Ferguson was unimpressed by the treatment of Knox and retaliated by announcing that he would only allow Aberdeen to keep him for a month at the most. ‘There is no way he will be staying there to be abused.’ For Knox it was water off a duck’s back. ‘Ach, I remember they were rustling their sweetie papers, shouting “traitor”. I expected it. It was a support that was hurt and so was old Dick. He was pleading with me to stay and keep it going. But it was never going to be the same.’ Knox ended up staying for three games.
Who could replace Ferguson, though? His own recommendation was the Hearts player-assistant manager Sandy Jardine, a former team-mate from Rangers in the 1960s. But Hearts reacted to press speculation about his candidacy by giving Jardine a three-and-a-half-year contract. In 2013, another former Rangers man, Tommy McLean, revealed in his autobiography that Donald had telephoned him about the job. McLean was Motherwell manager at the time, but met Donald in Perth. Having discussed terms, he turned the offer down, for family reasons. Twelve days after Ferguson resigned his successor was revealed. Ian Porterfield had not had a job since being sacked by Sheffield United eight months earlier. He was forty and a Fifer, but unfamiliar to supporters in Scotland, except for those who remembered him scoring Sunderland’s winner in the 1973 FA Cup final against Leeds. As a manager he had done well at Rotherham and initially in Sheffield, but he was no Alex Ferguson. ‘He has got all the qualities we were looking for,’ director Ian Donald told the press. ‘Ian has a different approach and after the success we have had we felt a new broom might be the best option.’
Porterfield was quietly delighted. ‘Alex is a super manager and he’s done a wonderful job. But I am my own man and I am ready to follow his achievements. I would place this club among the top eight in Great Britain. This club is built on the same lines as Liverpool.’ Porterfield was a good man, easygoing and likeable. Aberdeen finished fourth under him, one place higher than Ferguson had left them, and fourth again in 1987–88, his first full season. He signed Charlie Nicholas from Arsenal having initially telephoned George Graham to inquire about a teenager called Paul Merson. He also tried to sign a young Matthew Le Tissier during his first season at Southampton. Some Aberdeen supporters put on a brave face. One wrote to the Green Final: ‘The more sober personality of Ian can do the Dons a lot of good. After eight years of the overpowering cult of Alex Ferguson things may change a lot at Pittodrie and not necessarily for the worse.’ A spokesman for the Association of Aberdeen Supporters’ Clubs said: ‘We must remember that it is the players on the park who actually earn the results. After all, how many goals did Alex Ferguson score for Aberdeen? How many world-class saves did Archie Knox make?’
Few took the change harder than the players who had been with Ferguson the longest. They were used to work, intensity, focus and fearsome tirades when standards slipped. Porterfield’s approach was easy-osey and gentle. He was the Anti-Fergie. Neil Simpson said: ‘The standards weren’t the same. Fergie was one extreme and Porterfield was the other. It was a helluva clash of styles. There were a lot of draws under Porterfield. He would go, “Well, that’s a point more than we had at three o’clock”. Fergie would have gone mental.’
Replacing Ferguson was impossible. After eighteen months Porterfield resigned for personal reasons. If there had been early signs of Aberdeen’s decline in Ferguson’s final months, the process quickened under Porterfield and gradually snowballed under nearly all of his successors at Pittodrie, Gothenburg heroes Willie Miller and Mark McGhee among them. At the end of 2013, exactly thirty years after their triumph in the Super Cup allowed Aberdeen to claim they were the best team in Europe, Uefa ranked them 290th.
The North-East mourned Ferguson, of course, but for a club like Aberdeen the truly irreplaceable loss was not the man, it was the era. All the factors which elevated them in the late 1970s and early 1980s lost their value as football evolved into a new age shaped by rampant commercialism, massive broadcasting deals and players’ freedom of contract. In the summer of 1986 English football signed a television deal for the rights to live coverage of its best games: the deal was worth £6.2 million. A decade later the same rights were sold for £670 million. In every major football nation serious money began to flow towards a select group of bigger clubs while the rest were marginalised. Aberdeen had been able to pay competitive transfer fees and wages, and to keep outstanding players and an extraordinary manager for more than eight years. By the mid-1990s they were hopelessly outmuscled, too small to survive as a competitive force and excluded from the emerging elite, just as their old sparring partners Ipswich, Hamburg and even Liverpool were to varying degrees. Now the game’s true giants, clubs with long pedigrees and international brands like Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, prospered. And so did Manchester United under Alex Ferguson.
