The press conference finishes abruptly and he is still muttering about it as he marches to the door. ‘Not interested! Not interested!’
The Evening News has a tough time with Ferguson. Most football managers regard the local newspaper correspondent as a confidant and ally, granting him or her special treatment. But the Evening News is not afforded anything like the same access at United that they get at Manchester City, or that other regional newspapers are allowed at their respective clubs.
Ferguson’s opinion of the Evening News has never fully recovered since the newspaper conducted a phone-in poll in 1995 asking whether he should resign. The club was going through a difficult period in the league and Ferguson had expected more support because of the preferential treatment he’d given to David Meek, the newspaper’s United correspondent at the time. Ferguson thought it was a kick in the teeth and the Evening News has suffered ever since. ‘I don’t think our local paper does us any favours,’ he said once, ‘so I’m reluctant to do it any in return.’
The irony is that Ferguson’s relationship with Meek was strengthened by what happened. ‘He was having a hard time and the majority of people who responded to the poll said he should be fired,’ Meek recalls. ‘The figures were presented to me to write the story but my view was that he didn’t deserve to be sacked, so I questioned how many Manchester City supporters had voted and how many United fans simply couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone because they were happy with him in charge. I presented it as an overwhelming vote of confidence and, in his eyes, that cemented me as a Fergie man. I’d proved to him I wasn’t against him. You have to do that with Alex, because he can be implacable if he thinks he has an enemy.’
Meek, who is still on the scene in a freelance capacity, remains that rare thing: a journalist whom Ferguson admires. He worked for the Evening News for nearly forty years, from the Munich air crash in 1958, and he has gradually become an unofficial extension of the club’s PR department. He and Ferguson have had a few barneys in their time. Ferguson gave him an almighty dressing down one Christmas Eve. ‘Happy bloody Christmas,’ Meek shouted back. Yet he never writes anything about Ferguson that could be construed as critical. He ghostwrites Ferguson’s programme notes, collaborates with him on books and frequently rails against his critics in the fanzine/internet world.
Ferguson, in turn, shows Meek a side of his personality that the rest of us glimpse only occasionally. He gives him his phone numbers and is always available. Meek, he says, is ‘entirely trustworthy’ and ‘part of the fabric of the club’.
SQUEAKY-BUM TIME
14.4.06
Manchester United 0
Sunderland 0
It is that point of the season when newspapers start referring to ‘squeaky-bum time’. It was 2003 when we first used this odd little phrase and, to our disbelief, it is now recycled every Easter. Disbelief because the truth – the awful truth – is that we don’t know for certain that Ferguson ever said it.
We’d been interviewing him during one of those epic title battles with Arsenal. Ferguson was using the media to unnerve Arsène Wenger, questioning whether Arsenal’s players had the mental strength to hold out, and when we played back the tape to transcribe his quotes we couldn’t make out whether he had called it ‘squeaky-bum time’ or ‘squeeze-your-bum time’. He speaks in a drawling rasp, with that broad Glaswegian accent, and there are times when it sounds as though he is talking in a different language. So we ended up taking a vote. Four went for squeaky-bum, three thought it was squeeze-your-bum and two could not decide.
The majority ruled and ‘squeaky-bum time’ is now an accepted part of the football lexicon. Other managers have started using it as if it is an everyday phrase and it has even reached the Collins English Dictionary, where it is defined as ‘the tense final stages of a league competition, especially from the point of view of the leaders’.
It is difficult to imagine that Jose Mourinho’s bum is very squeaky right now, and we certainly aren’t going to find out this season. United have been on a good run of form recently but any hope of catching Chelsea disappears tonight. The gap has come down to six points, having been eighteen at one stage, but United have only four games left and if they were going to stand any chance of making up the difference they really had to beat Sunderland, the Premiership’s bottom club. Chelsea have two games in hand and in Ferguson’s words, it is the ‘killer blow’.
