Fergie Rises

by Michael Grant

  Pittodrie was full again for the second leg. By now Aberdeen’s home support had forgotten how it felt to be denied in Europe. But Porto’s visit was different and Ferguson knew exactly how dangerous they would be. Before the game he sounded almost Churchillian: ‘It will require the greatest effort any and all players in the team have ever made in the cause to put this club on the map.’ Fog enveloped the stadium during the game and its effect was deadening. Pittodrie was packed, but ghostly and quiet. Fans could hear the players’ shouts. Aberdeen played without urgency. With fifteen minutes left they gave the ball away and Vermelhinho chipped Leighton to give Porto a late and unassailable lead. Whatever Pittodrie electricity Aberdeen had tapped into against Ipswich, Hamburg and Bayern Munich had drained away. McGhee said: ‘Those European games used to give you an edge. When I ran out of the tunnel I would do a sprint and jump as if heading a ball. On nights like Bayern you felt like you could jump over the stand. But I ran out against Porto and felt like my boots were full of lead. That energy and that explosiveness just wasn’t there. There was something missing. The bubble had burst. It wasn’t just me. Willie said he felt it before the game, too. It was as if we had run our course.’ Porto, though, were outstanding. Six of their team at Pittodrie were still playing when they won the European Cup in 1987. Ferguson thought their midfield was exceptional, though he also admitted that Aberdeen had run out of fuel. ‘Last year it was a glory, glory run when we did not even contemplate defeat. During this game, I sensed we would lose.’

  It was a bleak day for the New Firm. Dundee United had been within touching distance of the European Cup final, and Ferguson admitted he was ‘praying’ they would defend their 2–0 first-leg lead against Roma. But in an ugly, vicious atmosphere the Italians won 3–0. Despite the desperate disappointment, though, Aberdeen and United could be proud. They had, again, lasted longer in Europe than the Old Firm. Rangers had gone out of the Cup Winners’ Cup (also to Porto) in the second round and Celtic tumbled out of the Uefa Cup in the third. Aberdeen and United’s European campaigns in the 1980s ran in tandem: United reached the Uefa Cup quarter-finals in 1982 and 1983, the European Cup semi-finals in 1984 and were Uefa Cup runners-up in 1987. Maurice Malpas, the United and Scotland full-back, can remember a joke that used to do the rounds at Tannadice. ‘When all the papers’ main writers appeared to cover our European trips we’d say, “Oh, it must be the third round already…Rangers get knocked out in the first round and Celtic in the second, so the reporters start coming with us”.’

  After Ferguson’s arrival at Aberdeen the only time Celtic made an impression in Europe was in 1980, when they reached the last eight of the European Cup. Rangers had done the same the previous year and then deteriorated into a series of dreary first and second-round exits. This dismal record on the international stage mirrored their decline at home. In a sequence of seven consecutive seasons, from 1980 to 1986, Rangers never finished higher than third, never finished above Aberdeen or Celtic, and were never within ten points of whoever won the league.

  Celtic were Glasgow’s main power in the early 1980s. ‘I think we are now at the stage when Aberdeen versus Celtic, or vice-versa, has taken over from the traditional Old Firm games,’ said Ferguson, though in his 1985 autobiography, A Light in the North, he used the same line about Dundee United, writing: ‘The intensity at Aberdeen-Dundee United matches is now greater than at an Old Firm game.’ Aberdeen-Celtic games were given more flavour by the apparent tension between their managers. Initially Ferguson had to prove himself to a set of Aberdeen players who continued to admire Billy McNeill, even after he defected to Parkhead. The two men were born twenty-one months apart and were natural competitors. And neither could be mistaken for a good loser. Way back in 1969, when Ferguson was made the scapegoat for Celtic’s opening goal in the cup final, McNeill had scored it. When their teams clashed the pair regularly descended into shouting matches.

  In matches against Aberdeen, both United and Celtic had to contend with Ferguson’s predisposition to intensity. He revelled in it. If there was no intensity, he would create it. By 1984 he had built a team who could comfortably handle anything thrown at them. Talented, attractive sides with pretensions to take on the Old Firm had risen periodically in Scottish football. None had been able to maintain a sustained challenge by complementing skill with swaggering confidence and insatiable hunger for battle. For all the similarities between Ferguson and Jim McLean, and their teams, it was these mental characteristics that elevated Aberdeen above United and made them true contenders.

