Football – Bloody Hell!

by Patrick Barclay

  George Graham found Hauge’s generosity harder to resist and, also in 1994, was discovered to have received gifts of £425,000 in connection with Arsenal’s recruitment of Jensen and the Norwegian defender Pål Lydersen. After a Premier League inquiry, Graham was sacked by Arsenal and banned from football for a year. He later managed Leeds United and Tottenham Hotspur and was generally regarded as having been unlucky in that, due to the diligence of the tax authorities in Norway and journalists both there and in England, he was caught. Because Hauge worked with quite a few clubs. By Ferguson’s testimony, he was an excellent identifier and procurer of talent.

  Nor was his gift lost to the game for long. An indefinite ban imposed by Fifa was reduced on appeal to two years and, short of putting up ‘business as usual’ signs, Hauge could hardly have appeared less devastated. It was less than two years, certainly, before another of his clients, a Norwegian forward, arrived at Old Trafford – and what a bargain Ole Gunnar Solskjær was to prove at £1.5 million.

  Ferguson had been more hesitant in assessing Hauge’s client Schmeichel than some others. Goalkeepers do not always adapt easily to the aerial buffetings of the English game and so Ferguson had him watched often by Alan Hodgkinson, the former Sheffield United and England goalkeeper who was his specialist coach at the time. ‘We must have sent Alan over about ten times to watch him playing for Brøndby or Denmark,’ said Ferguson. ‘My fear was that he couldn’t play in England. Alan said there was no doubt about it. He was a winner. He shouted and bawled at everybody. He was a real hungry bastard.’ A glimmer of self-recognition always stimulated Ferguson’s interest in a player. ‘So I went over to his house in Denmark and I could feel it in his handshake. He thrust out this massive hand. “You’ll do me,” I thought. And, after a few early problems adjusting, he was fine.’

  Ferguson was speaking at The Cliff towards the end of Schmeichel’s first season. United had just beaten Nottingham Forest 1–0 in a League Cup final whose quality, from both sides, had pleased him – whatever he thought of Clough as a person, he respected his footballing principles – and were firm favourites for the last League championship before the Premier League started. They led the table, as either they or Leeds had done since late August, with six matches to go and, at one stage in an interview I was conducting with Ferguson for the Observer, he actually talked about the title as if it were won.

  Discussing squad rotation, an art of which he was about to become the arch-exponent, he looked at a chart on the wall of his office and started counting. He stopped at seventeen. ‘Yes,’ said Ferguson, ‘seventeen players are going to get a League medal because they’ve played in fourteen matches or more.’ There was a pause. ‘If we win it, of course.’ Not one of those players got a medal. Fourteen of Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds players did. One was Strachan. But he inhabited United’s past. Another was Eric Cantona and the enigmatic Frenchman, soon to transfer to Old Trafford, was to shape United’s future more than any other player.

  Cantona had arrived at Elland Road at an opportune moment. Some said he had carried Leeds over the finishing line with his fifteen appearances, nine as what Ferguson’s old chum Craig Brown used to call a ‘cheer sub’ (a substitute who lifts the crowd, who in turn lift the players). But Ferguson’s chairman had a more convincing explanation, one which the manager shared. ‘Knocking Leeds out of both Cups lost us the League,’ Edwards declared.

  A trio of matches took place between the clubs in late December and early January, all at Elland Road with the inevitable high intensity, and, although Leeds won none (the points were shared in the League encounter), the outcome conspired to make the League Cup final the start of a season-concluding sequence of seven matches in twenty one days for Ferguson’s men. Leeds, with a much less demanding programme, took the title with a match to spare.

  Even Ferguson’s rotational skills had not been enough to keep his men as fresh as Wilkinson’s. But Ferguson had run by far his best campaign to date, the defence notably tightening as Pallister matured alongside Bruce and in front of the giant Schmeichel, and there was something approaching (but not, of course, reaching) satisfaction as he outlined his approach to squad management in the aftermath of the League Cup triumph.