Sunderland are a very poor side. They have had the chilly fingers of relegation around their throat all season, with only eleven points from thirty-two games. They have scored twenty-one goals and conceded fifty-seven and Ferguson describes them, a little uncharitably, as possibly the worst team there has ever been in the Premiership. But when the final whistle goes they have deserved their point and might even have nicked it with a late winner. The Sunderland fans can be heard in the corner, while Ferguson looks dead on his feet. ‘We need a miracle now,’ he says. ‘We won’t give up but it’s going to take a miracle.’
A manager in his position cannot accept defeat. Deep down, though, Ferguson knows it is all over. All that is left now are the formalities, with one last twist of the dagger when United go to Stamford Bridge in their final away match of the season. Either Chelsea will have won the title by then, or possibly they will clinch it against United. Either way, the trophy will be presented at the final whistle and for Ferguson, it doesn’t get much worse than that. This is one party to which he doesn’t want an invitation.
BLUE IS THE COLOUR
30.4.06
Chelsea 3
Manchester United 3
It has been a long, difficult season and Ferguson’s eyes are red-rimmed as he leaves Stamford Bridge. The worry lines jump out of his face, the bags beneath his eyes are even more super-sized than usual. There is only a week of the season left and then he is off for a five-week holiday with Cathy on the French Riviera. He looks as though he needs it.
He handles himself with dignity. An upright back, a thousand-yard stare. The trophy is adorned with blue and white ribbons and, as far as Ferguson is concerned, out of reach. He grits his teeth and puts on his war face, determined not to be a sour loser. He makes a point of shaking Mourinho’s hand as well as those of all the Chelsea backroom staff, and he is generous in his praise: ‘It is not easy winning the league and Chelsea deserve it. They don’t lose games at home and their record this season has been sensational. I would like to congratulate them because they are worthy champions.’
But he is long gone by the time the Chelsea players embark on the champions’ lap of honour, hugging and high-fiving and taking turns to give each other piggybacks. The Chelsea Pensioners form a guard of honour, Mourinho crosses his heart and Stamford Bridge rocks to the sound of 40,000 gloating Cockney voices.
Who the fuck are Man United?
Who the fuck are Man United?
Who the fuck are Man United?
As the Blues go marching on, on, on.
There is a sad, mournful look about Ferguson as he leaves the stadium. A street party is under way – lots of bare-chested blokes swigging plastic cups of beer, sprawled all over the pavements – and he has a lot to think about as the bus inches its way through the celebrating throngs. What has gone wrong, what needs to be put right, who should stay and who has to go.
United have some great players, but a smattering of world-class talent isn’t always enough. Too often this season their tactics, especially away from home, have been no more refined than getting the ball to Rooney and hoping he does something to win the game. Rooney is certain to win the club’s Player of the Season award, but he cannot always be expected to scintillate on demand. You cannot operate a team to rely solely on one player, however brilliant that individual might be.
If Ferguson is going to wipe that smile from Mourinho’s face there will have to be changes. And they might have to be significant changes, because maybe only Rooney, Ronaldo, Giggs, Neville and Van der Sar can legitimately argue that they have played
to their best form throughout the season. Scholes is exempt, having missed half the campaign with an eye problem, and Van Nistelrooy’s confidence has not been helped by being left out of the team. Others, though, will reflect on a difficult year. Ferdinand’s form has been so erratic that he lost his England place at one stage. Park has been in and out of the team, unable to make a serious impact. The same applies to Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic, who were signed in January for a combined £11 million. Before his injury, Smith had taken over Keane’s role, and that is exactly what he looked: a centre-forward playing in midfield. Heinze has been badly missed because Silvestre, once a mainstay in defence, is no longer good enough for the highest level.
As for Ferguson, he deserves better than to be lambasted. Equally, though, there have been times when he has sounded like the captain of the Titanic, waving away all warnings and ordering full speed ahead. He has described it as a ‘transitional period’ and he likes to argue that the current side is a young one lacking maturity and experience. Yet anyone with a calculator would know that is simply not true. The average age is older than that of the 1999 team and the only two players below the age of twenty-four, Rooney and Ronaldo, are established internationals with experience of major tournaments.
