Page 84 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

So when, on 10 May 2005, we assembled a guard of honour for Chelsea, the new champions, at our
ground, I had no intention of surrendering to Abramovich’s wealth in the months to come.
Psychologically that was a big moment for Chelsea. They had won the League for the first time in
half a century and could see themselves from then on in another light. A lesson we took on board was

that slow starts could no longer be tolerated if we were to face down Chelsea, our big new
challengers. The following season we made a flying start, though the campaign fizzled out, the lowest
point being the game against Lille in Paris, where a proportion of our supporters booed the young
players in the warm-up in the wake of Keane’s outburst on MUTV about some of our squad not
pulling their weight.
That was a killer. Roy had exacerbated the problem of our poor form by making targets of his team-
mates. On the pitch we were in shocking form and the 1–0 defeat that night was my lowest point for

many years.
In the same month that Roy Keane left the club, in November 2005, we lost George Best. He was a
very nice bloke, George, a very gentle lad, a bit nervous, somehow. Nervous to talk to you. He had an
insecurity about him that worried you. I remember sitting in a bar in Japan with him once – he was
with a girlfriend – and he could hardly talk. He seemed gripped by shyness. George could have had a
good life after football. He could have coached young players, but perhaps lacked the personality to

be a tutor. A fact about George that few recognised is how intelligent he was. The funeral was huge
and sad and wonderfully orchestrated by the city of Belfast. It had the feel and the grandeur of a state
funeral. I remember looking at George’s father, a wee, humble man, and thinking: ‘He produced one
of the greatest players of all time.’ A small man from Belfast, a quiet man. You could see where
George got his reticence.
The football public in his country is basically working class, and for some reason they like people
who are flawed. Best, Gascoigne, Jimmy Johnstone. They see reflections of themselves in these

imperfect heroes. They understand the frailty. Jimmy was such a likeable lad you could never fail to
be amused by his mischief.
Jock Stein would stare at his telephone every Friday night and his wife Jean would say, ‘What are
you looking at the telephone for?’
‘It’s going to ring,’ Jock would say. ‘The phone’s going to ring.’
A typical call would start: ‘Lanarkshire police here, Mr Stein. We’ve got young Jimmy here.’

George Best, of course, was one of United’s great European Cup winners. But we were a long way
off that pinnacle in this campaign. Wayne Rooney was sent off in a 0–0 draw at Villarreal in
September 2005 for sarcastically clapping Kim Milton Nielsen, who had also dismissed David
Beckham in the 1998 World Cup. Not my favourite referee. Nielsen was one of the most infuriating
match officials. You were petrified when you saw his name on the list. On another occasion, Rooney
swore at Graham Poll ten times. Poll, who could have sent him off, probably enjoyed having the TV
cameras on him. But at least he had the common sense to handle Wayne as a human being and not be

bothered by his effing and jeffing. In that respect, Rooney would have more respect for Poll than he
would for Nielsen. That was the game in which Heinze ruptured his knee ligament after his agent had
asked us for a transfer.
Meanwhile, after we had been knocked out of the Champions League with a 2–1 defeat at Benfica
in December, the press were rolling out the sell-by-date theory. To be criticised for continual
negligence in the job would have made sense to me, but the suggestion was that I had lost it because

of my age, which was disgusting. As people grow older, they gain experience. There was a phase in
football when top players were being hired as Premier League managers straight away with no