Ruthless, relentless and usually right

On the Premiership: There was no fanfare, no pomp or pretence. The gold carriage clocks and silver platters stayed unwrapped in their boxes. There was polite applause and a cursory wave of the hand as he strolled down the touchline, but nothing more. Instead, Alex Ferguson celebrated an extraordinary landmark as the manager of Manchester United in the time-honoured way: by winning a match.

He has been doing it for two decades now and, as a distinctly sprightly 64-year-old, he does not seem to be slowing down. Saturday's emphatic victory over Portsmouth ensured United spent another weekend peering down at their rivals from the summit of the Premiership. Arsenal may have the style and Chelsea may ultimately have the substance but when it comes to hunting down league championships, nobody does it better than Ferguson and he has the scent of blood in his nostrils once again.

To spend 20 years in the quicksand of football management is an achievement in itself but to do so at one club - and at Manchester United in particular - is staggering. And it is not enough to simply boast tactical nous or a keen eye for a player: only unusually steely characters can reach such an uncommon anniversary.

It is easy to succumb to clumsy stereotypes with Ferguson. Comparisons with his greatest rivals err towards the unfavourable: while Arsene Wenger is Le Professeur, Ferguson is the surly Scottish shopkeeper; while Jose Mourinho smoulders with Latin sensuality, Ferguson would struggle to win a beauty contest in his native Govan.

The reality, of course, is less simplistic. Ferguson does not have Wenger's balletic turns of phrase, but his intellect is just as rigorous. Last week, he discoursed at length on the inequities of British retirement legislation.

He would never admit it, but even Wenger must have been impressed.

The parallels with Mourinho are even more pointed. The Portuguese may have gone out of his way to goad Ferguson in his early Champions League excursions - his remarks after Porto's 2-1 second-round win over United in 2004 were especially acidic - but as soon as he arrived in the Premiership, his rancour turned to respect, unsurprisingly, perhaps, given Mourinho seems to have learned his sharpest tricks - the mind games, the feuds, the siege mentality - from the master himself.

The one trait he has not inherited is durability. While Mourinho has flitted from club to club in his pursuit of silverware and celebrity, Ferguson's notorious single-mindedness is manifested most tellingly in his devotion to Manchester United. His bond with Old Trafford is now so complete that his departure would most likely cause the stadium's towering stands to collapse in red rubble.

When the Ferguson era is contemplated in years to come, there are a clutch of faces who will loom large: Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville - maybe, if this season yields as much as it promises, Wayne Rooney.

They are the figures who are synonymous with Ferguson's success, but lingering behind them are other spectral presences - the ghosts of Paul Ince, Japp Stam, David Beckham, Roy Keane and Ruud van Nistelrooy.

All were totems of United's greatest recent teams; all dared to cross their leader; all paid the price with their Old Trafford careers. They have now been airbrushed from the club's history, with Ferguson refusing to even acknowledge their existence in public.

His ruthlessness was openly questioned by supporters but he has been proved indisputably right in each instance. With the possible exception of Stam, none of the Infamous Five topped their achievements at United after leaving and the hugely controversial decision to sell van Nistelrooy in the summer is now proving a masterstroke.

There is no question mark over the Dutchman's virtuoso attacking prowess.

His scoring feats in the Champions League and Premiership are virtually unsurpassed and such vast goal tallies are not amassed by chance. Yet it is the selfish streak which enabled van Nistelrooy to take a hatchet to the record books that has now been exposed as the limiting factor in United's recent seasons of underachievement.

Louis Saha might not match van Nistelrooy's poaching abilities, but the French forward is more mobile and versatile than his predecessor and his ability to drag defenders into peculiar positions enables Cristiano Ronaldo, Giggs and Rooney to take advantage of the wide open spaces left behind. With Paul Scholes flourishing once again, United suddenly have a myriad of attacking options where, last season, they had just one.

The result is that Ferguson now has the best chance of adding to his eight Premiership titles since 2003. It would be a fitting tribute to a remarkable managerial milestone but one suspects the man himself would it see it as nothing more than a staging post on the road to greater glories.