Ferguson: 'Control was my only saviour'

This interlude speaks to both the theme of Ferguson's book and his press conference in the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall yesterday. The boy from Govan has come a long way and he has done so by using a varied armoury of traits and characteristics. The most obvious, the most beneficial has been Ferguson's demand for control.

He has long been lazily portrayed as a "hair-dryer" manager, a bully and an emotional incontinent. There was method in any madness, however. Again the best anecdote in the book concerns a coach losing the plot but features Frank Connor, "a lovely man with a hellish temper", throwing a bench on to the pitch during a Cowdenbeath v East Stirlingshire match when a decision went against him. However, the headlines, particularly in England where Ferguson made a substantial living at Manchester United for 27 years and is still employed as a club director, will alight on his rows with David Beckham, Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney.

There was a media feeding frenzy in London yesterday and there was a portion for everyone. Hundreds of journalists squeezed into an ornate room and asked questions that ranged from a Chinese broadcaster demanding the great man's views on the sport in Asia to an Israeli journalist seeking an explanation on some arcane point about his countrymen's inability to replicate their club form for their country.

There were also the titbits on him being offered the England job and his relationships with other managers, especially who brought him the best wine. Roberto Mancini, if one must know.

But this was a masterclass in control. The how and the why of using it. He escaped without a mark by using his eloquence, experience and, just once, a "no comment" on the use of the Y-word in Tottenham Hotspur chants.

If he was in command of the conference, his book and his career shows he was in control of the Manchester United dressing room. Of his explosive row with Keane, he said simply that the Irishman had to go because if he had stayed it would have undermined Ferguson in the dressing-room with players changing their view of his strength, his adherence to certain principles.

Keane had fallen out with Ferguson over the conditions in a training camp and the merits of Carlos Queiroz, then the United coach. "We had a real set-to," says Ferguson in his book, leaving this observer pining for a ringside seat at that confrontation.

The Irishman then taped an interview with MUTV that heavily criticised some of his team-mates. "The meeting was horrendous," said Ferguson of his subsequent tete-a-tete with his one-time captain. He writes in the book: "What I noticed about him that day when I was arguing with him was that his eyes started to narrow, almost to wee black beads. It was frightening to watch and I am from Glasgow."

Keane was paid the monies due of his contract, a testimonial was honoured and he was sent to Celtic. Ferguson reports that the Irishman returned later to apologise, incidentally pointing out he was enjoying life at Parkhead. Ferguson, meanwhile, was doing ever so nicely at Old Trafford.

Beckham, too, was part of a spectacular row, with Ferguson flicking a boot on the dressing room floor that hit his player, opening up a cut on the Englishman's head. "Of course, he rose to have a go at me but the players stopped him," Ferguson writes. Beckham's crime was that he had failed to track back and United consequently lost a goal.

The confrontation was about control. Ferguson had become frustrated at Beckham's inability to heed criticism and was further angered when he saw the player highlighting in public the injury with the aid of an Alice band. In the book, Ferguson says: "It was in those days that I told the board David had to go."

He adds: "Beckham thought he was bigger than Alex Ferguson." The player may have meditated on that at leisure at Real Madrid when Ferguson sold him briskly.

It was not personal. The former manager was yesterday asked at the press conference if he was settling scores but he responded with a measured observation that touched on one of his major problems with Beckham. This concerned the player's marriage to Victoria, then in the Spice Girls, and his subsequent transformation from a player into a brand. "The big problem for me, and I am a football man, is that he fell in love with Victoria and that changed everything," said Ferguson yesterday. "I had to think of my control at the club."

The manager, too, was less than impressed by Beckham's move from Madrid to LA Galaxy. This was not a football move in the eyes of Ferguson. "If he had asked my advice, I would have told him exactly what I thought," he said.

He was generous, though, about a player he admires for his fitness, dedication and ability. But he emphasised his point about Beckham surrendering his place at a great club to the force of commercialism. "He probably did miss the big-time football and maybe in years to come he may feel he should have stayed at Real Madrid," he said. But he added: "How can I be critical of him as a human being? He is an icon to kids throughout the world and is a very wealthy young man. I liked him. When he joined at 12 years of age, he had this fantastic ambition to be a footballer, which I loved."

The control issue was raised again when Rooney told the club they lacked ambition. The relationship between manager and player deteriorated, with Ferguson claiming that the striker asked for a transfer. Rooney has denied this but Ferguson has repeated it in the book and again yesterday. "Wayne asked away. He felt he was playing out of position," he said. "As a player I was dropped for a Scottish Cup final at 10 past two," he said of his experience with Dunfermline Athletic in the 1965 match against Celtic. "I had a heated discussion with the manager."

The assumption must be that Rooney had a similar natter with Ferguson. But the manager was conciliatory yesterday, explaining the Englishman's subsequent omission from the first team thus: "At the time Wayne was not playing well enough. Do you think I would drop Wayne Rooney the way he is playing now. Absolutely no way."

This formulation allows Ferguson to stick to his record of events but to praise Rooney as a fine, powerful footballer with a substantial future at Old Trafford. This allows David Moyes, his successor, to remain a master of a prickly situation. Rooney needs to be loved and he may find consolation in the attentions of the former Everton manager.

Ferguson has moved on, but he feels an obligation to Moyes. It was clear throughout the press conference and in the book that Moyes will receive the same backing that the former Aberdeen manager enjoyed from Matt Busby and Bobby Charlton in his early days at Manchester United. He was bullish about the poor start in the Barclays Premier League: "You know something, Manchester United are the only club in that league who can win the title by coming from behind. Once he gets the ball rolling, they will be fine."

There was only one row that was brusquely dismissed and that concerned the controversy over the ownership of Rock of Gibraltar, who won seven consecutive Group 1 races. Ferguson and Coolmore disagreed over who owned the horse, prompting a bitter wrangle.

The book only devotes two paragraphs to the affair and Ferguson said yesterday that his agreement with Coolmore precluded any further discussion. Even on this prickly subject, he was holding the reins. It is what he does. "The only thing I could never allow was loss of control, but control was my only saviour," he writes.

There may be no Fergie: The Musical but, if there was, that sentence could serve as the lyrics to the theme music.

Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £25