Page 54 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

financial trouble by then and word came through to David Gill that Alan could be bought for around
£5 million. I had always liked Alan. He was what I called an attitude player, with a good character.
He could play a few positions: wide right, midfield, centre-forward. He was a Mark Hughes-type
player: not a great goal-scorer but useful to the team. We later sold him to Newcastle for £6 million.

Alan did a fair job for us and put in some smashing performances. His leg-break at Liverpool in 2006
was one of the most horrific I’ve seen. I’ll always remember rushing to see him as he lay on the
Liverpool treatment table – Liverpool’s doctor was exemplary, I should say – while they injected him
to stop the onset of trauma.
His foot was pointing in all sorts of directions. Bobby Charlton, who was with me, winced. And he
had been through the Munich air disaster. Alan, on the other hand, was unperturbed. He was sitting
there emotionless. It was a horror of an accident. Alan’s reaction told me that some men’s pain

thresholds are higher than others’. Jabs terrify me. I’m hopeless with needles. In my pub-keeping days
in Glasgow, during a keg-change one Sunday morning, I was releasing a spear to let the air out when a
rat jumped on my shoulder. I leapt back and the spear of the keg sank into my cheek. You can still see
the skin graft. I drove the two miles to the hospital, afraid to touch it. The nurse whipped it out and I
fainted as soon as they put the needle in me. The nurse said: ‘This is the big centre-forward of
Rangers Football Club and he’s fainting.’ I was dying there. Alan was sitting with one of the worst

injuries I’ve ever seen and not a bit of stir in him. That’s what Alan was: a supremely brave lad.
He was a good, honest professional, too. What he lacked was the real top quality you need to excel
at the biggest clubs. When we were offered the money by Newcastle, we had to let him go.
Our final use of him was as a defensive midfielder. He tackled well but didn’t read the game like
an authentic holding player. He was a midfield player who could tackle, wherever the ball was. In his
centre-forward days, centre-backs seldom had an easy time with Alan. But the whole process of
replacing Roy required us to find a player who could sit in good areas of the pitch, the way Owen

Hargreaves did for a while. Alan wasn’t that type, but he was a good, honest player who loved
playing for us. It took me a long time to persuade him that I couldn’t guarantee him a game. The team
had moved on.
Louis Saha was another major signing, from Fulham in January 2004, but persistent injuries
counted against him, and us. We watched him a couple of times at Metz but the scouting reports gave
no indication that he would be a target for the biggest clubs. He turned up at Fulham, and every time

he played against us he gave us a ‘doing’. In an FA Cup tie at Craven Cottage, he turned Wes Brown
on the halfway line, flew at our goal, cut it back and Fulham scored. From then on we watched him all
the time, and by January were ready to make our move.
Dealing with Mohammed Fayed, Fulham’s owner, was a complicated process. Word came back
that a figure had been agreed and we were told: ‘This is the best you’re going to get.’ It was a middle
position: £12 million.
Of all the centre-forwards we employed, when you talk about their talents (two-footed, good in the

air, spring, speed, power), Saha would be one of the best. He posed a perpetual threat. But then came
the injuries. Louis, who lived about 50 yards from me, and was a lovely lad, had to be 150 per cent to
play. It was agony for us. And it wasn’t a case of him being out for weeks; it tended to be months. The
reason for selling him was that no matter how talented he was, I could never plan around him, could
never say, ‘This is my team for the next two or three years.’ Saha was young enough to be viewed in
that way, as a cornerstone player, but the uncertainty caused by his constant non-availability rendered

it impossible to look far down the line.
It became so vexing to him that he considered retiring. ‘You’re a young man, you don’t give in