Page 32 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

was in the schoolboy enclosure that day because I played for Queen’s Park at the time, which entitled
me to walk in the front door and head for that part of the ground. I left three minutes before the end of
the game to get a bus home, because I was working in the morning, and of course missed all the
celebrations at the end, which were unusual in football around that time. Real performed a big parade

with the cup and were dancing about the park. I missed out. The next morning, with the papers laid
out, I studied the photographs and thought: ‘Damn, I missed seeing all that.’
Hampden Park was packed with 128,000 souls. To beat the huge exodus from big games, we would
run miles away from the ground: sprint away from Hampden towards the terminus, and take a bus
from there. It was a three- or four-mile run to the station, but at least we were on the bus. The queues
at the ground would be miles long. Miles long. Dads would pull up in lorries and you would give
them sixpence each and pile onto the wagon. That was another route in and out. But it would have

been unforgettable to get to Hampden for that 2002 final, which Real Madrid won 2–1, to send a
Manchester United side out onto that sacred turf.
Carlos Queiroz joining as my assistant was another major initiative that year. Arsenal had won the
Double the previous season and Roy Keane had been sent home from the 2002 World Cup, so there
was plenty to occupy my mind as we set off on another journey. When Roy was sent off after tangling
with Jason McAteer at Sunderland, I dispatched him for a hip operation, which removed him from the

picture for four months. Soon after we struck a bad run of form, losing at home to Bolton and away at
Leeds. We managed only two wins from our first six games and were ninth in the table when I took a
minor gamble and sent a number of players away for surgery in the hope that they would return to
energise us in the second half of our campaign.
In September 2002, though, the knives were out for me. The nature of the job is that the public will
attack you when things seem to be going wrong. Plus, I’ve never been beholden to the press and
couldn’t count on them for support. I never socialised much with them, didn’t give them stories or

mark their cards, with the exception – occasionally – of Bob Cass, of the Mail on Sunday. So they
had no reason to love me or support me through hard times. Other managers were more skilled at
cultivating relationships with the press. It maybe bought them a bit more time, but not indefinitely.
Results determine whether the guillotine stays up or falls.
Media pressure is usually where it starts. Whenever there was a bad spell I would see the line:
‘Your time’s up, Fergie; it’s time to go.’ The old line about shelf-life. You can laugh at it, but you

mustn’t get yourself in a tizzy, because hysteria is the nature of the beast. There have been so many
favourable headlines about me over the years, because the press could hardly avoid writing them,
given the success we had, but to be called a genius you also need to accept that you are probably also
going to be called a fool.
Matt Busby used to say: ‘Why read them when you have a bad result? I never did.’ And he lived in
an era when the press wasn’t as pervasive as it is today. Matt would always ride the waves of praise
and condemnation without bothering too much about either.

What we did at all times, in success and adversity, was make sure the training ground was
sacrosanct. The work there, the concentration, and the standards we maintained never dropped.
Eventually that consistency of effort will show itself on a Saturday. That way, when a United player
has a couple of bad results, he will hate it. It becomes intolerable to him. Even the best players
sometimes lose confidence. Even Cantona had bouts of self-doubt. But if the culture around the
training ground was right, the players knew they could fall back on the group and the expertise of our

staff.
The only player I ever coached who was totally unaffected by his mistakes was David Beckham.