Page 132 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

remarks. I banned another for saying Rooney and I never spoke in training sessions – and that
everyone at the club could see it. Not true.
I didn’t read all the papers, but from time to time our media staff would point things out that were
inaccurate. The process can drain you. Years ago I used to take action, but it ends up costing you

money. As for an apology, 40 words tucked away on page 11 was a long way from a story with
banner headlines on the back page. So what was the point?
In banning reporters I would be saying: I’m not accepting your version of events. Again, I was in a
strong position, because I had been at Man United a long time and had been successful. If I had been
some poor guy struggling on a bad run of results, the scenario would have been different. In most
cases I felt an underlying sympathy because I knew that extrapolation or exaggeration was a product
of the competitive nature of the business. Newspapers are up against Sky television, websites and

other social media channels.
Any Premier League manager should have an experienced press officer, someone who knows the
media and can act quickly on stories. You can’t stop them all but you can warn the author when the
facts are wrong and seek corrections. As a backup, a good press officer can extricate you from
trouble. Every day, for 24 hours, Sky News is rolling. A story will be repeated over and over again.
Dealing with the press is becoming more and more problematic for managers.

Say Paul Lambert is having a bad time at Aston Villa. The press conference is bound to be
dominated by negativity. Only someone who knows the press can train a manager for that. When I had
my bad spell at United, Paul Doherty told me: ‘You’re tense, you’re bait for them. Before you get in
that press conference, look in the mirror, rub your face, get your smile on, get your act together. Be
sure they can’t eat you up.’
That was marvellous advice. And that is what you have to do. Most times you have to go with the
flow and make the best of it. A standard question is: do you feel pressure? Well, of course you do.

But don’t give them a headline. I held my press conferences before training. A lot of managers hold
theirs afterwards. In that scenario, you are concentrating on your training session and not thinking
about the press. For a 9 a.m. press conference I would have been briefed by Phil Townsend, our
director of communications, on what might come up.
He would tell me, for example, that I might be asked about the Luis Suárez biting incident, say, or
the Godolphin doping scandal in racing, or a possible move for a player such as Lewandowski. I

always started by talking about players who would be available for that particular game. Then the
emphasis would usually switch to issues around the game, personalities. The Sundays would often
look to build a piece around one subject. Michael Carrick’s good form, for instance.
I was generally fine in press conferences. The most difficult challenge was how to address the
problem of bad refereeing. I was penalised for making remarks about referees because my reference
point was the standards I set for football, not match officials. I wasn’t interested in the standards
referees set themselves. As a manager I felt entitled to expect refereeing levels to match those of the

game they were controlling. And as a group, referees aren’t doing their job as well as they should be.
They talk of refereeing now as a full-time job, but that’s codswallop.
Most start at 16 or so, when they are kids. I admire the impulse to want to referee. The game needs
that. I wanted to see men such as the Italian Roberto Rosetti referee here. He’s 6 feet 2 inches tall, a
commanding figure, built like a boxer, and he flies over the pitch, calms players down. He’s in
control. I liked to see the top referees in action. I enjoyed observing proper authority, properly

applied.
It would have been hard to get rid of a Premier League referee on grounds of incompetence or