Page 109 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

Watching Dimitar at Tottenham, I felt he would make a difference because he had a certain
composure and awareness that we lacked among our group of strikers. He displayed the ability of
Cantona or Teddy Sheringham: not lightning quick, but he could lift his head and make a creative
pass. I thought he could bring us up a level and extend our range of talents.

So Berbatov’s arrival relegated Tévez to more of a backup role. And around December in his
second season, we started to feel he wasn’t doing especially well. The reason, I think, was that he’s
the type of animal that needs to play all the time. If you’re not training intensively, which he wasn’t,
you need to play regularly. During that winter, David Gill asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ I felt we
ought to wait until later in the season to make a decision. ‘They want one now,’ David said.
I replied, ‘Just tell them I’m trying to get him more games so we can assess it properly, because
Berbatov is in the team a lot.’

Tévez did influence plenty of outcomes in the second half of the 2008–09 campaign, especially
against Spurs at home, when we were 2–0 down, and I sent him on to shake things up. He chased
absolutely everything. He brought huge enthusiasm to the cause and was the one responsible for us
winning that match 5–2. His impact changed the course of events.
The 2009 Champions League semi-final pitted us against Arsenal and I was playing a three of
Ronaldo, Rooney and Park. That was my chosen group for the final and apparently Tévez was not

impressed. We made a mess of the final in Rome against Barcelona. We chose a bad hotel. It was a
shambles. We have to hold our hands up about our poor planning.
Anyway, I brought Tévez on at half-time and just felt he was playing for himself a bit. From what I
could gather, he had already made his mind up before joining City. After the game in Rome he said to
me: ‘You never showed any great desire to sign me permanently.’ I explained that I had to see how
the season played out and that he hadn’t played enough games for me to be sure. David offered the
£25 million fee for him, but from what I can gather it was as if he were talking to the wall. That led us

to think he had already elected to move across town.
The rumour, not confirmed, was that our Manchester rivals had paid £47 million. Tévez spoke to
Chelsea at some point, too, and I think his advisers played one against the other. The word was that
Chelsea offered £35 million but that City outbid them. To me these were incredible sums. I wouldn’t
have paid that kind of money, fine player though he was. To me he was an impact maker. It was a
mistake on my part, in the sense that Berbatov was a player I fancied strongly and I wanted to see him

succeed. But he is also the sort who wants to be assured he is a great player. The conundrum with him
and Tévez was always there.
There was no disciplinary problem with Tévez of the sort Roberto Mancini encountered when the
boy declined to warm up for City, apparently, in a Champions League game in Germany, but there
was a major hoo-ha over his supposed role in Sheffield United’s demotion to the Championship in
2007. Tévez’s goals had been saving West Ham from relegation when they came to our ground at the
end of that season. They were fined for breaching third-party ownership rules with Tévez, but no

points were deducted by the Premier League. Inevitably Tévez scored against us for West Ham,
which helped send Sheffield United down, and Neil Warnock, their manager, tried to load the blame
on us for playing a supposedly weakened team against the Hammers.
We had a Cup final the week after that West Ham game. Our squad was one of the strongest in the
League and I had been changing the team all season according to circumstance. If you watch that
match, we had two or three penalties turned down and their goalkeeper had a fantastic game. They

broke away and Tévez scored. West Ham were never in the game. We battered them. I brought on
Ronaldo, Rooney and Giggs in the second half but still we couldn’t knock them over.