World Soccer Presents - The Prem Era #2 (2022)

(Maropa) #1
8 THE PREM ERA

THE MANAGERS


APRIL 2006: Manchester United have just lifted the League
Cup, their first trophy in two years. Yet with Chelsea dominating

the Premier League under Jose Mourinho, Liverpool the reigning


European champions and Arsenal on course to reach the Champions


League final, there is a sense that the once-dominant Alex Ferguson


and his United side have been left behind by their rivals...


Fergie fading


I


n the dying of an empire, echoes
of past glories are everywhere.
Manchester United’s players
raised a smile and popped the
champagne at Cardiff’s Millennium
stadium after dispatching Wigan Athletic
4-0 to win the League Cup in February,
but the wider world thought only of
how dismissive Sir Alex Ferguson used
to be of this competition when he was
marching the club to Premiership titles
and European Cup success.
As the manager now grapples with
a patchy, unbalanced squad, a soured
relationship with much of his former
adoring crowd, and his own workaholic
unwillingness to retire, the League Cup
win came not so much as blessed relief,
but as a poignant reminder of better
times past.
In former years, Fergie used to rest
his first-team players for League Cup
matches, given that the competition
offered only a UEFA Cup place for

Words:David Conn

the winners. This rather upset the
Football League, which relied on the
tournament for much of its TV income,
as it still does. But, ironically, Ferguson’s
devaluing of the competition actually
resulted in it providing one of the most
memorable landmarks in his United
journey.
On September 21,1994, United took
on second-tier Port Vale in a second
round tie. Against the Staffordshire
club’s collection of old stagers and
lower division battlers, Ferguson threw
on a team of teenagers. The local MP
was outraged, complaining that the
public was being cheated of the chance
to see United’s stars – after all, who
wanted to watch these kids, Gary
Neville, Nicky Butt, David Beckham,
Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs?
As a Manchester City supporter,
I always remember watching the
highlights that evening; it was chilling
TV. We’d been told United had a good

group of young players coming through,
who had won the FA Youth Cup. Giggs
was already a star. But suddenly here
they all were, relaxed and utterly without
fear. It wasn’t so much the result that
has stayed with me – United won 2-1,
both goals from Scholes on his first-
team debut – but the image of Neil
Aspin, Vale’s sturdy ex-Leeds United
full-back, lumbering along in the kids’
wake. It was that that made me realise,
gloomily, that the blasted kids were
going to be as good as predicted.
This collection of mostly Mancunian
youngsters was about to take the club
to a new level. Of course, Ferguson had
already been United’s manager for eight
years, and had dragged the club from
being serial underperformers to winning
two successive league championships.
Look at United now, as Ferguson’s
dynasty groans to its end. You see a
club devoured by many of the excesses
it did so much to create. Money in
football has grown huge, ticket prices
raised tenfold, young people priced
out, and prawn sandwiches served.
As United became a PLC and Martin
Edwards made £93 million from steadily
selling his family’s major stake in the club,
fans hostile to all this clung to the image
of Ferguson as old football, Red at heart
and in politics, the old union organiser
from the hard Glasgow dockside. Then
he became involved with racehorse
ownersJohn Magnier andJ. P. McManus,
with whom he rowed about his shares
in Rock of Gibraltar, held out endlessly
for a higher salary for himself, and
there were revelations about his
son,Jason, operating as an agent
in transfer deals at Old Trafford.
Finally, the Glazer family bought
United last May, and Ferguson needn’t
worry because he will be long gone by
the time the £540m of debt begins to

Winner...Ferguson and his team celebrate with the League Cup trophy after beating Wigan 4-
Free download pdf