventus and Real Madrid and someone asks for their money back after a slightly quiet Sunday. Is there any club in the world that can give you more heart-stopping moments than Manchester United? In any set of programme notes I might have warned the supporters: if we’re losing 1–0 with 20 minutes to go, go home, or you might end up being carried out. You could finish up in the Manchester Royal Infirmary.

  I hope no one will disagree when I say: nobody was short-changed. It was never dull.

  two

  THE motto of the Ferguson clan in Scotland is: ‘Dulcius ex asperis’ or, ‘Sweeter after difficulties’. That optimism served me well through 39 years in football management. Over that time, from East Stirlingshire for four brief months in 1974, to Manchester United in 2013, I saw beyond adversity to the success on the other side. The act of controlling vast change year after year was sustained by a belief that we would prevail over any challenger.

  Years ago, I read an article about me that said: ‘Alex Ferguson has done really well in his life despite coming from Govan.’ Spot the offending phrase. It’s precisely because I started out in the shipbuilding district of Glasgow that I achieved what I did in football. Origins should never be a barrier to success. A modest start in life can be a help more than a hindrance. If you’re examining successful people, look at their mother and father, study what they did, for clues about energy and motivation. A working-class background wasn’t a barrier for many of my greatest players. On the contrary, often it was part of the reason they excelled.

  In my time in the dug-out, I advanced from managing East Stirling players on £6 a week to selling Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid for £80 million. My St Mirren squad were on £15 a week and were left to fend for themselves in the summer because they were part-time. The maximum any Aberdeen first-team player earned in my eight years at Pittodrie was £200 a week, the ceiling set by Dick Donald, my chairman. So the financial journey for the thousands of men I managed in nearly four decades was from £6 a week to £6 million a year.

  I have a letter on file from a chap who said that in 1959–60 he worked in the dry docks in Govan and used to visit a particular pub. He remembers a young agitator coming into this establishment with a collecting tin for the apprentices’ strike fund and delivering a firebrand speech. The only thing he knew about this boy was that he played for St Johnstone. His letter ended with a question: ‘Was that you?’

  At first I had no recollection of this visit to the political arena, but the note jogged my memory and eventually I recalled going round the pubs in our area to raise money for the strike. I was not auditioning for a role in politics. To call my shouting a ‘speech’ would embellish it with oratorical qualities it almost certainly lacked. I remember ranting on like an idiot after being asked to justify my request for money. Everyone would have been nicely lubricated and in the mood to hear the young fundraiser explain the cause he was advancing.

  Pubs were a large part of my early experiences. My earliest business idea was to use my modest income to enter the licensed trade, as security for the future. My first establishment was at the junction of Govan Road and Paisley Road West and was populated by dockers. Pubs taught me about people, their dreams and frustrations, in a way that complemented my efforts to understand the football trade, though I was not to know that at the time.

  In one of my pubs, for example, we had a ‘Wembley Club’, into which customers would pay for two years so they could get to the England v. Scotland match at Wembley. I would double whatever was in the kitty and off they would go to London for four or five days. Or, that was the theory. I would join them on the day of the game itself. My best mate, Billy, would head off to Wembley on the Thursday and come back seven days later. Inevitably, this unscheduled extension of the trip would cause ructions with his family.

  One Thursday, after a Saturday game at Wembley, I was at home when the phone rang. It was Anna, Billy’s wife. ‘Cathy, go and ask Alex where Billy is,’ Anna said. I pleaded ignorance. Maybe 40 of our customers would make the trip to the Twin Towers and I had no way of knowing why Billy was absent without leave. But for the working men of my generation, a big football match was a sacred pilgrimage, and they loved the camaraderie as much as the game.

  The pub we had on Main Street, Bridgeton was in one of Glasgow’s biggest Protestant districts. The Saturday before the Orange walk, big Tam the postman would approach me to say: ‘Alex, the boys are asking what time you’re opening next Saturday morning. For the walk. We’re going down to Ardrossan,’ which is on the west coast of Scotland. ‘The buses leave at ten o’clock,’ says Tam. ‘All the pubs are open. You’ll need to open.’

  I was flummoxed. ‘Well, what time should I open?’

  Tam says: ‘Seven.’

  So there I was at 6.15 a.m., with my dad, and my brother Martin, and a wee Italian barman we employed. We’re well equipped because Tam has told me: ‘Get stocked up, you’ll need plenty of drink in.’ I open at 7 a.m. The pub is soon full of Orangemen in full voice and the police are walking by, not saying a word.

  Between 7 a.m. and half past nine I took four grand. Double vodkas, the lot. My dad sat shaking his head. By 9.30 we were hard at work getting the place ready for the rest of our clientele. Scrubbed the place, we did. But there was four grand in the till.

  Running pubs was hard work. By 1978 I was ready to escape the onerous responsibilities that came with running two watering holes. Managing Aberdeen left no time for wrestling with drinkers or staying on top of the books. But what good stories those years left in my memory. You could write a book just about those. They would come in on Saturday morning – the dockers – with their wives, having been paid on the Friday night and deposited the money with me behind the bar in the night safe. On a Friday night you felt like a millionaire. You didn’t know whether the cash in the safe or the till was yours or theirs. In the early days Cathy would count it on the carpet. On the Saturday morning the money would be away again when these men came to collect it. The record of these transactions was called the tick book.

  A female regular by the name of Nan was especially vigilant in tracking the movements of her husband’s money. She had a tongue like a docker. ‘Do you think we’re all daft?’ she would say, fixing me in her sights.

  ‘What?’ I said, buying time.

  ‘Do you think we’re all daft? That tick book, I want to see it.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t see
the tick book,’ I said, improvising. ‘It’s sacrosanct. The taxman wouldnae let you do that. The taxman examines it every week. You can’t see that.’

  Nan turns to her man, subdued now, and says: ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Er, I’m not sure,’ says her man.

  The storm had passed. ‘If I find out my man’s name’s in there I’m never coming back,’ Nan says.

  These are lasting memories of a young life spent around people of great character and resilience. Tough people, too. Sometimes I would come home with a split head or black eyes. That was pub life. When it became too exuberant or fights broke out, it was necessary to jump in to restore order. You would try to separate the protagonists but often take one on the chin. Yet I look back and think what a great life it was. The characters; the comedy.

  I always remember a man called Jimmy Westwater coming in, unable to breathe. Grey, he was. ‘Christ, are you all right?’ I asked. Jimmy had wrapped himself in Shantung silk to creep out of the docks without being caught. A whole bale of Shantung silk. But he’d wrapped himself so tightly in it, he could hardly draw breath.

  Another Jimmy, who I employed, and who kept the place immaculate, turned up one night in a bow tie. One of my regulars was incredulous: ‘A bow tie in Govan? You must be joking.’ One Friday night I came back to find someone selling bags of birdseed by the bar. In that part of Glasgow, everyone kept pigeons.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Birdseed.’ Like it was the most obvious answer in the world.

  An Irish lad called Martin Corrigan prided himself on his ability to meet any domestic need. Crockery, a canteen of cutlery, a fridge – anything you like. Another guy walked in and announced: ‘Want a pair of binoculars? I’m skint.’ Out came a beautiful pair of binoculars, wrapped in greaseproof paper. ‘A fiver,’ he says.

  ‘One condition,’ I said. ‘A fiver as long as you drink in here. Don’t go over to Baxter’s.’ He was a nice guy with a speech impediment. So I get the binoculars and he immediately spends £3 across the bar.