Page 160 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

A major incident from that season requires a mention: the allegation, later dismissed by the
authorities, that referee Mark Clattenburg had used racist language against Chelsea players in our 3–2
victory at Stamford Bridge on 28 October. A word about the game, first: against Di Matteo’s Chelsea
we needed to work out how we would operate against Juan Mata, Oscar and Eden Hazard. Those

three were hammering teams and turning on the style. The two sitting midfielders, Ramires and Mikel,
were bombing on. We elected to load the right side to attack the areas they had vacated by attacking
us, and squeeze Mata’s space.
It was a thrilling game until the shenanigans at the end of the match. When Fernando Torres was
sent off, Steve Holland, one of Di Matteo’s assistants, blamed me. I looked at him, bemused. Mike
Dean, the fourth official, could make no sense of Holland’s accusation. Torres should already have
been sent off in the first half for a tackle on Cleverley.

When Hernández scored the winning goal, half a seat came on and hit Carrick on the foot, along
with lighters and coins.
I still wonder whether the Clattenburg allegation was a smokescreen to obscure the crowd trouble.
Twenty minutes after the game, I went in with my staff for a drink, and in that wee room were
Bruce Buck, the Chelsea chairman, Ron Gourlay, the chief executive, Di Matteo and his wife. You
could sense an atmosphere. Something wasn’t right. We stood in the doorway and thought it wise to

leave them to it.
The food was covered and the wine was uncorked. They said, ‘Help yourselves,’ and left the room.
My own staff had seen Mikel fly into the referee’s room with John Terry and Di Matteo. Whoever
told Mikel that Clattenburg had said something inflammatory was making a big call. It was also a big
move by Chelsea to inform the press pretty much straight away that an alleged incident had been
reported. A lawyer might have sat back and said, ‘Let’s wait until tomorrow.’
The Branislav Ivanović sending-off in that game was perfectly straightforward. Torres went down

easily but Evans did catch him. When you see where Clattenburg was, you can why he sent him off for
simulation. He took one step, then went down. A toe is enough to fell a player moving at speed, but
Torres did go over softly. I’ve no idea why Holland thought I had forced Clattenburg to send him off.
A few days later, Di Matteo announced that I had too much power with referees.
I had run-ins with match officials all my life. I was sent off eight times as a player. I was sent to the
stands three or four times as a manager in Scotland. I was fined so many times in England. I always

had disputes of one sort or another. But I called it as I saw it. I never went out of my way to drop a
referee in the soup.
There is no way, in my mind, that a top referee would be racist to a player. I called Mark
Clattenburg and said, ‘I’m just sorry we are the other team involved in this.’ I was poised for
someone in authority to bring us into the inquiry, which fortunately never happened. I had no
knowledge of it until we boarded the plane back to Manchester. The FA took a hell of a long time to
reach the decision that Mark was innocent. It could have been concluded in two days.

From January 2013 we really motored on in the League, piling pressure on Man City all the way.
For me, knowing I was standing down, the sense of release and relief was delayed until the night we
beat Aston Villa to win the title. We were going to win it anyway, but to finish the job in April, on our
own ground, was immensely comforting. I would go out with a bang. I continued to make my team
talks and prepare for games properly. The professionalism of Manchester United remained intact.
The only disappointment, of course, was losing our Champions League round of 16 tie to Real

Madrid, in a game that featured a ludicrous sending-off for Nani by Cüneyt Çakir, the Turkish referee,
for an innocuous challenge. In Spain in the first leg we had been terrific, weathering a 20-minute