The reality is that there are very few highly consistent players. A guy who might score a couple of goals in one game may just fire blanks in the next. Or a defender who tackles flawlessly in one outing may get a red card in the next. The sheer number of games in a season undermines this drive for consistency. In the top flight of European football, the teams play half a dozen pre-season matches, plus–depending on cup runs and European competitions–between 55 and 65 games during a season that stretches over nine months. That’s the equivalent of one game every four or five days. Also, for a team at Manchester United’s level, almost every player will be playing for their country as well: that’s another eight to ten games each season.
No matter how carefully players are trained, or how much they are cosseted, it is difficult to have all of them at peak performance for every match. I was always sparing in my use of the younger players to make sure we didn’t play them too much during their first two or three seasons. They were always raring to go but, at that stage, were still developing both physically and mentally. I also did not want them taking it for granted that they had earned a permanent place in the first team. It was good to keep them hungry. Paul Scholes, partly because of injuries, only started 38 League games in his first three seasons as a first-team player. At the other extreme, it’s difficult to rely on players reaching the twilight of their careers, because it takes them longer to recover from injury and they sometimes have recurring conditions that can sideline them for weeks at a time. In all my time at United we had a number of players who you could depend upon to be available for selection and play the majority of the games in a season. These included Steve Bruce, Denis Irwin, Brian McClair, Mark Hughes, Gary Pallister, Dwight Yorke, Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Phil Neville and Patrice Evra, during the peaks of their careers.
The task of building and maintaining a team is never done. Not only are there injuries, or the fatigue that can set in during a very long season, but you also have to deal with Father Time. There are always youngsters, in the full blush of youth, pressing to get into the first team; conversely, there are players in their mid-thirties who might have been mainstays of the club for many years but are approaching their sell-by date. This means that top-flight teams are in a perpetual state of evolution, and woe betide the manager who gets lulled into feeling that particular players can go on for ever. I was always on the lookout for new players for the first-team squad–either those who were home-grown at United (which was my strong preference) or from elsewhere. Whenever we came across a player of unusual ability, the unspoken question was whether he would serve us better than the current incumbent. This goes for a reserve goalkeeper as much as it does for a potent striker. Another exercise that I used to employ to keep myself honest was to ask myself which member of our first-team squad would be able to command a starting place with Real Madrid or AC Milan or whatever team happened to be Champions of Europe that year. That little mental exercise always illuminated our weaker spots.
When I assembled a squad, I would always try to ensure that I had half a dozen multi-purpose players who could play a variety of positions. It provides a manager with so much more flexibility, either during the course of a season if there is a plague of injuries or, for tactical reasons, during a game. Ryan Giggs, Phil Neville, Paul Scholes and John O’Shea are prime examples of that sort of a player. They could play with great distinction in four or five positions. The other virtue I prized was reliability. I wanted players who were fit to play in every game. Nobody would want to run an organisation whose top performers could only appear for work three days a week. The same goes for football teams, which is why I cherished players like Brian McClair or Denis Irwin, who between them played 1,000 games for United. They were great soldiers, although obviously without the profile of some of our household names. Mick Phelan was similar and would do anything that was asked of him. He would play in any position and would, if needs be, mark a man like a limpet mine.
Durability was another key characteristic. Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, Denis Irwin, David Beckham, Dwight Yorke, Ryan Giggs and Eric Cantona rarely ever spent extended periods out with an injury. In 1990, when Mark Hughes got injured against Liverpool, I genuinely thought he was going to be out for a month. He was back in the team ten days later. That sort of durability was a godsend to me because it widened my options and also meant that I could field teams where all the players were familiar with each other. In the 1992–93 Premier League campaign, eight players started 40 or more games in a 42-match schedule. It should be no surprise to hear that was the first year United won the League while I was manager.
I’m not exactly sure why Premier League players are more prone to injuries than their predecessors, especially since most of them are fitter and stronger than the players of 20 years ago. My suspicion is that the quality of the pitches has a lot to do with the higher injury rate. The fact that most top-notch venues now have pitches that are as smooth as the surface of a snooker table makes the game far quicker and more attractive to watch. But it also allows the players, who gain confidence from a sure footing and even surface, to hold the ball longer and also to tackle quicker and harder. So the velocity with which players collide is far greater than when I played. This makes it all the more important to have a squad that includes a healthy portion of multi-purpose players.
