Page 102 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

‘What about?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, but we’ve been tipped off,’ they said.
So, on television, Benítez puts his glasses on and produces this sheet of paper.
Facts.

The facts were all wrong.
First, he said I intimidate referees. The FA were scared of me, according to Rafa, even though I
had just been fined £10,000 by the FA two weeks previously, and I was failing to support the Respect
campaign. The Respect initiative had started that season, yet Rafa was going on about my criticism of
Martin Atkinson in a Cup tie the previous year, before the new guidelines had come into place. So he
was wrong in the first two things he said. The media loved it, even though the facts were inaccurate.
They were hoping it would start a war, that I would launch a rocket back.

In fact, all I said in reply was that Rafa was obviously ‘bitter’ about something and that I was at a
loss to explain what that might be. That was me saying to him: look, you’re a silly man. You should
never make it personal. That was the first time he tried those tactics, and each subsequent attack bore
the same personal edge.
My inquiries told me that he had been irritated by me questioning whether Liverpool would be able
to handle the title run in, whether they would buckle under the pressure. Had I been the Liverpool

manager, I would have taken that as a compliment. Instead Benítez interpreted it as an insult. If I, as
Manchester United manager, was talking about Liverpool and dropping in remarks to make them
wobble, my Anfield counterpart ought to know they’d got me worried.
When Kenny was in charge at Blackburn, and they were out in front in the title race, I piped up:
‘Well, we’re hoping for a Devon Loch now.’ That stuck. Devon Loch popped up in every newspaper
article. And Blackburn started to drop points. We ought to have won the League that year but Rovers
held on. There is no doubt we made it harder for them by raising the spectre of the Queen Mother’s

horse performing the splits on the Aintree run-in.
The advance publicity had been that Benítez was a control freak, which turned out to be correct, to
a point that made no sense. He displayed no interest in forming friendships with other managers: a
dangerous policy, because there would have been plenty from lesser clubs who would have loved to
share a drink and learn from him.
In the 2009–10 season he did come in for a glass at Anfield, but looked uncomfortable, and, after a

short while, said he needed to go, and that was that. To Sammy Lee, his assistant, I said: ‘At least
that’s a start.’
On the day Roberto Martínez, manager of Wigan Athletic, was quoted as saying I had ‘friends’ who
did my bidding in relation to Benítez (big Sam Allardyce was one he was referring to), Roberto
phoned me and put a call into the LMA to ask whether he should make a statement correcting the
story. Roberto told me he had no connection with Benítez, who had not helped him in any way. I think
Martínez had spoken to a Spanish paper about the way Benítez saw us, his rivals in England, but was

not endorsing that view himself. He was merely the messenger. You would think Benítez and Martínez
would have struck up an affinity, being the only Spanish managers in England.
Benítez would complain about having no money to spend, but from the day he landed, he doled out
more than me. Far more. It amazed me that he used to walk into press conferences and say he had no
money to spend. He was given plenty. It was the quality of his buys that let him down. If you set aside
Torres and Reina, few of his acquisitions were of true Liverpool standard. There were serviceable

players – Mascherano and Kuyt, hard-working players – but not real Liverpool quality. There was no
Souness or Dalglish or Ronnie Whelan or Jimmy Case.