  The Celtic winger, Davie Provan, faced both teams in their prime. ‘You had kicking teams who couldn’t play, and you had teams who could play but couldn’t kick. Dundee United come to mind. United could play but they weren’t nasty with it. Aberdeen could play and they could be nasty as well. They had both elements that you need. United weren’t going to go over the top or try to do you. It was different against Aberdeen. If Paul Hegarty or David Narey fouled you in a United game they would hold out a hand to pull you back up. If Miller or McLeish fouled you they’d stand on your fingers on the grass.’ The Celtic players heard rumours that even Black, the baby-faced striker, was encouraged to lead with his elbows when jumping for high balls, just to make defenders’ lives difficult. They believed them.

  Between 1980 and 1983 Ferguson had admired, but felt threatened by, the exhilarating young Celtic striker Charlie Nicholas. Good looks and a playboy image gave Nicholas an air of early celebrity, but his talent was the real thing. He had great control and balance, was a prolific finisher and played with terrific flair. Nicholas quickly formed the opinion that Aberdeen’s players were instructed by their manager to stop him by any means necessary. One of the chapters in Nicholas’s 1986 autobiography was titled: ‘The Time I Hated Fergie.’ At Pittodrie he felt they were ‘lying in wait for me’. When Celtic entered the stadium he would sit in the away dressing room, skim through the match programme and find a piece by Ferguson or Miller praising how dangerous he was. Some players would have taken that as a compliment. Nicholas knew better: he interpreted it as a warning.

  Ferguson knew his younger players were impressionable. Before a league trip to Parkhead in the 1982–83 campaign, he decided to rewire Neale Cooper’s attitude to Nicholas. The indoctrination began at training on Monday. Ferguson and Archie Knox would shout ‘Cooper’ and he was told to shout back ‘Nicholas’. He was force-fed a diet of ‘Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas. Everyone loves Nicholas’. ‘Nicholas likes to drop into the middle.’ ‘Nicholas is the guy you have to be tight on.’ By the Saturday he had endured a week of it. Celtic took the kick-off, Frank McGarvey touched it to Nicholas and…smash! Cooper hit him in the centre-circle at roughly the same time as the ball left it. Cooper said: ‘It’s still one of the quickest tackles ever. It had been like a build-up in the week before. The manager had me in most days. He drilled it into me. I was like a man possessed. I caught Charlie on the knee. It wasn’t a good tackle. The Celtic boys were going mental, Roy Aitken, Billy McNeill in the dug-out shouting and swearing. I just looked across to the manager and he’s giving me big thumbs up, both hands.’

  Nicholas also remembers it well: ‘It wasn’t the hardest tackle I ever received but it was just so fast. You could sense a real anger in the crowd because it was so quick. It was the obviousness of it: he was coming to nail me. It was just a take-out, American Football stuff.’ Ferguson’s aim was not that Cooper should maim or seriously hurt Nicholas, just ‘give him a dull one’. Nicholas recovered to open the scoring, but Aberdeen won 3–1. Cooper was not even booked. Ferguson took great pride in the low number of yellow and red cards Aberdeen collected, and especially that they went through the marathon 1982–83 campaign without a single suspension. Players would be fined if they were booked, even if the referee had been harsh or simply wrong. Even so, Ferguson wanted a team who sent out an unequivocal message: don’t mess with us. Aberdeen would not be bullied or pushed around by anyone, anywhere.

  Celtic’s
Davie Provan said: ‘There was an arrogance about them. And there was also the fact that at Celtic we found it hard to beat them. That wasn’t easy for us to accept and our resentment boiled up into a real dislike and brought several grudge games between us. The Old Firm didn’t like it, the Old Firm players didn’t like it and the Old Firm fans didn’t like it.’ There would be scuffling and shoving in the tunnel, insults flying back and forth. Bad blood would carry from one fixture to the next. And with four league games a season, and the possibility of Scottish Cup and League Cup ties, there were numerous opportunities for things to flare up. McGhee said: ‘We were never intimidated. Never. Quite the opposite. I remember big Roy Aitken saying that they used to say we were on drugs. They’d stand in the tunnel and look at us, guys like Rougvie, nae teeth, in your face, kicking the walls, twitching.’ Provan added: ‘Aberdeen was “the” game. By the time you got on the pitch both teams were sky-high with adrenalin. They wanted to kill each other. It was as physical and aggressive as you will ever get on a football pitch. And Aberdeen could play. They’d come to Celtic Park and sit back, the crowd would be driving us forward and Aberdeen would just pick us off.’