  ‘You use your experience,’ he said, ‘to decide who to rest and when.’ For the September confrontation with Wimbledon, for instance, he had left out the young wingers Kanchelskis and Giggs and used Irwin only as a substitute. That had let in the dependable and combative veteran Mal Donaghy. ‘You pick the ones who can handle it physically. So by doing something tactical like that you can rest people. You can combine the two.

  ‘Sometimes you just pick the same team all the time. We had a spell like that in November and December [United were unbeaten in those months] when the players were at their peak, in full flow. Then you hit the Christmas and New Year period when the games come more frequently and the grounds change a little and you look to make changes. You check the younger players to see if there has been a draining effect on them.’

  It all seemed to have worked. Since a 4-1 home defeat by Queens Park Rangers on New Year’s Day – ‘in among all those big matches against Leeds, it got lost, like an afterthought’ – they had suffered only one further loss in the League, at Nottingham, and the mood in the squad was upbeat. Everyone wanted to play. The next match was at home to Southampton and Ferguson semi-jocularly confided: ‘I’ve told eighteen players to report to Old Trafford – and I’m hoping at least one of them cries off.’ Like most managers, he found telling people they were left out the least palatable part of the job.

  In particular he hated disappointing Donaghy. It was on Ferguson’s mind because Donaghy had just missed the League Cup final. ‘He tends to miss out on the big games,’ mused Ferguson. He had missed the FA Cup final in 1990 and, after taking part in every round up to the semi-finals, the Cup-Winners’ Cup final in 1991. ‘He’s the odd-job man,’ said Ferguson. ‘If you need somebody to sort out the plumbing, he’ll sort it. If you need somebody to fix the gas cooker, he’ll fix it. He’ll play anywhere you like and do a great job. But you can’t keep bringing him in and out. You can’t keep kicking him in the teeth.’

  The trouble, Ferguson added, was the restorative property of the big match: ‘When it comes to a Cup final, every bugger is fit.’ It was the same now that United could almost reach out and touch the title. But he wasn’t really angry that they were adding to his selection problems. ‘It’s an important time for the club and the pressure’s on,’ he said, ‘and it’s good that nobody wants to duck it.’

  Donaghy was absent as they beat Southampton through a lone goal from Kanchelskis. Nor did he play two days later at his old club, Luton, where United drew 1-1. He came on as a substitute two days after that, replacing Neil Webb during the 2-1 home defeat by Nottingham Forest that let Leeds resume the League leadership for the sixth and last time and, as the matches kept coming thick and fast and the squad showed the strain, started at West Ham, where United lost 1-0, and Liverpool, where they went down 2-0 to a club, now managed by Graeme Souness, whose decline was to be masked by success in the FA Cup final against Sunderland.

  Donaghy made his final appearance for United in a 3-1 home win over Tottenham while, over the Pennines, Leeds celebrated. In twenty League contributions that season, four as substitute, the Northern Irishman had worn six shirt numbers. Ferguson let him go to Chelsea – their manager was Ian Porterfield, who had replaced Ferguson at Aberdeen – and there Donaghy had two more Premier League seasons. Under Glenn Hoddle, who replaced Porterfield, he became marginal and missed yet another Cup final. But this was a good one to miss. Chelsea lost 4-0 to United, for whom two Cantona goals completed the Double.

  Shortly after that Donaghy travelled to Miami with Northern Ireland for a friendly against Mexico and, having made his ninety-first international appearance, retired. He was nearly thirty-seven and it had been quite a career, featuring everything from two World Cups to the frustration that comes with a manager’s nee
d to make ruthless decisions. Donaghy went back across the Irish Sea and took charge of his country’s Under-19 team. He had plenty of experience to pass on.

  Darren’s Hamstring

  Mal Donaghy left United just as Ferguson’s fulfilment approached. The club might have won only the League Cup – in the FA Cup, they were beaten on penalties by Southampton in a fourth-round replay at Old Trafford, while their attempt to keep the European Cup-Winners’ Cup was ended in the second round by Atlético Madrid, for whom Paulo Futre scored twice in a 3-0 first-leg triumph – but the League campaign convinced most observers that Ferguson was getting there.

