Fergie Rises

by Michael Grant

  The only surprise at Hampden was that Frank McDougall failed to score. His rich form had continued into his second season and he helped himself to five goals in his first dozen games. Hibs were fortunate to be spared; six days later he was savage against the club he had supported as a boy. Celtic were taken apart 4–1 at Pittodrie and McDougall scored all four. The only mercy shown was courtesy of a broadcasters’ strike which began two hours before the game, ensuring the punishment administered by McDougall was never captured on camera.

  Aberdeen had bookended 1985 by beating Rangers 5–1 in January and now Celtic 4–1 in November. Those were perhaps the two most vibrant domestic games Pittodrie witnessed in the entire Ferguson era. As the season progressed Aberdeen’s home remained a fortress, but their away form suddenly collapsed. When they beat Rangers at Ibrox at the end of September, it was inconceivable that they would go almost five months before winning another away game in the Premier Division. But that was how long they had to wait before taking full points from a trip to Hibs. It was a poor run which sunk their chance of landing a third consecutive league title. ‘I have to say that there have been occasions in away games when players have not been hungry enough for success and have not fought as hard as they should against adversity,’ said Ferguson. ‘They must have the desire to win trophies. They must hate the thought of defeat.’

  Aberdeen’s stuttering league form had coincided with Ferguson taking on the Scotland role. They slipped off the top of the league in December and never made it back. The demands on his time were immense and his attention was divided. He had to scout an East Germany game in Belgrade before his first friendly as Scotland manager, which finished 0–0 on 16 October. On the day before the match it was confirmed that he would stay in charge on the same part-time basis for the rest of the World Cup campaign. That meant he would remain in position at least until the end of the play-off, and potentially through to the finals themselves the following summer. ‘It’s exactly what I wanted,’ he said. ‘There was never any chance of me walking out on Aberdeen and taking a full-time job as manager of Scotland. I’m too young for that. I know people have questioned my ambition. They have pointed out that I have turned down Rangers, Spurs and other clubs. Why should I leave Aberdeen to have any ambition? I have been at Aberdeen for seven-and-a-half years and although you never know what lies ahead in life, I would be happy to spend another seven-and-a-half years there.’ Dick Donald, he stressed, realised he was not using Scotland ‘to put myself forward for another job’. Still, he admitted, it would be a ‘strain’ to maintain Aberdeen’s success while taking Scotland through a two-legged play-off against Australia, who had won the Oceania group, and then six months of preparation for the World Cup finals. Davie Cooper and Frank McAvennie, the latter given his Scotland debut by Ferguson, delivered a 2–0 win in the first leg. For the second leg in Melbourne Ferguson would have to abandon Aberdeen for several days and travel to the other side of the world.

  While away with Scotland he delegated training and much of the day-to-day work at Pittodrie to Willie Garner, but inevitably his absences were noted and discussed. Miller said: ‘I think there was a feeling within the city and within the club that it did distract him. It would have been very difficult for him not to take it on. It was almost one of these situations where he had to accept it, and the club had to accept it. It was a responsibility to just take on the job under those circumstances. Did it make a difference? We won a cup double that season, but there was a feeling within the club that it was a distraction.’

  And it came just as Aberdeen were making their third assault on the European Cup. The campaign started against Akranes of Iceland on 18 September (eight days after Stein’s death). The 7–2 aggregate win was comfortable, but in the second round Servette, the champions of Switzerland, made Aberdeen sweat. The first leg in Geneva was placid. ‘The players of Servette were in so much awe of Alex Ferguson’s men that they failed to mount an effective challenge,’ wrote the Glasgow Herald. But the Swiss were sharp and forceful at Pittodrie. McDougall scored early, but had Servette been able to take their chances they would have recovered and turned the tie around. ‘Their performance was the best by any side at Pittodrie in European competition,’ said Ferguson. It was quite a claim. If he had not been involved, he said, he would have been applauding them. Still, the tight, 1–0 aggregate win carried Aberdeen through to the quarter-finals. Ferguson made it known he was eager to avoid Juventus in the draw, though the last eight also included Barcelona and Bayern Munich. He was hoping for a team who would be sluggish after their winter break at the time of the ties in March. That meant either the Finnish champions Kuusysi Lahti or IFK Gothenburg of Sweden. He was granted his wish. Aberdeen were handed the draw that sent them back to their beloved Ullevi Stadium.

