McDougall was convinced he had just ended his Aberdeen career eight months after it began. Ferguson bounced back to his feet and shouted at Teddy Scott: ‘Get him out of here, he’s fucking finished.’ McDougall went home and agonised over what to do. When he next saw Ferguson he blurted out a desperate apology. Ferguson stared at him and then calmly replied: ‘Make it up to me on the pitch. I want you back in the team.’ Curiously, Ferguson’s physical altercations with Aberdeen players all involved strong-willed strikers: Joe Harper, Mark McGhee and McDougall. He had been one of those himself in his playing days. McDougall was forgiven because he was invaluable: a familiar Ferguson trait previously demonstrated with Steve Archibald, McGhee, Strachan and others. His goals had won Aberdeen the league. The punch was not mentioned again and the pair’s mutual respect, and eventual friendship, deepened.
McDougall made an incredible impact in his debut season, bringing a fresh look to the team with the promise of further success to come. Tommy McQueen was not the iconic big figure Doug Rougvie had been at left-back, but he was steady and reliable, a valuable ally to Jim Leighton, Alex McLeish and Willie Miller at the back. Billy Stark had continued to blossom as an outstanding presence alongside Neil Simpson and Neale Cooper, when fit, in midfield. And Stark scored twenty times over the season. He was stylish on the ball and had the ability to change the pace of the team’s play.
At the end of the campaign Ferguson used his programme column to celebrate Aberdeen becoming league champions for the third time in six seasons and to underline how rewarding the campaign had been. Stark said: ‘At the start of a season he would have an idea about how many points we would need, how many defeats we could take, how many goals we’d need to score. And he was never far away. When you looked at the table at the end of the season you’d see how close he was and you’d think, “That’s spooky”. He not only knew the strengths of his own squad but the strengths of the others. And he’d say this to us, “The target this season is two trophies…minimum.”’ By that unforgiving standard 1984–85 was a failure. Aberdeen won the league, but their record in the cup competitions was the poorest of Ferguson’s time at the Dons: first hurdle exits from Europe and the League Cup had been compounded by a loss to Dundee United in the Scottish Cup. He had been determined to secure an historic fourth consecutive Scottish Cup triumph but, after a four-year sequence of twenty-three games without defeat, the run ended in the semi-final. He wished his old friend Jim McLean luck in the final against Celtic. ‘We supported them just as they would have given their support in a similar situation. The two clubs, after all, have done so much together for Scottish football in combatting the consistent dominance of the Old Firm.’ United, though, could not follow in Aberdeen’s wake, and Celtic won the cup.
Finding ways to beat Celtic and Rangers was the flame that never went out for Ferguson. The Old Firm managers he faced most often were Billy McNeill and Davie Hay at Celtic and John Greig and Jock Wallace at Rangers. When they tried to outwit him or apply psychological pressure he would usually pull off a successful counter-punch. He began to notice that when the Aberdeen bus pulled up to Parkhead a member of Celtic’s staff would scuttle inside. Moments later the foyer would be packed with members of Celtic’s legendary Lisbon Lions side, the 1967 European Cup winners. Ferguson reckoned it was an attempt to unnerve his players as they walked in. On the way to one Parkhead game Ferguson flagged it up to his players. Walker McCall remembered: ‘He said, “You watch, as soon as our bus pulls in the doorman will run inside. I don’t know who he goes to but he talks to someone.” Sure enough we pull up and the doorman disappears. As soon as we were through the front doors you had what seemed like all the Lisbon Lions standing there. It was Celtic trying to intimidate us. Fergie said, “We’re not going to be intimidated.” We marched in there with our heads held up. We weren’t disrespectful, we’d say a hello or whatever, but we were never going to be intimidated by them.’ Ferguson would include injured players in the travelling party so that Aberdeen would walk in mob-handed. More than twenty first-team players coming through the doors of Parkhead or Ibrox gave an impression of strength in numbers.