Some people wonder whether any organisation can survive if it is entirely composed of creative players. I suppose they worry that creativity brings its own negatives in the shape of ego and individualism. People with big egos want to win so that was never a problem for me. It is wonderful to dream of fielding 11 spectacularly creative players every Saturday, but that breaks down in practice because you have to deal with the realities of needing a solid defence to withstand attacks. You need to have balance in your team, but I always found myself drawn to the creative, attacking players. They can see things that others cannot. On a football field, they are the players who are able to penetrate opponents, make a decisive run, are equally comfortable hitting a 50-yard laser pass or carving open a defence with a short pass, like Paul Scholes, or switching the course of play like David Beckham. Creative players can change a game and galvanise a club. When Cristiano Ronaldo was playing for United, I kept telling him that his job was to create opportunities. In the 2004 FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal, my instructions to Ronaldo were simple: ‘Don’t worry about defending–just attack.’ We played three central midfielders and that gave Cristiano the platform, and freedom, to terrorise Arsenal. It is players like Ronaldo, Giggs, Cantona and Scholes who decide matches. Teams filled with players like Steve Bruce, Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, Gary Neville, Patrice Evra, Nemanja Vidić and Bryan Robson would be almost unbeatable, but would not be able to split open a competitor–especially important when your opponents will do anything not to lose. The ones who can slice open competitors are the few truly creative sorts.
The 1999 side exemplified this because we had creativity up front, and in midfield Scholes was the clever one with the piercing passes, Beckham was a spectacular crosser of balls from the sidelines, and Giggs’s bolts of electricity would leave opponents flailing. And behind them sat Keane–the indomitable, tireless driver. There were other combinations that worked well too. Dwight Yorke, whom we signed from Aston Villa in 1998, could skewer the opposition, create something out of nothing, beat a man and was deadly in front of the goal. Ole Solskjaer, Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole could all have played for any of the top European clubs. Ole and Andy were fabulous finishers and Teddy was a clever passer in the last third of the field. But none of them had that extra gift with which Dwight Yorke was blessed. Dwight’s arrival also had the unexpected benefit of bringing out the best in Andy Cole, with whom he developed an extraordinary relationship. In 1998–99 (the season United won the Treble), the pair scored 53 goals between them.
One attribute of the exceptional creative type is that you have to keep them from being bored. Usually it isn’t a question of arrogance or complacency, t
hey just don’t seem to feel sufficiently challenged. This was sometimes the case with Paul Scholes. Things would come so easily to him that, from time to time, when we were leading in a game, he would just tune out. He’d start to flick balls and do little tricks, as if he was at a Christmas party. I’d tell him, ‘Scholesy, stop the carrying on.’ He would look at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. But he knew, and when the going was tough and he had to perform, he rarely ever fell short.
I always had a fondness for the kings of creativity who would play for our opponents, even if I might have wished they were wearing United red. Dennis Bergkamp at Arsenal, Gianfranco Zola at Chelsea, Zinedine Zidane and Dejan Savićević in Europe, Glenn Hoddle at Tottenham and Paul Gascoigne at Newcastle and Tottenham are examples of that sort of extraordinary flair. Gascoigne, at his peak, was the best English player I have seen in my time, with the exception of Bobby Charlton. Xavi, Iniesta and Messi at Barcelona have been the master chefs for the past few years. All of them would get three Michelin stars and you would walk 50 miles barefoot to watch them in the kitchen. Speaking of fondness, I never allowed my personal feelings about a particular player to cloud my judgement about what was best for the team. Obviously I found it easier to get on with some players rather than others, but irrespective of any private feelings, I wanted the very best team on the field. I just think a leader has to keep reminding himself to be clinical about these sorts of judgements. You don’t have to love your players or your management team, but you do need to respect their abilities.
As I mentioned, at United we effectively rebuilt the team on four-year cycles–even though it may not have seemed apparent to all but the most ardent fan. For example, little more than three years after our 1999 Champions League final, ten members of the 18-man squad had left the club; five years after the victory, only five of those players were still at Old Trafford. It meant being very clinical about the capabilities of each player, which was not always easy when some of them had played hundreds of games for the club and made huge contributions to our success. But there was no choice. At Aberdeen, if we wound up third in the League, nobody beyond the team and the coaching staff would be too bothered because Rangers and Celtic were always supposed to occupy the top two spots. At United it was another matter entirely. The genetic make-up of the club was formed from victory.
One aspect of team-building that often gets overlooked is the need for old-timers to have the necessary patience with newcomers. Football can be brutal and there is nowhere to hide on a pitch. When new players arrived at United, particularly if they were transfers and immediately thrust into the first team, they were often uncomfortable with our style of play and performing in front of 75,000 people. When Patrice Evra, our great left-back, played his first game for United in 2006, it was in a derby against Manchester City. He spent the game walking around in a trance. It was a disaster and we lost 3–1. I signed Evra in the same season that we bought Nemanja Vidić from Spartak Moscow and the pair of them took about six months to settle in.
I always felt it was important to be careful about the way a newcomer was threaded into the side, especially if he was not a product of our youth system. For the newcomer everything was unfamiliar, and I am not alluding to the Manchester weather or driving cars with steering wheels on the right-hand side. I mean our system of play and, in particular, the habits and quirks of other players. The boys who had grown into men at Manchester United, such as Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and David Beckham, could almost have played together blindfolded. They knew how their team-mates would react, or where they were likely to be in particular situations, and could communicate without speaking. They trusted each other’s judgements and had that sense of fellowship which is the glue for any group of people who want to outperform competitors. The newcomer did not have that advantage, which is why I always tried to make sure that I wasn’t integrating a lot of new players into the first team at the same time. It was almost like trying to teach each person a new language, while familiarising them with several local dialects.