  Aberdeen’s ability to get under the Old Firm’s skin extended to the fans, sometimes inciting violence. In two different games lone Celtic supporters tried to attack Gordon Strachan. The darting wee fella with ginger hair seemed to drive them up the wall. The first attempted assault happened during a 2–0 Aberdeen win at Parkhead in 1980, the second ten months later after he scored a penalty two minutes into a match at Pittodrie. The intrusions resulted in the nearest enforcers, Bell and Rougvie, springing protectively into action. McLeish said: ‘Gordon wasn’t trying to wind them up but he was definitely a focal point. When the fan ran on the pitch at wee Gordon that flicked the switch for big Dougie.’ Rougvie said: ‘I was his bodyguard. We had to protect our match-winners. If any bastard went near them we were going to give them a doing, weren’t we? We needed Strachan and Weir to win our bonuses for us.’

  When Davie Hay became Celtic manager he decided they had to get tougher with Aberdeen. He introduced the combative Peter Grant to give his midfield steel and aggression. The plan was soon apparent. As Miller tried to usher a ball back to Leighton in a typically robust Celtic game, Grant came smashing into both the goalkeeper and Cooper. Grant said: ‘Aberdeen was full-on. It was like going to war. If you booted someone, then five minutes later you knew you were getting done, because you’d done him. You were waiting. People talk about concentration so you don’t lose a goal; it used to be concentration so you didn’t lose your legs.’

  Aberdeen’s commitment to standing their ground extended to a strategy of challenging, pressurising and questioning referees. Jim Duffy, the Morton defender, remembers his startling introduction to the ploy: ‘If you tackled any of their players, by the time you got up, or the referee had approached you, you had about six of them round you. You were literally isolated. They completely surrounded you: Miller, McLeish, Rougvie, Simpson, Cooper. In your face, really aggressive, intimidating. It was like a swarm of bees. And they’re saying to the referee, “You need to make a decision here”. The ironic thing was that if anyone dished it out to them–especially to Strachan, Weir or any of the young ones–they were on you like the house Mafia. They would sort you out.’ It was not spontaneous. McGhee said: ‘We were instructed, “Claim for everything”. If the ball was going out for a throw-in you saw eleven hands going up.’ The hand likely to shoot up fastest was Willie Miller’s. It was said that if football had rugby union’s ten-yard retreat rule for dissent Miller would have spent most of his career in Norway.

  Miller would regularly approach a referee and argue forcefully that Aberdeen should be getting more protection, or had been harshly penalised, or were generally not getting the rub of the green. When Miller was in full flow, haranguing an official, it could look as though the Aberdeen captain was the man in charge. But he has never felt apologetic. Miller said: ‘My view was that Rangers and Celtic had all these fans who influenced referees so we needed something too. I would think, “This ref’s getting influenced by their fans, I’m going to do something about it.” Of course, Fergie encouraged us to apply a wee bit of pressure. You have to stand up to injustices and that’s what we did. Besides, you have to show belief when you’re going down to these places, and perhaps a little bit of arrogance.’

  In one game at Pittodrie, a linesman Ferguson was berating snapped back at him to ‘sit down’. Ferguson turned to trainer Teddy Scott: ‘Who is that?’ Scott knew the man personally: ‘That’s the Reverend Roger. He’s my minister up in Ellon.’ Ferguson said: ‘You’re not going to his church tomorrow.’

  Aberdeen’s nerveless attitude to the Old Firm and their pressurising of referees defined the force Ferguson had created. They had gained respect from other players, managers and, even if given grudgingly, many rival supporters. For Aberdeen’s own fans it was liberating to follow a team who had unshakable belief in themselves. There was nothing Celtic or Rangers could do to intimidate them. If this combative streak went against the Aberdonian grain, against the gentle nature of men like directors Dick Donald and Chris Anderson, they said nothing about it. Ferguson had reinvented Aberdeen as the equal of the very best Old Firm teams in history, and that meant they were consistent winners.

  Dundee United had a fine side, but they did not have a Willie Miller. Paul Hegarty and David Narey, their centre-halves, were quiet and undemonstrative. And despite his own thunderous temper Jim McLean did not approve of his players mobbing a referee. Ferguson did not mind, though, and in the final game of the 1983–84 campaign the tactic would lead to renewed animosity at the season’s showpiece occasion.

