Page 36 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘they’re only eleven million in debt.’
‘But have you seen the stadium?’ I replied. ‘You’ll need a new stadium, for maybe sixty million,
and then forty million to get them into the Premier League.’
People try to apply to football the usual principles of business. But it’s not a lathe, it’s not a milling

machine, it’s a collection of human beings. That’s the difference.
We faced some seismic fixtures before that season’s end. A 4–0 home win over Liverpool – Sami
Hyypiä was sent off in the fifth minute for stopping Van Nistelrooy’s run on goal – led us into a
Champions League tie against Real Madrid. In the first of our games against Madrid, Van Nistelrooy
was our only scorer. Luis Figo and Raul, twice, left us facing a 3–1 deficit in the home leg, for which
I left Beckham on the bench. This was an epic game, watched, the story goes, by Roman Abramovich,
who was inspired by our 4–3 win, and the hat-trick by Brazilian striker Ronaldo, to seek his own

involvement in the great global drama by buying Chelsea.
Though we had been nine points off the lead at one stage, we raced eight points clear with a 4–1
win over Charlton in May 2003, in which a Van Nistelrooy hat-trick lifted him to 43 goals for the
season. On the penultimate weekend, Arsenal needed to beat Leeds at Highbury to have any chance of
catching us, but Mark Viduka helped us out with a late goal for our Yorkshire rivals. In our 2–1 win at
Everton, David Beckham scored from a free kick in his last game for us. We were champions again

for the eighth time in 11 seasons. The players danced and sang: ‘We’ve got our trophy back.’
We regained the League but said farewell to Beckham.