Players sometimes also coveted particular shirt numbers. The number 7, which had taken on a mythical status, having previously been worn by George Best, Bryan Robson and Eric Cantona, was a shirt that David Beckham, who had started his United career wearing number 24, was eager to wear. At that stage, after David had just played a couple of seasons in the first-team squad, I would have preferred if Roy Keane had taken the number. But Roy was not fussed about it and so I gave it to David. I quickly realised that, as a United fan, this number really mattered to him. He wore it with distinction. After my last season, the number 7 shirt became available and was worn by Antonio Valencia, who subsequently felt it added a burden to his game. He switched back to his previous number the following season.
I also found that experienced players are honest enough with themselves to know if they aren’t quite as good as another player. That’s particularly the case with older players. A 35-year-old player knows he doesn’t have the pace of a top-notch 20 year old, and all team members were aware of the difference between themselves and the unnatural talent of a Cristiano Ronaldo or Eric Cantona. The older players aren’t competing against the youngsters as much as they are contending with the comparisons with their younger selves.
Another thing I had to look out for were character clashes. If people are so selfish that they are only thinking about themselves, it just doesn’t work. When people start butting heads it destroys a team. We had a situation at United where Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham just didn’t like each other and they wouldn’t work together on the field. During one game they had an argument in the tunnel at half-time. So I called them into the office and told them that if I saw that again, they’d both be gone. The change was immediate and there was never another problem between them. Whilst they were never going to be the best of friends, they were professional about the whole situation. But Andy did not want to play second fiddle to anyone, and after Ruud van Nistelrooy arrived, it was clear he was unhappy. Some years later there was tension between Ruud van Nistelrooy and Cristiano Ronaldo. Ruud was dissatisfied with the number of passes he was receiving from Cristiano, and his very evident irritation exacted a toll on the younger player.
When I appointed Roy Keane as club captain in 1997, it aroused the ire of Peter Schmeichel. Schmeichel admired Keane as a player and, best as I know, there wasn’t any particular animosity between them. It was just that Schmeichel’s pride was hurt, and he let me know in no uncertain terms by storming into my office and going completely berserk. I refused to back down and he stormed out, but I just reiterated to Peter his importance to the team while telling him that the decision had been made. This, obviously, wasn’t the best way to usher in Keane as the club leader.
Working as a team didn’t stop at the touchlines, and it was a sensibility that was required everywhere. When I brought René Meulensteen back to United in 2007 after he had a brief, ill-fated spell as manager of Brøndby in Denmark, my coaching staff were unhappy. René isn’t shy about telling others what’s wrong with them, so the prospect of his return was not greeted with undiluted joy. I told everybody that the reason René was being rehired was because he was a spectacular development coach and it was good for the club.
I used all sorts of ploys to try to emphasise to the players, particularly the younger ones, the benefits of teamwork. In my office at the Carrington training ground, I used to have a large black and white photograph from the 1930s, of 11 workers in New York, eating their lunch while sitting on a steel girder several hundred feet above street level during the construction of Rockefeller Center. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. These guys are sitting there, wearing their cloth hats, without any safety harnesses, and one of them is lighting a cigarette. I’d explain to the players if one of the workers got into trouble his mates would try to save him. I’d say: ‘That’s team spirit–when you give your life to someone. No one at the club ever wins a thing without the other ones.’
Of course, some of the boys completely missed the point. Once, when I asked a player, ‘What can you say about that photograph?’ the reply was, ‘They’ve all got hats on.’
We were very careful about trying to make sure the limelight shone on as many players as possible. Inevitably, the press would focus on the goal-scorers, but there were plenty of ways for us to ensure that credit was shared as widely as possible. We would rotate different players in front of the press for post-game interview sessions. There were also plenty of opportunities in the match programme or on the website or on MUTV to showcase different personalities. Most were willing to do this, although a few, like Paul Scholes, preferred to stay in the shadows, and some of the foreign players who were unsure about their command of English tended to hold back. If we were playing in Spain, or Portugal, we would be sure to line up a player who spoke Spanish or Portuguese. That was just good business, because those sorts of appearances helped broaden United’s appeal.
There is one other lesson I learned regarding teamwork, and it is on an odd topic–nepotism. It does not matter whether you are running a family-managed organisation, or one with more widely distributed stakeholders: a leader is always tempted to look at his own kith and kin, or family friends, through a different lens. Some leaders think that if they bring a close relative into the organisation, it will send the wrong message, destroy teamwork and throw everything out of kilter, because people will assume that a surname, or a personal relationship, is more important than ability. These leaders have a firm rule and refuse to hire family members or friends, even if their credentials suggest they are more than worthy. Others will lurch in the opposite direction and turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of their son or niece.
Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United Page 8