Moyes can rest easy – Ferguson’s book disappoints
My copy of Alex Ferguson‘s new book, My Autobiography, only arrived at 11am this morning, so I have only had two and a half hours to speed through the 350 pages, but my first impression is that the new Manchester United manager David Moyes needn’t worry.
There doesn’t seem to be anything in Fergie’s text to cause further disruption to his already troubled team – no barbed comments or careful point-scoring.
Wayne Rooney can rest easily too, as Fergie says little that will embarrass the player (though it’s possible that in my haste I’ve missed it).
For 40 years Sir Alex Ferguson has always been great value – with his regular TV interviews and his many previous books.
Ferguson is rarely dull. Pugnacious, informed and intelligent, he always has a new take, some new titbits, or revelations, or controversial view.
It was even true with his regular column in the United match-day programme, where Moyes is also struggling to match his record.
Read more: Fergie’s autobiography: the digested read
Ferguson’s previous autobiography, Managing My Life, was published in 1999 after Manchester United’s great treble success.
That was probably the best autobiography ever by an English football manager – well written and very detailed.
And it was made all the juicier for his many barbed comments and outright attacks on all sorts of people in football, notably his former assistant at United, Brian Kidd, but also Paul Ince, Gordon Strachan, Paul McGrath, Alan Hansen, Jim Leighton, Kenny Dalglish, and the former United chairman Martin Edwards.
My Autobiography, in contrast, seems to be an attempt to be conciliatory.
This time Ferguson is generous in praise of Edwards, the man who brought him to Old Trafford in 1986.
And he’s generous to most of the others he’s fallen out with over the years as well, including David Beckham, Roy Keane and Ruud Van Nistelrooy.
In each case there’s an emphasis on the positive and he downplays the negative. And he’s effusive in his praise of the Glazers, the American family who bought United but burdened the club with huge debt in doing so.
Ferguson insists that debt never impinged on any of his decisions as manager.
Having said that, Beckham may be upset to learn Ferguson thinks that after the player started pursuing a career as a celebrity. “He never attained the level where you would say: that is an absolute top player.”
Another exception is Ferguson section on the former United and England midfield player Owen Hargreaves.
Read more: Sir Alex Ferguson retires as Manchester United manager
Ferguson says his purchase was a “disaster”. Hargreaves, he says, “didn’t show enough determination to overcome his physical difficulties, for my liking. I saw him opt for the easy choice too often in terms of training. He was one of the most disappointing signings of my career.”
What’s most disappointing is what Ferguson leaves out. He devotes just one nine-line paragraph to his dispute in the early noughties with the Irish racehorse owners John Magnier and JP McManus over the brilliant horse Rock Of Gibraltar.
Yet it was a major row which almost led to Ferguson’s departure from Old Trafford and caused the Irishmen to buy millions of shares in the club, a strategy which eventually led to the takeover by the Glazers.
Nor does Ferguson address the criticisms which I made in my biography, The Boss, in 2002 that he abused his position as United manager to further the interests of his son Jason, who was then a football agent (a species Ferguson has long despised).
There were big questions to answer about the role of Jason Ferguson’s company, Elite, in the sale of Jaap Stam and another transfer.
And several youth players alleged to me that the United manager put pressure on them to employ Jason as their personal agent.
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It was this issue, also explored in 2004 by my former researcher Alex Millar in the BBC documentary Fergie and Son, which caused Ferguson to boycott the BBC for seven years.
Ferguson states: “The United board cleared me, Jason and Elite of any wrongdoing, but decided that Jason could no longer act for the club on transfer dealings.”
He also says he wanted to sue the BBC, but Jason and his own lawyer persuaded him not to. There are many questions about the whole Jason episode which remain untouched. Nor does Ferguson mention at all his role in the takeover bid for United which his other son Mark, a Goldman Sachs banker, tried to put together in 1998-99 as an alternative to the bid then being made by BSkyB.
In a way My Autobiography is much more like a traditional ghosted football autobiography – worthy, patchy, rushed, and most unusual for Alex Ferguson, a touch dull.
It seems designed to sell books to loyal United fans, not to sell newspapers.
Now let me read it properly. Perhaps there’s something I missed.
Michael Crick, a Manchester United fan who saw Ferguson’s first and last matches with the club (and a majority of the 1,498 matches in between), is the author of The Boss: The Many Sides of Alex Ferguson (Simon and Schuster 2002; Pocket Books, 2003)
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