There was one stunt Celtic pulled so many times that Aberdeen started having fun with it themselves. Around fifteen minutes before kick-off at Parkhead there would be a knock on the away dressing-room door. It was the Celtic chairman, Desmond White. He was sorry, it was out of his hands, but the police had asked for the kick-off to be delayed because there were so many Celtic supporters still outside the ground waiting to get in. It happened every time they played there to the extent Ferguson and his players could set their watches by White’s arrival, and would joke among themselves as if counting down the seconds until they heard the knock. Ferguson decided to show White he was wasting his time. Archie Knox explained: ‘Alex said to the boys, “Fuck this, don’t get ready.” Desmond chaps the door and looks in. He started giving it the usual…then noticed all the boys were still sitting in their suits, looking like they didn’t have a care in the world! Fergie wouldn’t let them change until Desmond had gone out.’ White never knocked on the door again.
Ferguson retaliated by playing the Old Firm at their own game. He sought every little advantage. Remembering how Jock Stein had operated at Celtic, he built a network of spies and informants. A couple of days before the 1983 Scottish Cup semi-final, Celtic’s Charlie Nicholas suffered an ankle injury in training. It was obvious he would not recover in time for the game but Billy McNeill was desperate to keep the fact secret. The press did not get wind of it. Having a police escort to Hampden usually meant the Celtic bus arrived before their opponents. This time they turned up only to find Aberdeen already there and Ferguson standing watching from behind the main glass doors. Nicholas said: ‘Big Billy wanted me to walk in as naturally as I could, looking as fit as usual. But it was quite a jump down from the step on the bus to the ground and when I landed on my bad ankle I grimaced and started hobbling. I looked up at Fergie: I was the one he’d been watching. He just smiled right at me and then turned to go inside and tell his team, “Nicholas is injured”.’ Ferguson had made sure the Aberdeen bus arrived earlier than usual, so he could confirm the information he had been given that Celtic’s star man was out.
On another occasion, in the build-up to one Rangers-Aberdeen game at Ibrox, Jock Wallace told the newspapers his squad was desperately depleted by injuries. Two or three of his key men were out. When the Aberdeen bus pulled up to the stadium Ferguson was quick to jump off. Wallace, who was a friend, was one of the first people he saw near the door. Ferguson handed him a piece of paper. Wallace was nonplussed. Ferguson told him he had written down the team Rangers would have on the pitch at the start of the game. Wallace looked at it and pretended to scoff, asking Ferguson why he had included all the players who were injured. Didn’t he read the papers? Ferguson laughed and said the charade was over. The previous day he had visited his mother-in-law who lived in a block of high-rise flats overlooking Rangers’ training ground. He sat on the balcony and watched Wallace conduct his session with a fully-fit squad. Wallace looked at him: ‘Ach, you cannae blame me for trying.’
Aberdeen, by contrast, had no dedicated training facilities, so anyone wishing to spy on their preparations would have to trail them all round the city. The players would travel by minibus to Seaton Park, a nearby municipal facility open to the public, or to Gordon Barracks, a military training ground two miles from Pittodrie. Sometimes the car park opposite the stadium would do. If bad weather prevented them from using those locations Ferguson had no reservations about training on Aberdeen beach beside the ice-cold, wind-swept North Sea. ‘The training on the sand is fine for general fitness and stamina,’ he said. ‘The problem is that the constant running about on it can make players a shade sluggish.’ He might have cited the threat of hypothermia as another hazard. The temperature could dip to minus 12 degrees Celsius. ‘The wind’s hitting your face, freezing your knackers off, you never get used to the cold,’ said Ferguson. But p
rovided they were sufficiently wrapped-up the players quite enjoyed the beach. Weir said: ‘Sometimes it was hard running on the sand but you could have a bit of fun with the waves. The sea felt Baltic but if you had injuries it could help minor aches and pains.’ It was a training venue with unique peculiarities. On one day Eric Black and John Hewitt found a seagull covered in oil and took the bird back to Pittodrie so someone could call the RSPCA. Another time Black found a distressed seal pup.
