20 years and Fergie's won it all!

IT is easy to forget that Old Trafford wasn't always the football palace it is today.

Exactly 20 years ago, when the young and largely unknown - in England, at least - Alex Ferguson blew in from Aberdeen, things were quite different.
Pies, not prawn sandwiches, were the order of the day and fans jostled on the Stretford End and United Road terraces, rather than sitting in the lofty heights of the North Stand.


Things were equally undeveloped on the field.

United fans were starved of glory - a few FA Cup wins aside - and had grown sick of casting envious eyes west towards Liverpool's bursting trophy cabinet.

The 60s glory days were a dim memory, and after stumbling through the 70s and early 80s as nowhere men - or, at best, nearly men - United's claim to being the biggest and best in England was becoming an embarrassing joke.

There were bright spots. Tommy Docherty's Red Army delighted in cult heroes such as Steve Coppell, Stuart Pearson and Lou Macari, and `Big' Ron Atkinson almost got his champagne football to fizz with the best. The Dave Sexton years in between are best forgotten.

What United fans needed were trophies to match their Scouse rivals. They needed something they hadn't had since the Matt Busby era. Someone to play the United way, but instil the discipline to bring success. Someone to make Reds believe their own hype and have a grand vision for a lasting legacy.

What, it turned out, they needed was Alex Ferguson.

The United he inherited from Big Ron in November 1986 was in disarray - underachieving stars and the hope of being the best as far away as ever.

Ferguson - a shipyard shop steward in Glasgow before he went full-time as a player - had already smashed the Celtic-Rangers stranglehold with Aberdeen. What he brought with him from Scotland was to change United forever.

The success of his United reign will always be measured, rightly, in trophies - 18 and counting - in the fact that he is the most successful manager in British football history and in his knighthood.

Success

But it is his unquenchable thirst for success and his belligerent demand for high standards that have driven, and continue to drive, his ongoing quest for glory.

Ferguson, born into working-class socialist stock, has displayed an almost obsessive will to win and set the bar higher than any other manager before him to demand his players live up to his standards.

That was his way from the word go. Norman Whiteside and Paul McGrath, brilliant but boozers, were sent packing early in the Fergie years as he set a precedent for not shirking difficult decisions that were for the benefit of the club. Fergie has a well-deserved reputation as a hard man to please and the wrong man to cross, and Whiteside and McGrath were not the last to be treated with his hallmark brutal efficiency. Keeper Jim Leighton, an Aberdeen old boy, was shown no sentiment when he was axed from the 1990 Cup replay in favour of Les Sealey after a horror show in the first game.

And Paul Ince, Jaap Stam, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, David Beckham and Ruud van Nistelrooy, all celebrated title winners, were shown the Old Trafford exit door when Fergie thought the time was right.

But the glory years were preceded by a few barren ones as the Scot found his Old Trafford feet.

And it was a story that, according to United legend, almost went untold. Only Martin Edwards, then United chairman, really knows how close Fergie was to the sack after more than three trophyless years in his post.

If you believe in the romance of football, it was Mark Robins' FA Cup third-round winner against Forest in January 1990 that saved Ferguson's job. The Reds went on to win their boss his first United trophy - with a 1-0 FA Cup Final replay win against Crystal Palace - and afford him the time to build his first great team.

Patience

United might claim it was their patience and good planning that allowed Fergie to carry on.

Either way, it was a good job for them he did.

The Reds claimed the Cup Winners' Cup in 1991, and what followed made United fans the happiest - and most hated - in the country and saw the Reds rise from being world renowned to a worldwide brand.

The league title in 1993 broke a 26-year drought for the club and started a snowball effect that made the Reds the team of the 90s. The `double' followed the next year for a side strong on the United instincts of attacking football - Fergie wasn't all grit and determination - and in 1996 the `double double', including, sweetly, FA Cup final victory over Liverpool, was achieved with a team built on home-grown, still wet-behind-the-ears talent.

More title glory followed in 1997 before Ferguson's crowning glory and the biggest fairytale of all, the 1999 treble. Within the space a few sweet days in May, United sealed another title, bagged the FA Cup, and with an amazing injury-time fight-back against Bayern Munich, claimed the European Cup in Barcelona.

If Ferguson had stopped there, he would have been granted football immortality alongside the likes of Busby, Shankly, Paisley, Stein and Clough.

And with knighthood came the assumption by many that he would retire.

But another two titles followed to make a record three in succession, before he decided to quit - only to change his mind to pick up an eighth Premiership crown in 2003.

It is an amazing record, unlikely to be matched by any other modern-day manager, but to paint it as the product purely of Ferguson's incredible desire and drive sells him short. Just as important is that those trophies were won the United way - with attacking, entertaining football, played by the best players.

The hairdryer blasts at those who cross him are a legend in themselves - but you don't win 18 trophies just by being tough and wanting it more than the rest.

Talented

Playing the United way needs supremely talented players and Fergie has shown he is the master at both buying them and producing them.

The youth set-up, overhauled to become the bedrock of the club, saw talent roll off the Old Trafford production line Busby-style.

Giggs, Sharpe, Beckham, the Nevilles, Scholes, Butt, Brown, Fletcher - all were treated with kid gloves, rather than the iron fist, as Fergie first moulded them into United class, then gave them their chances to shine on the biggest stage at a young age.

He has shown the same tender touch with the young stars he has bought in. Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney are flourishing as world-class talents.

And in the transfer market, the Reds' boss has shown a bargain-hunting ability that makes David Dickinson look like a Flash Harry.

United legends Peter Schmeichel and Eric Cantona, the two key men behind the 90s success, were bought for less than £2m for the pair and the £3.5m spent on Roy Keane in 1993 must go down as among the best money ever spent in English football. Value signings such as Denis Irwin, Steve Bruce and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer didn't do too badly, either.

There have been a few big-money flops - Juan Sebastian Veron and Kleberson to name but two - but Cole, Yorke, Stam, van Nistelrooy and more recently the £30m splashes on Rio Ferdinand and Rooney more than redress the balance.

Canny Fergie has also built and benefited from the best back-up system around, from the Academy system goldmine, to top-class coaching, notably from now departed sidekick Brian Kidd, to support his leadership.

Authority

The habit of pulling off a winning gamble and a good bit of old fashioned luck don't go amiss, either and leading with an almost unquestionable authority holds it all together.

Things haven't all been plain sailing. It wasn't just the press that was calling for Fergie's head, but some United fans as well, when the early years didn't bring instant success.

Not every signing or selection has come off, and his increasingly sour relationship with the media is becoming tiresome for fans, who want to hear their manager speak now and then. Some thought he should have quit when he said he would in 2002, though he would point to the 2003 title as vindication of his decision to stay on and his desire to land another European Cup - where United have failed since 1999, most embarrassingly last season - as further motivation.

But the foundation of Ferguson's success has always been to look forward.

To rest on his laurels goes against the work ethic of the Glaswegian, who named his Wilmslow home `Fairfields' after the shipyard where his father worked.

After having things mostly his own way since setting the ball rolling in 1993, he now faces a new challenge, in the shape of mega-rich Chelsea.

He has won some great battles in his 20 years at Old Trafford - spats with Kevin Keegan and Arsene Wenger, in particular, provided amusing sideshows to the business of winning - but now the Reds boss faces a test against an unusual foe: one with bigger spending power.

Jose Mourinho's Abramovich-funded Chelsea, champions for the last two years, stand in the way of further prizes.

But the current table-topping United team have, after three lean years, all the Fergie hallmarks - flair, youth, passion, determination, a splash of maverick brilliance - and their best chance of reclaiming the crown of top dogs in years.