  The first leg at Pittodrie was preceded by a minute’s silence for Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister who had been assassinated on a Stockholm street five days earlier. IFK Gothenburg were a team of Scandinavian giants, and Ferguson’s wish to be drawn against them was misguided. Not since Bayern Munich three years earlier had a European team scored twice at Pittodrie, but IFK Gothenburg secured a 2–2 draw and deserved more. Jim Leighton had suffered another match-night drama. He had gone through his pre-match warm-up before accepting that an eye infection would prevent him playing. His deputy, Bryan Gunn, kept Aberdeen alive with three crucial saves in the second half. But the towering striker Johnny Ekström caused all sorts of problems to an Aberdeen team who looked desperately uncomfortable playing with an unfamiliar three-at-the-back formation. Ferguson was typically bombastic about how the tie stood. In some ways the score worked in Aberdeen’s favour, he told the newspapers. The Swedish crowd would think they were in the semi-final and would pressurise their team to finish off Aberdeen in the second leg, he said. ‘We will win the second leg over there. I am convinced of that.’ He was wrong. They crashed out of the European Cup after a frustrating goalless draw.

  Aberdeen had failed in the Ullevi, of all places. Ferguson drew an analogy which showed he was acutely aware of how difficult it would be to emulate 1983 and repeatedly compete with the European elite. When Juventus sold the outstanding Zbigniew Boniek to Roma they had replaced him with Michael Laudrup, said Ferguson. ‘When we lost Gordon Strachan we were not in a position to replace him with a player of similar calibre. There will be no rash or hasty moves because Aberdeen failed to reach their European expectations. Losing out in Europe could have the opposite effect and bind the club tighter for our Scottish assault.’

  Winning the league was too much to ask. They had only eight league games left when they lost in Sweden and eventually trailed home fourth, behind champions Celtic, Hearts and Dundee United. The season in which the Scotland job pulled on Ferguson’s time and energy was also the one in which Aberdeen posted their lowest league finish since 1979. The chance to fulfil the manager’s ‘two trophies a season’ demand rested on the Scottish Cup. An effortless semi-final defeat of Hibs put them into a cup final against the team who had been the story of the Scottish season.

  Few paid much attention when Hearts lost five of their first eight league games in the autumn of 1985. They had been promoted to the top flight only two years before and despite a proud history and a massive support they had not been a force in Scottish football for a quarter of a century. Then something extraordinary happened. After losing at Clydebank on 28 September they stayed unbeaten in the league and the Scottish Cup for thirty-one games, a mesmerising run which took them to the brink of a double. In January they were the first visiting team to win at Pittodrie for more than a year. Immediately after that 1–0 defeat, Ferguson was magnanimous and fulsome in his praise of Hearts, but in his next set of programme notes he sounded a different message. ‘They are not a great side and a true Aberdeen performance would beat them. The fact is that we have been falling below the standards we set for ourselves and the standards we expect. It is a problem which I have to look at very carefully. Truth is, I may have t
o build a new Aberdeen.’

  What he did not realise was that he was about to be hit by the unwelcome departure of a fourth senior member of his Gothenburg team. Eric Black was twenty-two years old and had been connected to Aberdeen and Ferguson since 1978. He had won two league titles, three Scottish Cups, the League Cup, the European Cup Winners’ Cup and the Super Cup. A youthful face and wholesome demeanour gave an impression of innocence, but on the pitch Black was as nerveless as an assassin. Every time he started a cup final he scored, including against Real Madrid. Four cup final starts, five goals. He had pace and was an excellent sniffer of penalty-box chances, but above all he possessed fantastic heading ability. He timed his jumps so well he seemed to hang in the air in the moment before a cross reached him.

