Page 159 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

Laughing, I told him where to go. But we constructed a potential deal in that direction with add-ons
for first-team and England appearances. Powell was not told until after that season’s play-offs. He is
an absolute certainty to be in the England team one day. He could play anywhere: off the front, even
through. He’s quick as hell, has two good feet and shoots from outside the box. In the winter of 2012

he picked up a virus and his girlfriend had a nasty car accident. He’s quite a detached figure – good at
switching off – but he’s a player, believe me.
Shinji Kagawa was another good catch that summer. We elected not to move for him after his first
season in German football, because sometimes a player rises a notch and you want to be sure he can
sustain it. He played in a very good Dortmund team, which I considered capable of winning the 2013
Champions League. In the event they reached the final but lost to Bayern Munich. The first thing I
noticed was Shinji’s sharp football brain. Mick and I flew to Berlin for the German cup final in the

summer of 2012 and I found myself sitting next to the Mayor of Dortmund and his wife. He was
wearing trainers. Angela Merkel was nearby, along with Joachim Löw, the German coach. Introduced
to Mrs Merkel, the German chancellor, I thought to myself: ‘My word, I’ve come a long way.’
There was no way I could hide in that seat – but everyone knew I was going anyway.
That summer the Glazers were perfectly happy to go for Van Persie or Robert Lewandowski and
Kagawa. In many of our greatest phases we could call on four fantastic strikers. Making sure they all

felt valued could be problematic. It required a range of diplomatic skills. Dortmund, however,
refused to sell Lewandowski, who has a wonderful physique and has good lines of running.
The other signing was Alexander Büttner, from Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem. We had allowed Fábio
to go to Queens Park Rangers on loan and we had a couple of young left-backs with potential. But we
needed experience in that area and backup for Evra. Büttner was flagged up. He was always taking
the ball, having shots, taking on defenders: a bargain at 2.5 million euros. He was an aggressive boy,
determined, quickish and a good crosser of the ball.

There were times in the first half of that season when we couldn’t have defended a sandcastle. We
conceded way too many times for my liking before tightening up from January onwards. The
goalkeeping position was complicated. De Gea developed a tooth infection and needed an operation
to remove his two rear molars. He missed a couple of games on that account and Anders Lindegaard
didn’t do anything wrong in the No. 1 spot. He had a good game at Galatasary and against West Ham.
My message to De Gea was that I needed to be fair to Anders. But after our narrow 4–3 win at

Reading on 1 December, De Gea came back in and did well throughout the second half of the season,
especially in the 1–1 draw at Real Madrid in February, where he was brilliant.
I still had high hopes for Javier Hernández. The issue with Chicharito was freshness. For three
seasons in a row he played all summer with his country. Despite that we cooperated well with
Mexico. The presidents of their FA and Olympic association came over, with their coaches, for a
meeting with me. I showed them the medical file. Under discussion was whether he could play in two
World Cup qualifiers as well as the Olympics.

Chicharito said, ‘I’d rather miss the other two games and play in the Olympics because I think
we’ll win it.’ I thought he was joking.
He went on, ‘If we don’t get Brazil in the quarter-finals, we’ll win it.’
Meanwhile we had invested heavily in a marvellous new medical centre for Carrington. We can
now do everything on site, apart from operations. We had a chiropodist, dentist, scanners, everything.
The benefit was that, apart from having it all on site, injuries would not become instant public

knowledge. In the past we might send a player to hospital and rumours would flash round the city.
This told you we weren’t standing still. It might have been one of our best buys.