Page 108 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

then, when my position was more fragile, I was more attuned to the damage that might be done to my
position should they turn against me. Other United managers before me had felt the same way. In my
playing days at Rangers, a group of powerful fans travelled with the first team and were influential
lobbyists. At United there was a larger array of supporters’ voices. In disgust at the Glazer takeover,

some handed in their season tickets and started FC United of Manchester.
There is a price to pay when you support a football club, and the price is that you can’t win every
game. You are not going to be a manager for a lifetime. United are lucky to have had two for half a
century. With losing and winning games, the emotions rise and fall. Football naturally generates
dissent. I remember us losing a game at Rangers and the supporters throwing bricks through the
windows.
There was no reason, beyond my age, for the Glazers to consider a change of manager in the

summer of 2005. I never considered that possibility, never felt under threat.
The tens of millions of pounds paid out in interest to service the loans did arouse protective
feelings towards the club. I understood that, but at no stage did it translate into pressure to sell a
player or excessive caution on the purchasing front. One of their strengths was their commercial
department in London, which brought in dozens of sponsorships globally. We had Turkish airlines,
telephone companies in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Thailand, beer companies in the Far East. That

sucked in tens of millions and helped service the debt. On the football side we generated huge
earnings. The 76,000 crowds helped a great deal.
So at no stage was I held back by the Glazer ownership. Often we would lose interest in a player
because the transfer fee or wage demands had become silly. Those decisions were taken by me and
David Gill. There was no edict from above to spend only in line with the club’s debts.
Instead our galaxy went on expanding. From 2007 more foreign talent poured into Carrington from
South America, Portugal and Bulgaria. No imported player in those years attracted more attention than

Carlos Tévez, who was at the heart of a major controversy over the relegation of Sheffield United
from the Premier League and was to end up in opposition to us at Manchester City, staring down from
that provocative billboard in his sky-blue shirt, underneath the message: ‘Welcome to Manchester.’
The tale begins when Tévez was at West Ham and David Gill was receiving calls from his agent,
Kia Joorabchian, saying the boy would love to play for Man United. We had heard that kind of story
many times. It was almost routine for agents to call saying their client had a special feeling for our

crest. My advice was that we should not involve ourselves in any complicated dealings with the
Tévez camp. David agreed. It was clear that a consortium of people owned the player. But, to David,
I also remarked: ‘He does make an impact in games with his energy and he has a decent scoring
record. It would depend what the deal was.’
David told me he could acquire Tévez on loan for two years, for a fee. That was the way it turned
out and Carlos did well for us in his first season. He scored a lot of important goals, against Lyon,
Blackburn, Tottenham and Chelsea. There was a real enthusiasm and energy about him. He wasn’t

blessed with great pace and wasn’t a great trainer. He would always like a wee break, saying his calf
was sore. In the context of the way we prepared, that sometimes annoyed us. We wanted to see a
genuine desire to train all the time. Top players have that. But Tévez compensated quite well with his
enthusiasm in games.
In the 2008 European Cup final in Moscow, he played and scored in the penalty shoot-out against
Chelsea. He was our first taker. In the game itself, I took Rooney off and left Tévez on because he

was playing better than Wayne. What planted a doubt in my mind was that in his second season I
signed Dimitar Berbatov, and the emphasis was on Berbatov and Rooney as our forward partnership.