Ferguson takes guard against rise of demons

A skeleton implausibly clad in bright red pyjamas this week tumbled just as implausibly out of Alex Ferguson's cupboard, which most people had always assumed contained only mothballs and several immaculately tailored blazers.

A television documentary revealed how Ferguson, in a preenactment of the behaviour of some of his future Manchester United players, once turned up drunk in a hotel bar, wearing those red pyjamas, shouting and bawling at all around him. The incident occurred on a pre-season tour in 1969 after Ferguson, then a Rangers player, had phoned home to be told by his wife Cath that the club had issued a statement saying he would never play for them again.

The image will have sat incredulously with Old Trafford fans, not to mention former United players such as Norman White side and Paul McGrath, who were sold because of their fondness for a drink. To them Ferguson was born a middle-aged martinet in a padded Umbro top zipped up to the neck, prowling life's touchlines railing at those unable to meet his standards in anything from sobriety to timekeeping.

But what provoked Ferguson to that Gazza-style confrontation with the bottle was not so much self-pity that the club of his boyhood dreams had rejected him but the manner in which they had gone about it. To him, Rangers were guilty of the most unpardonable crime: disloyalty.

Any number of friends, whether they first encountered Ferguson inside the school gates or on his arrival in Manchester, will testify to his loyalty. Hugh McIlvanney, who is writing the man's autobiography and is so decorated himself that the term ghost writer does not approach adequacy, says: "One of the most impressive things about Alex is the way he keeps friends, some of them from primary school days."

Many of those friends are also from outside football, which can help broaden the Ferguson perspective at times of crisis when most football men cannot see beyond the white lines. It was one of these friends, Richard Greenbury, who helped him make his decision after the Eric Cantona kung-fu incident three years ago.

He told Ferguson: "Remember what I told you about John McEnroe. On the court he was an absolute beast but outside the court he was a really charming man." Fergie reflected on the advice and admitted: "When I came to think of it, Cantona had never been any bother off the pitch."

Ferguson has sometimes defended his players to the point of self-ridicule, once describing Roy Keane as "the most victimised player in the game". But Glenn Hoddle would benefit from practising Ferguson's belief that players, like friends and relations, should only hear home truths at home.

He is not one who believes in extending friendship beyond the dressing-room door. He says: "I believe that an approach of `you're the players, I'm the manager' works best. They don't have to say, `Boss, would you and your wife like to come for dinner?' I've known that and there's nothing wrong with it, but I think it makes for a far better relationship if we have our own social lives."

He does sometimes join in the players' card school, though they may think twice about asking him again after hearing the claims of Ferguson's brother Martin, who says: "He used to cheat all the time, though he would tell you different. He once had five pontoons in a row and told me he wasnae cheating."

Ferguson would probably insist he was just giving himself an edge, which all good managers attempt to do. "Get it flooded" was his instruction to a disbelieving groundsman before the second leg of United's European Cup quarter-final against Monaco at Old Trafford last season. He believed that the stamina of the Monaco players, who play on a rock-hard pitch at home, would be tested by softer conditions. But if Monaco were unable to walk on water, nor on that occasion were United, managing only a 1-1 draw which meant their elimination on the away goal.

Men who remain as loyal to their friends as Ferguson tend to be as faithful to their roots. Thus Ferguson, who on a reported £800,000 a year has become wealthy enough to indulge in the sport of kings, remembered his own, and his father's, days in the Glasgow shipyards when he bought his first racehorse. He named it Queensland Star, after a ship which his father helped to build.

Ferguson says: "I've often thought about the periods in my life that changed me and the drive has to be shaped in your youth. When we were brought up, you had to get to work on time and work hard or you didn't have a job.

"I wasn't a particularly successful footballer, though I thought I was a good player in a team and scored goals. But I never won the things I wanted to win and that shaped me. You get an opportunity to put that right as a manager, and Scotsmen who leave the country have a great sense of pride of who they are and want to do well. There is a sense of duty to do well for your country and your self."

The story of Fergie in his red pyjamas may indicate that history is about to repeat itself. Rangers had only just been taken over by Davie White, who did not get on with Ferguson. Now United are in the process of being bought by Sky television and those who put two and £623 million together may come up with the equation: United + Murdoch United - Ferguson.

There have been fanciful rumours this week as United prepared for Barcelona on Wednesday and Arsenal tomorrow that Ferguson might leave for Juventus, where his pursuit of the European Cup would be diluted from Holy Grail to a routine target. And if there was a smidgin of truth in reports that Murdoch's men have been trying to sign a Japanese player behind his back, there would already be a trail of skid marks leading from his former parking bay at The Cliff training ground.

Those closest to Ferguson believe it would take some unprecedentedly appalling treatment to drive him from a job with which he has become synonymous, an honour that seemed unlikely to be bestowed on any manager after the late Sir Matt Busby.

Ferguson, you see, had become hopelessly attached to United long before the mirror on the wall had begun to flatter him. Back in 1989, not yet three years into the job and looking as though he might be facing the sack, he told a friend: "Every time someone looks at me, I feel I have betrayed that man.

"But that's only because you care, care about the people who support you. At Manchester United you become one of them, you think like a supporter, suffer like a supporter."

Like every other supporter, he has suffered most in Europe where, he says: "You are looking for what is going to trip you up, you are looking for the demons." Ferguson will continue to seek to destroy them on the field of play, despite the voices which whisper that he should be looking for demons among the putative new suits in the boardroom.