  Indeed, two Fergusons seemed to be getting there. Young Darren was coming along quite nicely: in the reserves, mainly, though he had taken part in that end-of-season match against Tottenham. It was his ninth League appearance. He was never going to be a top player, mainly because of a lack of pace. ‘Darren was like his dad in that way,’ said a sage of the Scottish game. ‘He had reasonable technique, too. But he wasn’t as brave or aggressive as his dad.’ And none the worse for that, maybe. ‘His dad was aggressive to the point of being dirty.’

  His dad also picked the Manchester United team at the start of the fateful 1992/3 season. Alex Ferguson was never one to be embarrassed about selecting a family member. He had proved that by picking his eldest son, Mark, for Aberdeen reserves and he demonstrated it again by employing his own brother, Martin, as United’s globetrotting scout. Darren’s twin, Jason, had a season in the United youth ranks and it can safely be said that, had Cathy ever displayed a gift for the game or inclination to pursue a career in it, her husband would not have let the age-old prejudice against female participants thwart her, or him.

  But Cathy had had enough to do in bringing up those three sons. Mark did his parents proud. At the European University in Paris he obtained an MBA and became fluent in French. He then worked as an investment-fund manager for Schroder’s and Goldman Sachs, with whom he became a European champion in the same year as his father: in 1999 he was voted top European Fund Manager in the annual Reuters survey. Later he helped to found a firm whose chairman was Al Gore, the former United States Vice-President.

  The twins chose football but, while Darren played the game, Jason inhabited its fringes. He went into television production with Sky and began so promisingly that he was tipped as the eventual successor to the head of sport, Vic Wakeling. In the event that distinction went in 2009 to Barney Francis, son of the journalist and broadcaster Tony Francis, a distinguished biographer of Brian Clough. Meanwhile, Jason Ferguson had been frying other fish. He had forsaken television to become a football agent – at least until unwelcome publicity caused United to sever their connections with the Elite Sports Agency, which he helped to run, in 2004. However, Jason continued to represent his father.

  Darren, meanwhile, was coming to the end of a playing career that had peaked early. He had begun the 1992/3 season as he ended the one before – in the first team. And what an exciting time it promised to be. He was twenty and (though it may have owed much to his father’s falling out with Neil Webb towards the end of the previous season) in the side, deputising for Bryan Robson, no less. But it was hardly like for like.

  United struggled to rediscover the momentum that had so nearly brought them the title. Lee Sharpe returned from injury and the team was reshuffled. Darren, having pulled a hamstring in a Scotland Under-21 match, never played again that season. In fact his days as a regular were over because the club, thanks to Cantona, made a growth spurt. By starting fifteen matches, however, Darren had done enough to earn a Premier League championship medal, even though United’s form in those fifteen matches had been of anything but championship consistency.

  An analysis of their results shows quite starkly what had happened. United had achieved defensive solidity the previous season. To ascribe it merely to Schmeichel’s vociferous but splendidly defiant relationship with Bruce and Pallister, to state that Ferguson had reinvented his Aberdeen triangle of Leighton, McLeish and Miller, would be an over simplification and an injustice to the work of other team members, but the fact is that in 1991/2, Schmeichel’s first season, the average number of goals conceded in a match fell from 1.19 in the previous League campaign to 0.79. It was to fall a little more in 1992/3. But the big difference was at the front. Here United had been getting worse. Their goal output had fallen sharply. Ferguson had not found his catalyst (his Peter Weir, as students of Aberdeen might have put it). And here luck came to the rescue of Ferguson’s judgement.

  Ah, Cantona . . .

  Not for the first time, nor for the last, Ferguson had been casting his net wide in the transfer market, seeking a centre-forward hither and thither, trying one day for Alan Shearer, who preferred to leave Southampton for Kenny Dalglish’s new adventure at Blackburn, and the next, it seemed, for the ill-fated David Hirst of Sheffield Wednesday, whom Trevor Francis refused to sell. Eventually, after inquiring about various others, he had settled for Dion Dublin from modest Cambridge United, whose resourceful manager, John Beck, had sent a video by which Ferguson, with remarkable candour, confessed to have been swayed.

