Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

by Alex Ferguson

  Our behaviour in big games was generally excellent. One newspaper cited the case of the referee Andy D’Urso being harassed by Roy Keane and Jaap Stam, which we stamped on. Me saying, ‘It’s none of their business,’ evidently irked the FA. I also pointed out that this was the League Cup, not the FA Cup. I was never much impressed with the work of the FA’s compliance unit.

  When I criticised Alan Wiley for his physique in the autumn of 2009, I was making a wider point about the fitness of referees. In my opinion Alan Wiley was overweight when I made that point after a 2–2 draw with Sunderland at Old Trafford. The comment that landed me in hot water was: ‘The pace of the game demanded a referee who was fit. He was not fit. You see referees abroad who are as fit as butchers’ dogs. He was taking thirty seconds to book a player. He was needing a rest. It was ridiculous.’

  Later I apologised for any personal embarrassment caused to Alan Wiley and said my intention had been to ‘highlight a serious and important issue in the game’. But, 16 days after the Sunderland game, I was charged by the FA with improper conduct. I had twice been banned from the touchline, in 2003, and again in 2007 for having my say about referee Mark Clattenburg. Later I was fined £30,000 and banned from the touchline for five matches for my comments about referee Martin Atkinson in the wake of our 2–1 defeat at Chelsea. After my comments about Alan Wiley, former referee Jeff Winter suggested a ‘FIFA-style stadium ban’ might be appropriate.

  By the end, I felt we hadn’t had a really top Premier League referee for a long time. I know Graham Poll had that arrogant streak, but he was the best decision-maker. He had such an ego that it detracted from his performances, and when he entered one of his stroppy moods he could be difficult for you. He was the best judge of an incident over my time at Manchester United.

  When a referee is working in front of 44,000 at Anfield, or 76,000 at Old Trafford, and he gives a goal that goes against the home team, and the crowd scream, it does affect a lot of them. That’s another distinction: the ability to make decisions against the tide, against the roar of the crowd. The old saying that a referee was ‘a homer’ does apply. It’s not to say a ref is cheating, more that they are influenced by the force of emotion in the crowd.

  Anfield was probably the hardest place for a match official to be objective, because it was such a closed-in, volatile environment. There is an intimidation factor, from fans to referees, not just at Liverpool but across the game.

  Forty years ago, crowds were not frenzied the way they are today. So perhaps it would serve a higher purpose for the referee to attend a press conference with his supervisor alongside him and explain how he saw it. For instance, I would have found it interesting to hear from the Turkish referee who handled our Champions League tie against Real Madrid at Old Trafford in March 2013, and listen to what he had to say about Nani’s sending-off, which was appalling.

  A brief referee’s press conference might have been a step forward. You can’t stop progress. Take football boots: I was totally against the modern boot, yet manufacturers were pouring money into football and therefore could not be challenged. The level of gimmickry is now very high, to get young kids to buy pink boots, orange boots. A lot of clubs use the kit manufacturers as part of the deal to sign a player: we can get you a deal with Nike or adidas, and so on. They have to get their money back, and it’s through boots.

  As an audience we are never ever going to be satisfied with referees, because we are all biased towards our own teams. But full-time referees have not been successful, except in terms of man-management. It’s impossible for a person to do his normal job and still follow the kind of training programme referees are assigned. So the system is flawed. There should be full-time referees who report to St George’s Park every day. You may say – how are they going to travel from Newcastle to Burton-upon-Trent every day? Well, if we signed a player from London, we found him a house in Manchester. Robin van Persie, for example. If they want the best refereeing system, they should be as professional as the Premier League clubs, with the money the game now has.

  Mike Riley, the head of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, once claimed they lacked the finance to take such steps. If he is right, it is incredible that football lacks the resources for proper professional refereeing, with £5 billion in revenues from television. That is ridiculous. Think of the sums available in parachute payments to clubs relegated to the Championship. If referees are going to be full-time, the system should reflect that. It should be done properly.

  In Europe, Champions League referees have an arrogance about them because they know they won’t see you again the following weekend. I was in four finals and there was only one where the referee could be recognised as a top official: Pierluigi Collina, in the Barcelona final of 1999.

  I’ve lost two important European ties to José Mourinho, not because of the performance of the players but because of the referee. The Porto game in 2004 was unbelievable. The worst decision he made that night was not the disallowed Scholes goal that would have put us 2–0 in front. When Ronaldo broke away with a few minutes to go, he was brought down by the left-back. The linesman flagged for a free kick but the referee chose to play on. Porto went up the park, got a free kick, Tim Howard parried it out and they scored in injury time. So we had plenty of experience of bad decisions against us in Europe.

  I was at an AC Milan–Inter game and a senior Inter official said to me: ‘Do you know the difference between the English and the Italians? In England they don’t think a game can ever be corrupt. In Italy they don’t think a game can not be corrupt.’

  In England, on the plus side, there was an improvement in man-management. That was good. The communication between match officials and players was much more constructive. People in authority have to be able to make decisions, and a lot of them lacked the ability to reach them quickly. The human element tells you a referee can be wrong. But the good ones will make the correct decisions more often than not. The ones who make the wrong ones are not necessarily bad referees. They just lack that talent for making the right calls in a tight time frame.