In Scotland, in 1986, the shape of things to come was already apparent. Souness’s arrival began a near-decade-long Rangers monopoly over the Scottish game, fuelled by massive sponsorship, commercial incomes and season-ticket sales. Eventually Celtic hauled themselves level and once again Scotland’s list of league champions resumed the dull rhythm–Rangers-Celtic-Rangers-Celtic-Rangers-Celtic–it had maintained until Aberdeen broke the sequence in 1980. Ferguson’s league win in 1985 remains the last by any non-Old Firm club. In the 1990s the directors at Pittodrie saddled the club with major debts to replace the old Beach End with a new stand and gambled on some comparatively expensive signings, without an improvement in the Dons’ fortunes. Lower and lower league finishes were posted until eventually they hit bottom in 2000. In any other season that would have meant the club’s first ever relegation, but issues around league reconstruction spared them.
Dick Donald died in 2003 and the incomparable Teddy Scott passed away in 2012. When Aberdeen collapsed to a horrific 9–0 defeat against Celtic at Parkhead in 2010 the score was so poignant it made headlines across the international media. The New York Times carried a column about the result under the headline FOR SCOTTISH CLUB, A CRUEL DECLINE; the names of Gothenburg, Real Madrid and Ferguson were mentioned in the first five paragraphs.
When Ferguson moved to United he vowed not to poach any of his old players, only to be irritated when Joe Miller was sold to Celtic without Aberdeen giving him first refusal. From then on he regarded Pittodrie as fair game and tried to sign Alex McLeish before taking Jim Leighton to Old Trafford in 1988. The relationship between those two fractured beyond repair when Ferguson dropped Leighton for the FA Cup final replay against Crystal Palace in 1990. Gordon Strachan and Mark McGhee later fell out of favour with Ferguson after moving into management, but only Joe Harper and Leighton are irreconcilably estranged from him. Leighton said: ‘I’m happy to speak about Fergie. He won’t mention me. We’ve done Gothenburg twenty-fifth anniversary events, thirtieth anniversaries, he’s either there or he’s not, he does interviews or DVDs or whatever, and there’s only certain of the boys who get mentioned. Some of the boys have said to me, “Did you actually play in that team?” He’ll say, “Alex and Willie were brilliant at the back, the defence was magnificent.” And then he’ll mention midfield and Gordon won’t get a mention. And up front Eric and Mark won’t get a mention. It’s a team with holes in it! But everybody played their part along the way: Ally MacLeod, Billy McNeill and then Fergie took it to a different level. We wouldn’t have done it without someone like him leading the team.’
Aberdeen’s decline pained Ferguson from afar. He took Manchester United to Pittodrie for friendlies and testimonials in 1991, 1999, 2008 and 2012 and contributed to numerous official club books and DVDs. Aberdeen’s retreat into mediocrity only heightened the nostalgia for the years Ferguson gave them. When he promoted his 2013 autobiography the tickets for an event in Aberdeen under the billing ‘In Conversation with Sir Alex Ferguson’ sold out within thirty minutes of going on sale. Most of the audience were old enough to have sat in the Beach End in the mid-1980s. Ferguson’s return allowed them to revel in the achievements of a team who have stood the test of time. S
trachan said: ‘I always remembered us being fit and organised and having drive, but there was more to it than that. That team could play any game, anytime, anywhere. They were like a four-wheel-drive Range Rover. They could handle anything.’
Aberdeen’s peak came between 1982 and 1984. How would the team who triumphed at Gothenburg have fared in the European Cup? Certainly they were stronger than the Dundee United team who reached the semi-finals in 1984. Leighton commented: ‘I’m not saying we would have won it, but it would have been nice to have had a crack at it. When we got into the European Cup the following season the team wasn’t the same. We’d lost Gordon, we’d lost Rougvie, we’d lost McGhee. We had brought in good players but it wasn’t that team.’ It is an intriguing ‘what if’. Ferguson’s teams at Pittodrie were every bit as reflective of his football ethos as all those who landed thirteen league titles and two European Cups at Old Trafford. If things had been different he might have lain his hands on the European Cup fifteen years earlier.
When interviewed for Aberdeen’s official centenary book in 2003, Ferguson looked back warmly on his years in the North-East. ‘There is no doubt that Aberdeen made me as a manager. I keep a very special place in my heart for Pittodrie. I have to say that the chemistry which brought together that particular talent and character might turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime happening.’ Govan made the man and Aberdeen made the manager. It was while he was ruling Pittodrie that Ferguson lost his father, saw his mentor Jock Stein die in Cardiff and learned that his mother had the lung cancer which would claim her life within a few weeks of his move to Old Trafford. It was a period during which he saw his sons Mark, Darren and Jason go through their formative years at school, where Cathy felt so at home that it was a wrench for her to move the family south, and where he made deep and lasting friendships which endure to this day. Some of those relationships were with the players who helped him make Aberdeen great. Willie Miller, Alex McLeish and Stuart Kennedy have stayed in regular contact with their old boss. The likes of Bobby Clark, Neil Simpson, Neale Cooper, John McMaster and Peter Weir see him now and again. Plenty of others have his number stored in their phones. Throughout his 26-year tenure at Manchester United there was an open door policy for his Aberdeen boys. Very few of them will hear a bad word said about him.
