Page 137 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

to be a bargain for us at £6 million.
We went 24 games unbeaten before losing at Wolves on 5 February 2011, and finished with only
four defeats. A turning point in the race was the 4–2 win at West Ham in early April, after we had
been 2–0 down at the interval. I made the point that several of our players had sampled success for

the first time and would want more, Valencia, Smalling and Hernández among them.
Winning the title was the most important aim that season, with the 19 as a bonus. By the time I
finished we had moved on to 20, which was a number that the fans chanted with great relish. There
was no evidence in my final season that Liverpool, despite some excellent performances, possessed a
team who might win the League. I was coming out of the Grand National meeting with Cathy in April
2013 and two Liverpool fans came up alongside to say, ‘Hey Fergie, we’ll hammer you next season.’
They were good lads.

‘Well, you’ll need to buy nine players,’ I said.
They looked crestfallen. ‘Nine?’
One said: ‘Wait till I tell the boys in the pub that.’ I think he must have been an Everton fan. ‘I don’t
think we need nine,’ said the other as he traipsed away. I nearly shouted, ‘Well, seven, then.’
Everyone was laughing.
That summer we knew Manchester City were emerging as the team we would have to beat. The

danger no longer emanated from London or Merseyside. It was so close you could smell it. An owner
with the means to make this a serious municipal contest stood between us and control of the city. We
continued down our path of building up strength for the future and hoped it would see us through.
The big player we needed to replace was Edwin van der Sar. Although most people assumed
Manuel Neuer was going to be our target (he was on our agenda), we had scouted David de Gea for a
long time, right through from when he was a boy. We always thought he was going to be a top
goalkeeper.

In the summer of 2011, also, Ashley Young had a year to run on his contract at Aston Villa. He was
a solid buy: English, versatile, could work either side of the pitch, could play off the front, and had a
decent goal-scoring record. Given that Ji-Sung Park was coming up to 31, and with Ryan Giggs’
advancing age, I thought it was a good time to move for Young. Giggs was never going to be a
thrusting outside-left any more in the way he had been in the past.
We picked up Young for £16 million, which was a reasonable fee, maybe a pound or two more

than we expected to pay, with him in the final year of his contract. But we concluded the deal quickly.
Ashley ran into trouble against QPR in the 2011–12 season, when Shaun Derry was sent off and our
player was accused of diving. I left him out for the next game, and told him that the last thing he
needed as a Manchester United player was a reputation for going down easily. It wasn’t a penalty
kick against QPR and Shaun Derry’s sending-off was not rescinded. Ashley did it two weeks in a row
but we stopped it. Going to ground too willingly was not something I tolerated.
Ronaldo had issues with the same tendency early in his career, but the other players would give

him stick for it on the training ground. The speed he was travelling at, you had only to nudge Cristiano
to knock him over. We spoke to him many times about it. ‘He fouled me,’ he would say. ‘Yes, but
you’re overdoing it, you’re exaggerating it,’ we would tell him. He eradicated it from his game and
became a really mature player.
Luka Modrić was an example of a player in the modern game who would never dive. Stays on his
feet. Giggs and Scholes would never dive. Drogba was a prominent offender. A Barcelona game at

Stamford Bridge in 2012 was the worst example. The press were never hard on him, except in that
Champions League fixture. If the media had been tougher on him five years earlier, it would have