The truth is that United are ending the season in no-man’s-land: too good for the vast majority of the Premiership, yet no longer strong enough to challenge for the league or the European Cup. In 1991, Nick Hornby wrote in Fever Pitch that fans of Manchester United were ‘imbued with frustrated grandeur’ and now, after a period of great joy and success, Old Trafford is once again engulfed in a grey blanket of negativity. Chelsea have the title sewn up, Liverpool are in the FA Cup final and when Arsenal and Barcelona walk out on to the Stade de France pitch for the Champions League final next month it will have been seven long years since United triumphed in Europe. It’s four since the club even made the semi-finals.
The answer is not to get rid of Ferguson – the Glazers would be foolish if they even thought of it. True, Ferguson might not be the autocratic presence he once was, and, yes, he has made a bit of a pig’s ear of this season. But he still has the complete respect of the players. And the point is: who could do a better job? That is the question the Glazers have to ask themselves. Because when a man with Ferguson’s force of personality is involved, finding someone who is equipped to take the job and able to shift the club forward will be fiendishly difficult.
This might be Ferguson’s annus horribilis but he is still powerful enough to control great swathes of the Old Trafford workforce. He can still silence a room when he walks through the door and, when he does finally retire, whoever fills his shoes will have to possess unbreakable self-belief. Every trophy, every memorable achievement, every European campaign will be set against his predecessor’s medal count. Every defeat or substandard performance will be greeted with sniping that he is ‘not a patch on the last guy’. A new appointment will have to work against a backdrop of endless comparisons, in a stadium lined with photographs of Ferguson’s greatest achievements. History has shown that it will require a man of exceptional qualities, if such a man exists. Take Nottingham Forest, post-Brian Clough. ‘All I ever got was the history of the club rammed down my throat,’ Joe Kinnear once said, reflecting on what it was like to be Clough’s seventh successor. ‘I couldn’t fart without someone bringing up the European Cups he won.’
All that matters to Ferguson is going out on a high, whether it is in two years, five years or ten years, and that can mean one of only two things: recapturing the Premiership or the European Cup. Either achievement has seemed unreachable this season and will continue to be so unless he makes some courageous decisions.
His career has been distinguished by clear thinking and instinctive decision-making, but if one thing has badly let United down it is the absence, since Keane, of a truly exceptional midfield. Once, the quartet was Beckham, Keane, Scholes and Giggs. Ferguson must realise he will not outdo Abramovich’s millions by packing his midfield with players such as Fletcher, O’Shea, Smith and Richardson. He has even tried Ferdinand, a centre-half, and Rooney, a centre-forward. Both times the experiment predictably failed.
Perhaps Scholes can come back next season and show he is still a player of authentic brilliance, the most stylish English midfielder of his generation. Ronaldo has demonstrated that he may be on the point of making a significant mark. Giggs is still a beautifully ingenious player and Park may find his second season easier. But the problem is that Chelsea have the money and the players to dominate English football for years to come. Some people think what Chelsea are doing is great, others think it is boring. But nobody questions the inevitability of it. Chelsea are that much better, that much richer, that much more powerful.
Twelve minutes from the end, Rooney goes down under a heavy tackle and breaks a bone in his foot. He is carried away on a stretcher and, after that, United lose hope. Chelsea are already 3–0 ahead, winning from the fourth minute, and they start to showboat, juggling with the ball, keeping possession, lapping up the crowd’s approval. Little flicks here, little flicks there. The fans start the celebrations early, chanting ‘Olé’ whenever a player in a blue shirt touches the ball, thundering ‘Easy, easy, easy’ in the manner of the old wrestling chant. It is a party. Ferguson watches grimly from the sidelines, hardly uttering a word.
