Page 155 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

was a residue of mistrust.
He was fine so long as he was scoring, but in fallow times there was perhaps a stirring of the old
resentment. Players can underestimate the depth of feeling for a club among fans. In the most extreme
cases it leads supporters to think they own the club. Some of them have stood behind the club for 50

years. They’re there for life. So when a player is deemed to have shown disloyalty to a club, there is
no messing about with them.
Very few players want away from Manchester United. We had a generation of players who had
pledged their whole careers to our club – Giggs, Scholes, and so on – and it was alien to our
supporters to see a player agitating for a move or to hear him criticising transfer policy.
In the winter of 2011, I did have to take disciplinary action after Wayne, Jonny Evans and Darron
Gibson had a night out. They went across to Southport to a hotel to celebrate our 5–0 Boxing Day win

against Wigan. They came into training the next day weary. I went into the gymnasium where they
were doing their exercises and told them they would be fined a week’s wages and not considered for
selection against Blackburn on the Saturday.
Wayne needed to be careful. He has great qualities about him but they could be swallowed up by a
lack of fitness. Look at the way Ronaldo or Giggs looked after themselves. Wayne needed to grasp the
nettle. It was not wise for England to give him a week’s holiday before Euro 2012 because he might

lose his edge. If he missed a couple of weeks for United, it could take him four or five games to get
his sharpness back. The Ukraine game was over a month after his last game for us.
He would receive no leniency from me. I would hammer him for any drop in condition. It was quite
simple – he wouldn’t play. That’s the way I always dealt with fitness issues, regardless of the player
involved, and I saw no reason to change in the final years of my career.
Wayne had a gift for producing great moments in games. In my final year, when he was left out a
few times, and replaced in games, I felt he was struggling to get by people and had lost some of his

old thrust. But he was capable of making extraordinary contributions. That pass to Van Persie in the
win over Aston Villa that secured the title for us was marvellous, as was his overhead kick against
Man City. Those flashes guaranteed his profile. But as time wore on, I felt he struggled more and
more to do it for 90 minutes, and he seemed to tire in games.
I took him off in that Aston Villa game because Villa were a very fast young side, full of running,
and their substitute was running past Wayne. He came into my office the day after we won the League

and asked away. He wasn’t happy with being left out for some games and subbed in others. His agent
Paul Stretford phoned David Gill with the same message.
All players are different. Some are happy to stay at the same club their whole careers; others need
fresh challenges, as Van Persie felt when he joined us from Arsenal. The urge to fight and flourish
would not be extinguished in Wayne. I left him to discuss his future with David Moyes, hoping to see
many more great performances from him at Old Trafford.