Everything had to run like clockwork at a Ferguson training session. Usually the assistant manager would take a minibus to that day’s host venue. The youth players would carry the goalposts and gear so that everything was ready when another minibus arrived with the first team. Ferguson immersed himself in all aspects of training when Pat Stanton was his assistant manager, and carried that on when Archie Knox took over in 1980. One day Knox said: ‘Why am I here? I do nothing. You shouldn’t be doing all the training sessions.’ Ferguson disagreed, but Teddy Scott backed up Knox. From then on the manager took a step back, overseeing everything but letting the assistant take charge of the fine detail. Willie Garner revealed: ‘Fergie was demanding. I had to come in every day with a plan for training, a plan that went from ten to five past ten, then five past ten to half past ten, then right to twelve o’clock. Every morning. He would have a look at it and say, “Right, I think we should do a bit of this, then a bit of that as well.”’ With the wise input of Scott the drills were never repetitive or boring, and the players’ fitness was permanently high.
The natural competitiveness of the players led to flash-points. Dangerous tackling and injuries were a constant risk. Steve Cowan, one of the squad’s strikers, remembered: ‘Alex McLeish did me in a practice match. I was out for three months with torn knee ligaments. He came right through me, did me, off I went, not a word said. Training was like the games: aggressive. Not just McLeish but Miller, Kennedy, Bell. Nobody took liberties with that Aberdeen team.’ Even a small player like winger Joe Miller, just 5ft 6in and only sixteen in 1983, could be spiky. Little Miller had been brought up in the east end of Glasgow. One day he took on Pittodrie’s undisputed heavyweight, who was eight inches taller than him. ‘I was running riot in training, nutmegging Dougie Rougvie all the time. He wasn’t happy. I destroyed him. He started booting me up and down. Fergie told him, “Hey, calm down, he’s only sixteen”, and Dougie goes, “He’s big enough.” I think his mind was elsewhere because he wasn’t going to stay at Aberdeen. So later in the dressing room Dougie goes, “Want a lift up the road, wee man?” I get in the car and he says, “I’ve just got to go somewhere first.” He drives out to Balmedie Beach, opens the door and says, “Get out.” He goes, “Don’t ever make a fool of me like that again.” I couldn’t believe it. I kept it to myself, never said anything to Fergie. I just waited my opportunity. Then I tried to break his legs in training. He was going nuts. “Gaffer, he tried to two-feet me there.” I said, “Well, if you’re big enough…” He said, “If you ever do that again I’ll knock you out.” Dougie left not long after that. But that was the sort of attitude among the players. We were all hard.’
Training was intense because that was the way Ferguson demanded they approach every fixture. In games the players were told to set a fast tempo: take quick throw-ins, quick corners, quick goal-kicks, get the ball down and get playing. Don’t give the opposition time to draw breath. Knox said: ‘The message was that if you’re winning you don’t slow the game down, you increase the tempo.’ The players were told to run off the pitch at half-time to show opponents they still had plenty of energy. McGhee said: ‘If you watch the old games you can see we used to run down the tunnel. Did you ever notice that? We ran off the pitch. It was done to intimidate the opposition. At Pittodrie when you head from the pitch to the tunnel there is a downhill slope on the concrete, past the boot room and the referee’s room, across the corridor to the dressing rooms. The opposition’s door was to the right and ours was straight ahead. Our door would be open. The other team would be walking down the tunnel and we would all run down. If any of them were walking down you’d fuck right into them and you’d be in the dressing room before they could gather themselves and react. Quite often we’d all come piling in, running in, and the door would get shut and all you could hear outside was, “Ya fucking bastards!” By that time our door was shut we were all in and there was chaos out in the corridor, the opposition shouting and bawling.’
The focus was relentless. In a game at Morton, Walker McCall suffered concussion and was carried off on a stretcher and taken to hospital. Ferguson sent a message to him that the team bus would collect him after the match. McCall waited. An hour passed, and then another. McCall said: ‘We got hold of Fergie and I said, “What’s going on, I thought you were coming to get me.” He said, “I had other things on my mind…I totally forgot about you. I’ll tell you what, go and get the train up the road.” I said, “Boss, I got carried off on a stretcher, I’ve still got an Aberdeen kit on!”’ Eventually McCall’s brother-in-law drove him north, receiving £200 in an envelope from Ferguson for his trouble.