  It was the same with players. What makes the difference in the last third? It’s your decision-making. We were on to players about it all the time. If I were starting again, I would force every player to learn chess to give them the ability to concentrate. When you first learn chess you can be three or four hours finishing a game. But when you’ve mastered it and start playing 30-second chess, that’s the ultimate. Quick decisions, under pressure. What football is all about.

  twenty-one

  IN the build-up to us winning our 19th English League title, there was this constant question about us beating Liverpool’s record. My view was that we would pass their haul of 18 championships at some point anyway, so there was no need to make a fuss about it in that particular season. I wanted our attention focused on the campaign itself. But it was something I always felt we needed to achieve.

  The Souness–Dalglish Liverpool teams were the benchmark for English football in the 1980s, when I made my first foray into management south of the border. Those Liverpool sides were formidable. I had suffered against them with Aberdeen and brought those memories with me to Manchester. In one European tie we had lost 1–0 at Pittodrie, played really well for the first 20 minutes at Anfield, but still ended up 2–0 down at half-time. I did my usual thing in the dressing room and, as the players were leaving, one, Drew Jarvie, said, ‘Come on, lads, two quick goals and we’re back in it.’

  We were 3–0 down on aggregate, at Anfield, and he was talking about two quick goals as if they were ours to take. I looked at Drew and said: ‘God bless you, son.’ Later the players would hammer Drew with the quote. They would say, ‘We weren’t playing Forfar, you know.’

  When that great Liverpool side were 1–0 up against you, it was impossible to get the ball off them. It would be boomp-boomp around the park. Souness would spread the play. Hansen, Lawrenson, Thompson: whatever the combination at the back, they were comfo
rtable on the ball. When I moved to United, they still had Ian Rush, John Aldridge, that calibre of player. Buying John Barnes and Peter Beardsley just elevated them again.

  I said at the time: ‘I want to knock them off their perch.’ I can’t actually remember saying that, but the line is attributed to me. Anyway, it was a representation of how I felt, so I have no objection to it being in the newspaper cuttings. Manchester United’s greatest rival, though it changed towards the end, was Liverpool – historically, industrially and football-wise. The games were always emotionally intense events.

  Our League success in 1993 opened the door, and by the turn of the century we had added a further five championships. In 2000 I looked at Liverpool and knew there was no easy way back for them. They were in for a long haul. Youth development was spasmodic. You had no feeling that Liverpool were a threat again. The impetus was all with us. On the day we reached 18 titles to match their record, I knew fine well we were going to pass them, the way our club was operating.

  The weekend of our 19th coronation was an extraordinary one for the city of Manchester. City won their first trophy since the 1976 League Cup, with a 1–0 win over Stoke in the FA Cup final, and we drew 1–1 at Blackburn with a 73rd-minute penalty by Rooney. In 1986, when I arrived, Liverpool led United 16–7 in League titles won. This was the season in which Chelsea had spent £50 million on Fernando Torres and City had invested £27 million in Edin Džeko while Javier Hernández turned out to be a bargain for us at £6 million.

  We went 24 games unbeaten before losing at Wolves on 5 February 2011, and finished with only four defeats. A turning point in the race was the 4–2 win at West Ham in early April, after we had been 2–0 down at the interval. I made the point that several of our players had sampled success for the first time and would want more, Valencia, Smalling and Hernández among them.

  Winning the title was the most important aim that season, with the 19 as a bonus. By the time I finished we had moved on to 20, which was a number that the fans chanted with great relish. There was no evidence in my final season that Liverpool, despite some excellent performances, possessed a team who might win the League. I was coming out of the Grand National meeting with Cathy in April 2013 and two Liverpool fans came up alongside to say, ‘Hey Fergie, we’ll hammer you next season.’ They were good lads.

  ‘Well, you’ll need to buy nine players,’ I said.

  They looked crestfallen. ‘Nine?’

  One said: ‘Wait till I tell the boys in the pub that.’ I think he must have been an Everton fan. ‘I don’t think we need nine,’ said the other as he traipsed away. I nearly shouted, ‘Well, seven, then.’ Everyone was laughing.

  That summer we knew Manchester City were emerging as the team we would have to beat. The danger no longer emanated from London or Merseyside. It was so close you could smell it. An owner with the means to make this a serious municipal contest stood between us and control of the city. We continued down our path of building up strength for the future and hoped it would see us through.

  The big player we needed to replace was Edwin van der Sar. Although most people assumed Manuel Neuer was going to be our target (he was on our agenda), we had scouted David de Gea for a long time, right through from when he was a boy. We always thought he was going to be a top goalkeeper.

  In the summer of 2011, also, Ashley Young had a year to run on his contract at Aston Villa. He was a solid buy: English, versatile, could work either side of the pitch, could play off the front, and had a decent goal-scoring record. Given that Ji-Sung Park was coming up to 31, and with Ryan Giggs’ advancing age, I thought it was a good time to move for Young. Giggs was never going to be a thrusting outside-left any more in the way he had been in the past.