  Aberdeen had reached their third consecutive Scottish Cup final. This time Celtic, not Rangers, awaited them. In the twenty minutes before kick-off referee Bob Valentine walked into the dressing rooms and warned both teams that he had been ordered to clamp down on indiscipline by SFA secretary Ernie Walker. After twenty-three minutes Aberdeen took the lead. Black scored a goal like the one he put away in Gothenburg: Strachan corner, McLeish header and a loose ball converted in the goalmouth. Celtic claimed Black was offside, but the real controversy came seven minutes before half-time. McGhee broke into space and was running between the halfway line and the penalty area when Roy Aitken ran square across and brought him crashing down. McGhee was not hurt but took a bang on his elbow and lay on the ground until the muscle relaxed. He looked up to see Valentine holding a red card.

  Provan said: ‘I remember Gordon Strachan being in the referee’s face to get Roy sent off. Wee Gordon had to get his bit in.’ Valentine was an experienced and accomplished referee. Whether he was influenced or not, Aitken became the first player sent off in a Scottish Cup final since 1929.

  Celtic responded brilliantly. They regrouped and played with terrific heart before equalising through Paul McStay four minutes from the end. There were no histrionics from Ferguson this time, no vilification of his players. They still had the extra man and though Celtic had taken the final into another half-hour the Glasgow team had nothing left in their legs. Aberdeen were revitalised, and after Bell crashed a shot off the post Strachan crossed and McGhee volleyed home the winner. Not since Rangers in 1950 had a team completed three straight Scottish Cup victories. To boot, Aberdeen had bagged their first league and cup double: after three years behind Celtic and Dundee United they reclaimed the league title in 1983–84. This time, there was none of the drama of the 1980 run-in. They went top of the table in October and were never supplanted. Celtic were four points behind when they went to Pittodrie on 4 February, but John Hewitt’s winning goal stretched Aberdeen’s lead to six. Ferguson thought it was the decisive result of the campaign. The twenty-one goals conceded during the season was the lowest total since the Premier Division was formed in 1975; in eighteen away games they only let in nine. As they had four years earlier, the league celebrations came in Edinburgh, this time with two games to spare after Stewa
rt McKimmie’s goal delivered a 1–0 win at Hearts on 2 May. When he spoke to reporters the following day Ferguson was relaxed, happily pondering what the seasons ahead held in store: ‘A European Cup final with Liverpool would be ideal.’

  The New Firm was in its pomp. The last time two non-Old Firm clubs had won consecutive Scottish titles was eighty years earlier, when Hibs and Third Lanark did so in 1903 and 1904. Now Dundee United and Aberdeen had cemented Scottish football’s new order. Ferguson still indoctrinated his players with the mantra that the Glasgow press was biased against them, but in truth the praise for both east coast clubs was generous. Ferguson and Jim McLean were colourful and opinionated, and their sides played admirable, entertaining, winning football. The Glasgow-based newspapers held them up as the standard to which Celtic and struggling Rangers should aspire. The Old Firm still drew the country’s biggest average crowds, but only just. Rangers averaged 21,996 for league games in 1983–84, Celtic 18,390, Aberdeen 17,138 and Dundee United 10,894. In 1984 the newspapers had every reason to believe that Scottish football’s natural order, of unchallenged Old Firm supremacy, was a thing of the past. ‘Aberdeen’s success this time is far more commendable than when they won the premier title for the first time in 1980,’ wrote Ian Paul in the Glasgow Herald, arguing that competing on five fronts proved the depth and quality of their squad. They had been involved ‘in everything bar the Calcutta Cup’.

  Aberdeen’s magnificent campaign had yielded the Super Cup, the Scottish Premier Division and the Scottish Cup, plus runs to the semi-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup and the League Cup. It had been the most successful season in the club’s history. But surrendering the trophy won against Real Madrid still hurt. Years later Doug Rougvie was working in the oil industry. One of his colleagues told him a story from 1983, when he had been a 15-year-old fan. His father had said they should go to Gothenburg, but the boy had just started a relationship and wanted to spend time with his girl. Rougvie said: ‘The boy said, “Dad, I’m no’ going, I’ll go next year…” Back then people didn’t realise Gothenburg was a one-off. They didn’t realise there’d never be another one.’