Aberdeen was the prototype for United. A club where he had to prove himself before establishing a benign dictatorship. A club with boardroom stability and absolute trust between manager and directors. A club committed to finding and shaping its own young players to Ferguson’s specifications. A team built around a back four, a formidable central defence and an outstanding captain who was the embodiment of Ferguson’s own intolerant hunger out on the pitch. A style based on strength, intensity, width and relentless attacking. An attitude built on character, spirit, aggression, fearlessness and ambition. A club where Ferguson became the greatest, most successful manager they had ever known. He knocked Rangers and Celtic off their perch in Scotland long before Liverpool and all the others were knocked off theirs in England.
When Alex Ferguson called it a day and retired in 2013, the BBC presented him with a special award at the Sports Personality of the Year ceremony. ‘After a successful eight years at Aberdeen…’ said host Gary Lineker, before lingering on all the subsequent successes in Manchester. Seven words? To span the battles and the glories of Pittodrie, Hampden, Parkhead and Ibrox? To do justice to the clashes with Liverpool, Ipswich, Hamburg and Bayern Munich? To cover Gothenburg? There was a time when Lineker would have received a phone call about that. From a furious young Glaswegian with something to say about anti-Aberdeen bias.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Around one hundred people played a part in Fergie Rises. There is a line in the book where Archie Knox describes his managerial partnership with Alex Ferguson as ‘bad cop-bad cop’. Sam Harrison at Aurum and Martin Smith took on those roles in the editing process, wielding a literary hairdryer and a baseball bat. The end result was the same as it was at Pittodrie in the 1980s: a better end product. Any changes they suggested were shrewd and insightful, and their skill, judgment and enthusiasm were hugely appreciated. Thanks to all at Aurum. Charlotte Coulthard’s patient research and selection of pictures enhanced the book enormously. Without the initial cheerful nagging of agent Mark ‘Stan’ Stanton it would not have happened in the first place. It all feels worth it now. Thanks to Dave Innes, who helped at the very beginning and at the end, and whose ‘Doug Rougvie Is Innocent’ T-shirt inspired a chapter title. Mark McGhee’s help and advice were highly valued. To John McMaster, thanks for putting a Gothenburg medal in my hand.
For one reason or another, a debt is owed to all of the following: George Adams, Douglas Alexander, Charlie Allan, Keith Anderson, Ian Angus, Eamonn Bannon, David Begg, Dougie Bell, Raman Bhardwaj, Eric Black, Alan Brazil, Darryl Broadfoot, Jock Brown, Terry Butcher, Brian Campbell, Bobby Clark, Charlie Connelly, Robert Connor, Kersten Constanze, Neale Cooper, Steve Cowan, Jim Duffy, Tom English, Alan Ferguson, Ian Fleming, Willie Garner, Chris Gavin, Frank Gilfeather, Richard Gordon, Richard Gough, Alan Grant, John Grant, Peter Grant, Bryan Gunn, Billy Hamilton, John Hewitt, Tony Higgins, Brian Irvine, Thomas Jordan, Stuart Kennedy, Archie Knox, Jim Leighton, Craig Levein, David Lindholm, Dave Macdermid, Kenny MacDonald, Archie Macpherson, Walker McCall, Ally McCoist, John McGarry, Brian McGinlay, Derek McGregor, Tommy McIntyre, Dave McKinnon, Stewart McKimmie, Alex McLeish, Jackie McNamara Senior, Dave McPherson, Tommy McQueen, Maurice Malpas, Joe Miller, Willie Miller, Johnny Metgod, Steve Morgan, Pat Nevin, Charlie Nicholas, Jonathan Northcroft, Malcolm Panton, Ian Paul, Ian Porteous, Davie Provan, Derek Rae, Ian Redford, Harry Reid, David Robertson, John Robertson, Doug Rougvie, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Neil Sargent, Ron Scott, Neil Simpson, Gordon Smith, Kenny Smith, Walter Smith, Billy Stark, Danny Stewart, Kevin Stirling, Gordon Strachan, Dom Sullivan, Ian Taggart, Peter Weir, Chick Young, and the staff at Central Library, Aberdeen, and The Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Sincere apologies to anyone omitted from the list due to forgetfulness. To Donald from Glenlivet and Ruby from Torry, thank you for the Dons and for absolutely everything. What great fun we had. Thanks to Sharon, Tom and Charlie, for putting up with all of this. Boys, maybe one day you will read this and finally believe me: they really did beat Real Madrid in what you pair call ‘the olden days’.
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