Page 120 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

eighteen

FIRST of all, you must tell them the truth. There is nothing wrong with presenting the hard facts to a
player who has lost his form. And what I would say to anyone whose confidence was wavering is that
we were Manchester United and we simply could not allow ourselves to drop to the level of other
teams.
Faced with the need to confront a player who had performed below our expectation, I might have
said: ‘That was rubbish, that.’ But then I would follow it up with, ‘For a player of your ability.’ That
was for picking them back up from the initial blow. Criticise but balance it out with encouragement.

‘Why are you doing that? You’re better than that.’
Endless praise sounds false. They see through it. A central component of the manager–player
relationship is that you have to make them take responsibility for their own actions, their own
mistakes, their performance level, and finally the result. We were all in the results industry.
Sometimes a scabby win would mean more to us than a 6–0 victory with a goal featuring 25 passes.
The bottom line was always that Manchester United had to be victorious. That winning culture could

be maintained only if I told a player what I thought about his performance in a climate of honesty. And
yes, sometimes I would be forceful and aggressive. I would tell a player what the club demanded of
them.
I tell young managers now: don’t seek confrontation. Don’t look for it, because you can bet your
life it will come your way. If you seek a clash, the player is placed in a counter-attacking role, which
gives him an advantage. When the former Aberdeen, United and Scotland captain Martin Buchan went
to manage Burnley, he punched the captain on the first Saturday. ‘That was a good start, Martin,’ I

told him.
He was a very principled guy, Martin Buchan. In his playing days, he moved to Oldham and was
given a £40,000 signing-on fee, which was a lot of money back then. Struggling for form, he handed
the £40,000 back to the board. He couldn’t bring himself to keep money he felt he had not earned.
Imagine that happening today.

In general, across my career, people always assumed I had elaborate Machiavellian strategies. In
reality I didn’t set out to master the dark arts. I did try the odd trick. Saying we always finished the
campaign at a higher gallop and with heightened resolve could be classified as a mind game, and I
was intrigued to see Carlo Ancelotti, the Chelsea manager, twig it, in the winter of 2009. To
paraphrase, he said, ‘Alex is saying United are stronger in the second half of the season, but we are,
too.’
I did it every year. ‘Wait till the second half of the season,’ I would say. And it always worked. It
crept into the minds of our players and became a nagging fear for the opposition. Second half of the

season, United would come like an invasion force, hellfire in their eyes. It became a self-fulfilling