Page 129 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

we had started the procession. I spoke to Darron Gibson and asked him how he saw his future.
Perhaps it wasn’t the perfect place to begin that discussion, but he got the gist of what I was thinking.
He was off on holiday that night so we needed to start the conversation. Wes Brown, I struggled to
reach by telephone. It was horrible to let players of that experience and loyalty to me go.

I lost five players aged 30 and above and let Owen Hargreaves go. We were bringing back
Welbeck, Cleverley, Mame Diouf and Macheda from loan spells, and signing three new players. The
average age of the squad was reduced to around 24.
With Scholes and Neville, my plan was to let them roam about the place, with the youth team,
academy and reserves, then the three of us would sit down for an assessment of how strong we were.
I was going to place a big burden on them to shape the future, because they knew better than anyone
what it took to be one of our players. It’s something I’d wanted to do for years and years: feed my top

players into the stream.
Scholes was a man of excellent opinions. His assessments were brilliant. Always in one line.
There were no maybes. When we had a problem with Van Nistelrooy, Paul was instantly clear that
Ruud could not be allowed to cause disruption. His language was blunt. Gary asked him, ‘Are you
sure, Scholesy?’ – just winding him up.
At that point, on the coaching side, we had Brian McClair, Mick Phelan, Paul McGuinness, Jim

Ryan and Tony Whelan. They were all United players or academy graduates. I wanted to strengthen
those areas. Clayton Blackmore and Quinton Fortune did a few bits on the development side.
After the inquest, I told myself: ‘When we play Barcelona next time in a Champions League final, I
would have Jones and Smalling, or Smalling and Evans, right on top of Messi.’ I wasn’t going to let
him torture us again.