Archie Knox was Ferguson’s longest-serving and most successful Aberdeen assistant. He bought into all of the boss’s methods with enthusiasm, but sometimes Ferguson’s individualism could wrong-foot even this most trusted right-hand man. One Saturday the pair of them agreed that day’s team and then walked across the corridor to the dressing room to tell the players. To Knox’s bafflement Ferguson read out a team with three changes to the one they had discussed seconds earlier. When the players left he asked him what was going on. ‘Fergie said, “Ach, I just thought it would be better going this way.” He would do things like that. It was about knowledge and instinct. You can have all the knowledge in the world about how your team will play, but then a bit of instinct will come in, and you have to follow your instinct. You can’t coach that. To be honest he never really listened to me on the bench.’ Sometimes the pair of them would launch into arguments at half-time, with the players reduced to the role of spectators. Strachan said: ‘They used to argue all the time. We used to think it was hilarious. Brilliant. We used to sit back and watch. “That’ll never work”. “No, that’s rubbish”.’
Ferguson was not above superstition. He approached Knox and asked if he wanted to buy ‘a good coat for £12’. A friend of his was selling them. The pair of them duly bought a coat each and first wore them at the start of a Scottish Cup campaign. When they won, Ferguson insisted they continue wearing the coats for every tie. Knox said: ‘So we get to the final. It’s roasting and I’m out on the touchline with the bloody trench coat on. We had to wear them in every round! Alex could be funny with stuff like that.’
All of his assistant managers–Knox, Pat Stanton and Willie Garner–became accustomed to his sometimes idiosyncratic demands. He would spend hours on car journeys with his assistant, making the 300-mile round trip from Aberdeen to Glasgow to watch opponents, potential signings or youth coaching sessions. His players could tell when he turned up for training after a late night away. ‘He used to come in with his eyes popping out of his head,’ said John McMaster. ‘Nae sleep, thinking about games, going to games, coming back up the road, going to training.’
The same demands were made of his assistants: ‘If there was a game on somewhere you had to be at it,’ said Garner. ‘He said to me, “I’ve given you a company car, get to a fucking game.” If he came with me he’d make me drive and he’d sleep in the passenger seat.’ Travelling gave Ferguson thinking time. Not all of it was devoted to football. On one drive south with Stanton, Ferguson suddenly ended a quiet spell by asking, “Do you think we’re alone?” Stanton said: “I started getting a wee bit worried.” I says, “How do you mean?” He says, “Do you think we’re alone in the cosmos? Do you think there are other beings on other planets?” That was all he said. I’m thinking, “What’s brought this on? Was he heidin’ that ball too much back when he played?”’ Ferguson let the subject drop and the journey continued. ‘Later that n
ight we come out of the game and we were walking towards the car when he said, “What do you think about that?” It hadn’t been much of a game so I said, “Ach, it wasn’t much to look at”, and he goes, “No, no, no…Do you think we’re on our own?” That’s still what he was thinking about! Obviously the game hadn’t impressed him!’
Whether on football or metaphysics, Ferguson’s mind was restless and inquisitive. He was also quick to take advantage whenever the opportunity arose. When suspended from the touchline by the Scottish Football Association he had to rely on technology to maintain control. He began communicating with his assistant manager via rudimentary walkie-talkies during games. After arriving to play Hibs one time, and having exchanged pleasantries with John Blackley and Tommy Craig, the opposition management team, he told Willie Garner to go to the dug-outs so they could test the handsets they were using that day. Garner took his position on the trackside and looked up at Ferguson in the stand. ‘So I switch it on and immediately I can hear Blackley talking to Craig. Fergie saw me and quickly put his finger up to his lips, telling me not to make a sound. That’s the way it stayed. There was some sort of crossed line and for the full game me and Fergie never said a word to each other. We could hear everything they were doing. So we’re doing stuff like moving Eric Black from one wing to another and I’m hearing Blackley going, “Christ, they’ve moved Black again.”’ Aberdeen won comfortably. When the two management teams had a beer after the match Craig gushed in admiration about how Aberdeen had anticipated their every tactical move. Garner said: ‘So I tell him, “That’s ’cos we could hear you on the walkie-talkie.” Blackley goes, “Ya bastards, I thought I could hear something on the line! I thought it was crossed lines with a taxi company.”’
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