Page 64 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

showed no responsibility to the other players. It’s not as if we asked you to live in a hovel. They were
nice houses. Good places.’
The bad feeling didn’t subside. The deterioration in our relationship really started there. Then
came the MUTV interview episode, in which Roy let rip at some of the younger members of the squad

for supposedly failing in their duties. We had a rota for MUTV interviews, and on this occasion it
was Gary Neville’s turn. On the Monday after we played Middlesbrough, I was not particularly
interested when a press officer informed me that Roy was taking over the slot from Gary. It didn’t
strike me as significant.
But apparently Roy had been giving the other players terrible stick about Saturday’s game. Cut to 4
p.m. I receive a call at home: ‘You need to see this.’
In the interview Roy described Kieran Richardson as a ‘lazy defender’, doubted why ‘people in

Scotland rave about Darren Fletcher’ and said of Rio Ferdinand, ‘Just because you are paid a
hundred and twenty thousand pounds a week and play well for twenty minutes against Tottenham, you
think you are a superstar.’
The press office had phoned David Gill right away. It was stopped pending a decision from me on
what we ought to do with the tape. ‘OK, get the video to my office tomorrow morning and I’ll have a
look at it,’ I said.

Jesus. It was unbelievable. He slaughtered everyone. Darren Fletcher got it. Alan Smith. Van der
Sar. Roy was taking them all down.
There was no game that week and I was due to go to Dubai to visit our soccer school. That morning
Gary Neville called me from the players’ dressing room and asked me to come in. Down I went,
expecting Roy to have apologised. I took my seat. Gary promptly announced that the players were not
happy with the training. I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘You what?’ I said. Roy had a major influence on
the dressing room and I believe that he had used that influence to try and turn the situation. Listen,

Carlos Queiroz was a great coach, a great trainer. Yes, he could be repetitive with some exercises,
but that’s what makes footballers: force of habit.
I let them have it. ‘You pulled me down here to complain about the training? Don’t you start, the
pair of you … Who are you talking to?’ And I walked out.
Later, Roy came up to see me and I told him, ‘I know what’s happened.’ Then I started on the
video. ‘What you did in that interview was a disgrace, a joke. Criticising your team-mates. And

wanting that to go out.’
Roy’s suggestion was that we should show the video of the interview to the players and let them
decide. I agreed and the whole team came up to see it. David Gill was in the building, but declined
my invitation to take a seat for the show. He thought it best to leave it to me. But Carlos and all the
staff joined the audience.
Roy asked the players whether they had anything to say about what they had just seen.
Edwin van der Sar said yes. He told Roy he was out of line criticising his team-mates. So Roy

attacked Edwin. Who did he think he was, what did Edwin know about Manchester United? Van
Nistelrooy, to his credit, piped up to support Van der Sar, so Roy rounded on Ruud. Then he started
on Carlos. But he saved the best for me.
‘You brought your private life into the club with your argument with Magnier,’ he said.
At that point, players started walking out. Scholes, Van Nistelrooy, Fortune.
The hardest part of Roy’s body is his tongue. He has the most savage tongue you can imagine. He

can debilitate the most confident person in the world in seconds with that tongue. What I noticed about
him that day as I was arguing with him was that his eyes started to narrow, almost to wee black beads.