  We picked up Young for £16 million, which was a reasonable fee, maybe a pound or two more than we expected to pay, with him in the final year of his contract. But we concluded the deal quickly.

  Ashley ran into trouble against QPR in the 2011–12 season, when Shaun Derry was sent off and our player was accused of diving. I left him out for the next game, and told him that the last thing he needed as a Manchester United player was a reputation for going down easily. It wasn’t a penalty kick against QPR and Shaun Derry’s sending-off was not rescinded. Ashley did it two weeks in a row but we stopped it. Going to ground too willingly was not something I tolerated.

  Ronaldo had issues with the same tendency early in his career, but the other players would give him stick for it on the training ground. The speed he was travelling at, you had only to nudge Cristiano to knock him over. We spoke to him many times about it. ‘He fouled me,’ he would say. ‘Yes, but you’re overdoing it, you’re exaggerating it,’ we would tell him. He eradicated it from his game and became a really mature player.

  Luka Modrić was an example of a player in the modern game who would never dive. Stays on his feet. Giggs and Scholes would never dive. Drogba was a prominent offender. A Barcelona game at Stamford Bridge in 2012 was the worst example. The press were never hard on him, except in that Champions League fixture. If the media had been tougher on him five years earlier, it would have been better for the game.

  The purchase of Phil Jones was a long-term plan from when Sam Allardyce was Blackburn manager. When Rovers beat us in the FA Youth Cup, I called Sam the next day and said, ‘What about the boy Jones?’

  Sam laughed and said, ‘No, he’ll be in the first team on Saturday,’ which he was. And he stayed there. Sam was a big fan of Jones. Blackburn wouldn’t sell him in the 2011 January transfer window because they were in a relegation battle. By the end of the season, every club was on his tail: Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea. He spoke to all four clubs but we managed to coax him to United, at 19 years of age.

  At the point we signed Phil, I was unsure what his best position would be. Later I came to feel it would be at centre-back. He gave us versatility. He could play almost anywhere. In the 2011 Community Shield I took Ferdinand and Vidić off at half-time and assigned Jones and Evans to push right on top of the opposition. Evans is good at that too: breaking into the middle of the pitch. Vidić and Ferdinand were more old school. They have got good heads, understand the game well, don’t get caught out. They were a great partnership. Increasingly, though, I could apply variations at centre-back, and Jones was a major part of my thinking.

  Evans, I think, needed a shake. He didn’t appreciate me signing Jones and Smalling. It caused him to question my opinion of him. But he proved himself in his own right and did increasingly well for us. It’s always gratifying when a player responds to new arrivals by redoubling his own efforts.

  Tom Cleverley, another young hopeful, was the victim of a shocking tackle against Bolton early in that season, which killed his year in many ways. He came back after about a month and we played him right away against Everton. A recurrence of the injury then kept him out for about three months. The plan was to send him off for an operation, which he didn’t want. It would have kept him out for nine months. He wanted to carry on, and it worked, but by that time I had Scholes and Carrick back. I was never able to place Tom in the side regularly.

  He’s a very clever player, the boy. Very intelligent. He’s mobile and a good finisher. He was in the London Olympic squad, which pleased me because he needed a challenge to lift his self-belief right up. Darren Fletcher, meanwhile, was battling a colonic illness. In the summer of 2012, it was possible he might have an operation, but he needed to be well to go under the knife. With a setback he had, he was going to be out until December. The previous season I had him with the reserves to do some coaching. He enjoyed that. Scholesy had gone back to the first team. Darren delivered a couple of half-time talks in reserves games and was impressive.

  De Gea, who was 20 when we signed him for 24 million euros from Atlético Madrid, had a torrid time to begin with. It was obvious he lacked the physique of Van der Sar or Schmeichel. That part of his body needed to be developed and we devised a programme to help him add muscle mass. A complication for him was
that we lost Ferdinand and Vidić in our first game of the 2011–12 League campaign: a 2–1 win at West Bromwich Albion, in which he allowed a weak shot from Shane Long to slip through. I described the battering he received in our penalty box at West Brom as his ‘welcome to England’.

  Vidić was out for six weeks and Rio for three. De Gea then had Smalling and Jones playing in front of him. Young players. He did all right but was a few degrees short of infallible. There were issues with his handling of the players in front of him. By the time we played Liverpool in October, he conceded the first goal from a corner kick. He should have dealt with that better: not just him but Evans and Smalling, the centre-backs on that occasion.

  Their positioning was bad, which locked De Gea in to his six-yard area, but it’s the goalkeeper who takes the blame for those rocky moments. In the decisive Premier League game against City at the Etihad Stadium the following April, Jones blocked him in and stopped him getting out to deal with the corner kick that led to Kompany’s goal. There was progress to be made on that front. As the season wore on, though, he was more and more effective and self-assured. Some of his saves were miraculous. Our instincts were correct all along. He was one of the world’s best young keepers and we were proud to have him with us, where he could develop as so many others had before. At Real Madrid, in the first leg of our Champions League round of 16 tie in February 2013, he saved brilliantly from Ronaldo, Fábio Coentrão and Sami Khedira.