  Black had never given Ferguson any trouble. He married young and was one of the most popular players around Pittodrie. But in the summer of 1986 he was due to come out of contract and had made up his mind to leave and seek a higher wage elsewhere. When he told Ferguson he intended to employ an agent he was told not to, but did so anyway. Talks were held with clubs in Germany and France and Black signed a contract committing himself to Metz. He informed Ferguson nine days before the Scottish Cup final. The news was kept in-house for five days until Ferguson told reporters. Aberdeen would not deal with agents, he said. It was time for the club to take a stand and show their displeasure. ‘We are big enough to do that by not playing Eric Black against Hearts on Saturday. He is finished with this club.’ He added a cold dig at Black’s choice of destination. Metz had knocked Terry Venables’ Barcelona out of the 1985 Cup Winners’ Cup with a breathtaking 4–1 win in the Nou Camp, but the little club from north-east France had an otherwise unremarkable history. ‘He has gone to an insignificant club in Europe,’ said Ferguson. ‘His agent has done him no favours at all. It’s a travesty that a player like Black is going to a club like Metz.’

  Ferguson had strong grounds to be irritated by Black’s choice. If he had been sold to an English club Aberdeen might have received more than £500,000. But European clubs benefited from an agreement to pay a fee equivalent to ten times a player’s salary, which would mean a figure closer to £300,000. Willie Garner still vividly remembers Ferguson’s insistence that Black had to be dropped. ‘Fergie says to me, “Ask Black if he’s still got his agent. If he has, tell him he’s not playing in the cup final.” I asked if he was joking. “Am I fuck! If he’s still got his agent he’s no’ playing. I don’t give a shit about his record in cup finals.” Eric told me he wasn’t getting rid of the agent. And that was it, Fergie didn’t play him. Brave.’

  The episode effectively ended the relationship between Ferguson and Black. Years later, in Managing My Life, Ferguson wrote of his anger about ‘cloak and dagger’ behaviour, Black having ‘plotted in secret’ and even kept his intentions hidden from his team-mates. Black, however, has always been comfortable with his decision to leave and has no criticism of Ferguson. ‘I don’t regret it. I thought it was the right thing for me personally. Obviously it wasn’t the right thing in the manager’s mind, for him or for Aberdeen, but I had made my mind up to go. The opportunity was there. It was financial.’ Chairman Dick Donald had told him there had been offers from Tottenham, Everton and Aston Villa, but by then he was committed to the move to France. ‘I didn’t wake up having dreamt of going to Metz. I’d signed a five-year deal to go to Monaco, but the deal was dependent on them getting Arsène Wenger as coach and the whole thing changed because Wenger couldn’t get out of his contract at Nancy. But I liked the Metz coach.’ Had he thought he might be dropped for the final? ‘I hadn’t considered that. I didn’t enjoy it. I never went near Hampden, I watched the game on television in Aberdeen. It was unfortunate it ended that way, but I don’t blame Alex Ferguson for reacting the way he did, he was quite right. I feel I was quite right to do what I did as well. It wasn’t personal. Some of the boys knew what I was intending to do. They knew and he didn’t. I understand why he wouldn’t be happy about that, but for the move to happen that’s the way it had to go.’

  Sacrificing Black was a gamble. He was a proven big-game player and the team’s second top goalscorer that season. Such rigid decisiveness was typical of Ferguson, though, and he did not worry that his team had been weakened. He looked around his dressing room and saw players who had won leagues, cups, European trophies, and been over the course time and time again. Hearts were a different story. Other than the former Rangers men, Sandy Jardine and Sandy Clark, their squad had won nothing. ‘In the early days Aberdeen didn’t see us as a threat,’ said Hearts’ prolific goalscorer John Robertson. ‘When we came into the Premier League we were just another team of whipping boys and we got battered by them. Not only were they an intimidating team, they had a very intimidating manager.’ There was an unspoken feeling at Pittodrie that the cup final had been won a week in advance. For weeks Hearts had looked and played like champions-elect. Their momentum seemed unstoppable and huge crowds followed them home and away as they closed in on winning the league for the first time in twenty-six years. On the last day of the season they had only to avoid defeat against Dundee and they would be champions.