Mourinho comes over to the United dugout with two minutes to play to offer an outstretched arm. Ferguson will not have liked that when the game is still going on, but he chooses not to make a scene and shakes hands respectfully. He stays on his feet to wait for the final whistle, raises a dutiful arm in the direction of the United fans and then he is down the tunnel and out of sight. The rest, he does not want to see.
RUUD VAN NISTELROOY
7.5.06
Manchester United 4
Charlton Athletic 0
In happier times, the final game of the season at Old Trafford would be a riot of flags, banners and general redness. The players’ wives would totter on to the pitch after the final whistle. Ferguson would walk out to the centre circle, take the microphone and thank the fans for their support. The trophies would be paraded on a lap of honour and the players’ kids would join them on the pitch for a kick-about.
Not this year. United have ended the season as football’s equivalent of the Rolling Stones. Struggling to find their old magic, a little frayed round the edges. No satisfaction. Everybody’s tired, looking forward to a break. Not only tired physically, but emotionally. There is nobody milling about on Sir Matt Busby Way trying to blag a ticket. All the touts are in position but business is slow. The season is drifting into anticlimax and there are other, more significant stories going on elsewhere. Relegations, promotions, Arsenal’s final game at Highbury, the battle for the fourth Champions League spot. For once, Old Trafford isn’t the place to be.
And yet they still manage to make News at Ten.
Ferguson has asked the players to arrive early for a team meeting and a spot of lunch. When they start drifting in he is waiting for Ruud Van Nistelrooy. There is an exchange of words and Van Nistelrooy is told, in no uncertain terms, to go home. On his way out he passes the other players.
‘Good luck with the match,’ he says. ‘I’m off.’ The whole thing has taken no more than five minutes.
When the rumours start to filter through to the pressroom Van Nistelrooy is already at Manchester airport, booked on the first flight to Amsterdam. The team-sheets are handed out forty-five minutes before kick-off and Giuseppe Rossi, a teenager from the reserves, is playing in attack. A one-line statement is passed around to say Van Nistelrooy has left the stadium and won’t be coming back. Keane has already been fed to the sharks and now it is Van Nistelrooy’s turn. Today, in this stadium, we know it is all over for him.
Old Trafford is in a state of shock when the game gets under way. The news spreads like a Mexican wave and for long spells the fans hardly seem to be paying attention to what is happening on the pitch. Winni
ng confirms second place above Liverpool and it is Alan Curbishley’s farewell match after fifteen years as Charlton’s manager, but there is only one point of discussion in the stands. The supporters are barely able to take it in.
First Keane, now Van Nistelrooy. Who next?
The mood at the final whistle is strange: polite applause mingled with confusion and disillusionment and a desire to get a proper explanation. Yet none is forthcoming. Ferguson, as always, ignores the post-match press conference, while on MUTV all he offers is a couple of ambiguous sentences. ‘There have been a couple of issues that have concerned me in terms of the team spirit,’ he says. ‘It was such an important day I wanted everyone to be together and because of that I felt Ruud should be left out. But that’s all I want to say about it at the moment.’
His voice is hoarse, but his words are clear and emphatic. He says he will discuss it with the club’s directors and he briefly refers to an incident in training. We later find out that Van Nistelrooy had a shoving match with Ronaldo because he hadn’t passed him the ball. Van Nistelrooy is twenty-nine, Ronaldo twenty-one. A manager has to respond to something like that and Ferguson chose to side with Ronaldo.
So much doesn’t make sense. It was obvious that there would have to be changes, but nobody thought the clearout would begin with the club’s most prolific striker since Denis Law. Van Nistelrooy has been a truly great player for Manchester United. Only eight strikers in the club’s history have scored 150 times or more and he did it in just five seasons. Clinical finishing, anticipation, the nerve of a bomb-disposal expert. His goals in Europe alone have repaid his £19 million transfer fee. Yet it is this one-man goal machine – not Richardson or Fletcher or O’Shea or any of the other United players who would struggle to get on Chelsea’s bench – who has been sacrificed.
This is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius Page 15