  Sad to say, Dublin broke a leg on only his sixth League appearance for United, in the midst of the run of wins that hoisted them to third. They had slipped back down the table, and been swiftly knocked out of the Uefa Cup by Torpedo Moscow on penalties, and been removed from the League Cup by Sheffield Wednesday, when Martin Edwards took the telephone call that was arguably the most important of Ferguson’s career.

  It was a Wednesday in November and Ferguson was in his chairman’s office, discussing the possibility of landing Peter Beardsley (a very different player from Dublin) from Everton. The phone rang and on the other end was Bill Fotherby, the Leeds director in charge of transfer deals, asking about Denis Irwin. After Fotherby had been rebuffed, Edwards continued to talk to him until Ferguson, apparently seized by an idea, handed over a scribbled note: ‘Ask him about Eric Cantona’. Edwards complied and Fotherby, aware that Howard Wilkinson had clashed with the Frenchman on several occasions, said business might be possible. He added that he would speak to Wilkinson and call back within an hour.

  In the thirty minutes before this momentous call came, Edwards asked Ferguson about Cantona’s reputation for tempestuousness, which had been fostered by reports of fights with team-mates as well as angry gestures to fans and, only eleven months earlier, insults delivered to the faces of the French Football Federation officials who had disciplined him, after which he had announced his retirement from the game at the age of twenty-five. Ferguson replied that Gérard Houllier, the French national team manager at the time, had recently tipped him off about Cantona, stressing that he was a far easier professional to handle than those reports might suggest – and a talent worth making allowances for.

  Houllier’s word was good enough for Ferguson. And Ferguson’s educated instinct was enough for Edwards. The deal was on and Edwards, having been asked by Fotherby for £1.3 million, worked hard to seal it for just over £1 million. Had Fotherby suspected what would ensue, he would have demanded a world record fee. Had Edwards and Ferguson known, they would have paid it. Without bothering to negotiate.

  Cantona was to make United champions that very season. He was to help them claim four titles in five seasons, two of which featured the League and FA Cup Double. So accustomed did they become to success that it was hard to credit that, when Cantona arrived, they had won only seven of seventeen League matches and lost interest in two cups.

  His first League appearance was as a substitute in a derby against Manchester City, a 2-1 win at Old Trafford, and, although he neither scored nor shone, the effect he was to have on the team can be enumerated. In those seventeen matches pre-Cantona, they had scored eighteen goals. The remaining twenty-five brought forty-nine goals. At a stroke he had doubled United’s scoring rate. The last barrier to their return to greatness under Ferguson had been removed. Or, if we are to relate the metaphor to Cantona, kicked away.r />
  Eric was always a bit of a character. A bit like Ferguson in that he refused to let a decent background calm him down. He was born and brought up on the hillside outskirts of Marseilles and enjoyed, as Ferguson had done in Govan, an upbringing that was modest but comfortable in the context of its time (Zinedine Zidane, who grew up later in the city’s Castellane district, had it much tougher). Cantona’s turbulence, like Ferguson’s, came from within.

  He loved football but had to win. Whatever the game. Once, according to a fine biography by Philippe Auclair, the enfant terrible lost at table tennis and reacted by jumping on the table so forcefully that it broke (an anecdote that might persuade the Crystal Palace supporter at whom Cantona was infamously to launch himself studs first many years later to reflect that he was lucky to escape with a fright).

  Cantona watched Olympique Marseille and, upon seeing them play Ajax, made an idol of Johan Cruyff. At fifteen he was called to Auxerre by that club’s great coach, Guy Roux – one of the few who could be compared with Ferguson in terms of one-club longevity and attention to the development of youth – but made his life no easier while progressing to the France Under-21s, who won the European Championship, and then the full national team, for which he scored on his first appearance, against West Germany.

  Even in England, which was still relatively parochial, he was noted as one of the most potent young footballers in Europe. And those who had scrutinised him knew he had a physique that could cope with the rigours of the English game. As Auclair brilliantly put it: ‘He was gifted the ideal body to become himself.’