Page 104 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

work their socks off for him, so there must be some inspirational quality there: fear, or respect, or
skill on his part. You never saw his teams throw in the towel, and he deserves credit for that.
Why did he not do as well as he might have at Anfield, from my perspective? Benítez had more
regard for defending and destroying a game than winning it. You can’t be totally successful these days

with that approach.
José Mourinho was far more astute in his handling of players. And he has personality. If you saw
José and Rafa standing together on the touchline, you knew you could pick the winner. You always
had to respect a Liverpool side. The same goes for some of the work Benítez put in, because they
were a very hard side to beat, and because he won a European Cup there. There were plus points. He
got lucky, but so did I, sometimes.
His mode on the touchline was to constantly move his players around the pitch, but I doubt whether

they were always watching him or acting on those instructions. No one could have understood all
those gesticulations. On the other hand, with Mourinho, in a Chelsea–Inter match, I noticed the players
sprinted over to him, as if to say, ‘What, boss?’ They were attentive to his wishes.
You need a strong manager. That’s vital. And Benítez is strong. He has great faith in himself and
he’s sufficiently stubborn to ignore his critics. He does that time and again. But he did win a European
Cup, against AC Milan in Istanbul in 2005, which offered him some protection against those who

dismissed his methods.
When Milan led 3–0 at half-time in that game, so the story goes, some of the Milan players were
already celebrating, pulling on commemorative T-shirts and jigging about. I was told Paolo Maldini
and Gennaro ‘Rino’ Gattuso were going crackers, urging their team-mates not to presume the game
was over.
Liverpool won the Cup that night with a marvellous show of defiance.
After a brief spell in charge at Anfield, Roy Hodgson gave way to Kenny again and Liverpool

embarked on another phase of major rebuilding. Yet few of the signings made in Kenny’s time haunted
me at night. We looked at Jordan Henderson a lot and Steve Bruce was unfailingly enthusiastic about
him. Against that we noticed that Henderson runs from his knees, with a straight back, while the
modern footballer runs from his hips. We thought his gait might cause him problems later in his
career.
Stewart Downing cost Liverpool £20 million. He had a talent but he was not the bravest or the

quickest. He was a good crosser and striker of the ball. But £20 million? Andy Carroll, who also
joined for £35 million, was in our northeast school of excellence, along with Downing and James
Morrison, who went on to play for Middlesbrough, West Brom and Scotland. The FA closed it down
after complaints from Sunderland and Newcastle. This was at the time academies started. The Carroll
signing was a reaction to the Torres windfall of £50 million. Andy’s problem was his mobility, his
speed across the ground. Unless the ball is going to be in the box the whole time, it’s very difficult to
play the way Andy Carroll does because defenders push out so well these days. You look for

movement in the modern striker. Suárez was not quick on his feet but has a fast brain.
The boys Kenny brought in from the youth set-up did well. Jay Spearing, especially, was terrific.
As a boy Spearing was a centre-back, with John Flanagan at full-back, and Spearing was easily the
best of them: feisty, quick, a leader. You could see he had something. He was all right in the centre of
midfield, but it was hard to visualise his long-term future. His physique perhaps counted against him.
Kenny won the League Cup, of course, and reached the final of the FA Cup, but when I heard that

he and his assistant Steve Clarke had been summoned to Boston to meet the club’s owners, I feared
the worst for them. I don’t think the protest T-shirts and defending Suárez in the Patrice Evra saga