Page 63 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

others supported the play. Roy was at an age where he shouldn’t have been doing that, but he could
not accept the new reality.
I think he could see the truth of what we were saying to him, but to surrender to it was too
threatening to his pride. He was a player constructed around his own passions. In the season prior to

the fall-out, he was beginning to show physical signs of weakness in terms of getting back to fulfil his
defensive duties. He wasn’t the same player – but how can you be, after hip operations, and cruciate
knee ligament operations, and being on the front line of so many ferocious battles for so long?
The energy Roy expended in games was quite exceptional, but when you enter your thirties it’s hard
to comprehend where you’re going wrong. You can’t change the nature that has driven you to so much
success. It became transparent to us that we were no longer dealing with the same Roy Keane.
Our solution was to tell him to stay in that same area of central midfield. He could control the game

from there. Deep down, I believe, he knew that better than anyone, but he simply could not bring
himself to abandon his old talismanic role.
That was the long-term context to the confrontation that ended with him leaving the club and joining
Celtic. He thought he was Peter Pan. Nobody is. Ryan Giggs is the closest you might come to that
mythical ageless figure, but Ryan never had any serious injuries. Roy had some bad ones. His hip
problem was the one that caused the biggest deterioration in his physical prowess.

The first major fracture in our relationship appeared in pre-season, before the 2005–06 campaign,
on our trip to a training camp in Portugal. Carlos Queiroz went out to set it up because it had been his
idea, and led us to the most marvellous facility. Vale do Lobo. It was out of this world. Training
pitches, a gym and small houses, which were perfect for the players.
I arrived there at the end of my summer holiday in France. All the staff and players were nicely
ensconced in their villas. But bad news awaited me. Carlos was having a nightmare with Roy.
I asked what the problem was. Carlos explained that Roy considered the houses at Vale do Lobo to

be beneath the required standard and was not willing to stay in his. According to Carlos, Roy had
rejected the first house because one of the rooms lacked air conditioning. The second threw up a
similar problem. The third, which I saw, was a fantastic house. Roy wouldn’t take it. He wanted to
stay in the next village, Quinta do Lago, with his family.
That first night, we organised a barbecue on the patio of the hotel. It was beautifully presented. Roy
approached me and said he needed to talk to me.

‘Roy, come on, not now. We’ll talk in the morning,’ I said.
After training I pulled him to one side. ‘What’s going on, Roy?’ I started. ‘I’ve looked at the
houses, they’re fine.’
Roy erupted, issuing a long list of complaints, which included the air conditioning. Then he started
on Carlos. Why were we doing the pre-season here?, and so on. It was all criticism. It placed a strain
on his relationship with us. He became quite reclusive, I thought, on that tour. I was disappointed.
Carlos had worked his socks off to make the trip right for everyone.

When the visit was over, I resolved to bring Roy up to the office to at least get him to say sorry to
Carlos. He was having none of it.
When we were embroiled in an argument once, Roy said to me, ‘You’ve changed.’
I replied, ‘Roy, I will have changed, because today is not yesterday. It’s a different world we’re in
now. We have players from twenty different countries in here. You say I’ve changed? I hope I have. I
would never have survived if I hadn’t changed.’

He said: ‘You’re not the same man.’
We had a real set-to. A proper argument. I told him he was out of order. ‘You’re the captain. You