  Their fans packed into Dens Park to watch history unfold. A gastro-intestinal bug had gone through the Hearts players, though, and late in the game they began to tire and struggle. With just seven minutes left Dundee scored. Celtic were beating St Mirren 5–0, enough to snatch the title on goal difference. Hearts were broken. They conceded a catastrophic second goal. At full-time their shattered players limped back into the dressing room and sat in stunned silence. On the bus back to Edinburgh several of them were in tears.

  On the same afternoon Aberdeen won 6–0 at Clydebank. Leighton said: ‘As soon as we heard Hearts had lost at Dundee we were saying, “We’re a shoo-in for the cup final”. We had eight or nine international players. We had players who’d played in Scotland-England games, World Cup games, cup finals, games to decide league titles. Hearts didn’t have any of that. They were a one-season wonder at that time. Probably the last team they would have wanted to play in the final after losing the league was Aberdeen.’

  The rebuilding of Hearts began when they reported for training on the Monday morning. Manager Alex MacDonald and his assistant, Sandy Jardine, were in the players’ faces. Loud, upbeat, encouraging. ‘Training was sharp, we were ready to go, everything was very, very positive,’ said Robertson. By the morning of the final the Hearts management had done a decent job of lifting the pall which had descended at Dens Park. What they had not considered was that Ferguson would anticipate their psychological gambit and deliberately set out to destroy it. Tommy McQueen said: ‘He got all these red roses for the buttonholes. He’d say, “You have to show the other side that this is what we do, we’re always in cup finals, this is novel to you.” We had the suits with the red roses. I think Hearts came in their tracksuits.’

  The Aberdeen bus arrived at Hampden earlier than usual, before Hearts. Ferguson told some of the players to mill around in the stadium reception area, as if waiting to distribute their complimentary tickets to friends and family. When the Hearts players arrived, they were to make a point of approaching them, shaking their hands, telling them how unlucky they had been not to win the title, how Aberdeen had been rooting for them, how it was a terrible, awful way to end their season after all that hard work. Robertson said: ‘It was about getting it right back in our heads that we’d lost the league. I only found out about it much, much later. Fergie had guys waiting to make sure the message was subtly put across. As soon we were on the pitch the rest of the squad came over to us with more of the same. “Oh boys, you were unfortunate”. That was part of his psychology. “Get it back into their heads that they’ve just lost the league title and see if it puts them on a downer”.’ Garner saw it all from the Aberdeen dug-out: ‘You could see the Hearts boys going, “Last week, last week…I thought I’d just got that out of my head”. It just absolutely did them. You could see the confidence drainin
g out of them.’

  Hewitt drilled a low shot into the corner of the Hearts net after only five minutes. At the start of the second half, Weir attacked the line, McDougall dummied his cross and Hewitt scored again. Hearts had folded: their captain, Walter Kidd, had been tormented by Weir and was sent off for throwing the ball at Cooper and then McDougall after conceding a free-kick. Stark scored again for 3–0 from another Weir cross. ‘That Hearts team should have won at Dundee,’ said Weir. ‘To go to Dens Park on the last day to be champions of Scotland: if that had been Aberdeen we wouldn’t have lost. We’d have got the job done. We gave Hearts a doing. I felt sorry for them.’

  By 1986 Aberdeen had won so much silverware that Miller had developed his own distinctive way of lifting a trophy. Most captains raised them straight above their heads with a hand on each ear of the cup. But Miller gripped a cup by the stem in his right hand and held out both arms like a Messiah before the faithful. They had won both domestic cups and gone out of the European Cup quarter-finals on away goals. They played eighteen cup ties in 1985–86 without defeat. Ferguson was entitled to his view that they would have won the domestic treble had it not been for injuries to Simpson, Weir, McDougall, Black, Hewitt and Bett at key points in the campaign. The usual formalities were observed: an open-top bus along Aberdeen’s Union Street, the cup shown off to the crowds from the balcony of the Town House, and a civic reception. But Ferguson’s mind was already on other matters. The bus parade was on Sunday; on Wednesday he was due to board a plane to Mexico with the Scotland squad. Having comfortably seen off Australia in Melbourne they were heading for the World Cup finals.