Page 153 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

and there were flashpoints on the pitch. Off the field, though, he caused me no anxiety. My problem
was that, being a centre-forward myself, I was always harder on the strikers than anyone in the team.
They were never as good as me, of course. I’m sorry, but none was as good as I was in my playing
days. Managers are allowed such conceits and often inflict them on players. Equally, the players think

they are better managers than the men in charge – until they try it, that is.
If I saw attackers not doing the things I believe I used to do, it would set me off. They were my
hope. I looked at them and thought: you are me. You see yourself in people.
I could see myself in Roy Keane, see myself in Bryan Robson, see bits of me in Paul Scholes and
Nicky Butt and the two Nevilles, Gary and Phil. Teams reflect the character of their manager. Never
give in: that’s a great religion, a great philosophy to have. I never gave in. I always thought I could
rescue something from any situation.

Something was always happening at Man United. There was always a drama. It was routine to me.
When Wayne Rooney’s personal life was exposed in the News of the World, and a sense of crisis
was brewing in his world in the late summer of 2010, there was no council of war in my office, no
pacing of the room.
I didn’t phone him the morning after the story broke. I know he would have wanted me to. That’s
where my control was strong. He would have been looking for a phone call from me, an arm round his

shoulder. To me that wasn’t the way to deal with it.
When these sorts of allegations surfaced the first time, he was 17 years old, and allowances were
made for his youth, but this time we were seven years on. Coleen, his wife, had her head screwed on.
She always struck me as a stabilising force.
I certainly felt under pressure in relation to him during that World Cup in South Africa. I knew
there was something bugging him at the 2010 World Cup. I could see it. Although he had been named
PFA Player of the Year and Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year that season he was

in a strange mood in South Africa. ‘Nice to see your home fans boo you,’ he said into a TV camera
after England’s goalless draw with Algeria in Cape Town. England went out in the second round and
there were no goals in four matches for Wayne.
I needed to get his attention. Yet the best way to achieve that was by not saying anything to him –
not offering consolation – to force him to think. When I left him out away to Everton in September, to
protect him from abuse by the crowd, he was relieved, because he knew I was doing the right thing by

him. Your job is to make an impact on each personality with the best possible output in terms of
performance.
We can all moralise but everyone will commit indiscretions. I was never going to moralise with
Rooney. On 14 August 2010 Wayne informed us that he would not be signing a new contract at
United. This was a shock, as the plan had always been to sit down after the World Cup to discuss a
new contract.
As the drama gathered pace, David Gill called me to say that Wayne’s agent, Paul Stretford, had

been to see him to say that Wayne wanted away. The phrase he had used was that he didn’t think the
club were ambitious enough. We had won the League Cup and the League the year before and reached
the final of the Champions League.
David said that Wayne would be coming to see me. At that meeting, which was in October, he was
hugely sheepish. I felt he’d been programmed in what he was trying to say. The basis of his complaint
was that we were not sufficiently ambitious.

My response was to ask Wayne: ‘When have we not challenged for the League in the last 20 years?
How many European finals have we been to in the last three or four years?’