The Greatest Football Story Ever Told - Part 7

As part of the build-up to Tour 2015, presented by Aon, we’ll be reflecting on some of the most important and unforgettable times in Manchester United's history - something we believe to be the greatest football story ever told. We'll also be hearing from some of the key personalities who have helped create that story. In chapter seven of our series, we turn our attention to Sir Alex Ferguson's arrival at the club and, in the video player above, we show former player Denis Irwin talking about the great Scot's managerial ethos....

In November 1986, just as Matt Busby had arrived at Old Trafford tasked with rousing a sleeping giant four decades earlier, a young Scottish manager unpacked his bags in Manchester, rolled up his sleeves and set about re-routing the course of history.


In the intervening 18 years between United’s 1968 European Cup triumph and the appointment of Alex Ferguson, five different managers – plus Busby’s brief second stint – had taken the reins at Old Trafford. In almost two decades, the sum total of the Reds’ efforts was a haul of three FA Cups won in 1977, 1983 and 1985. The emergence of local rivals Liverpool as the country’s dominant force merely highlighted each passing year with which United failed to challenge for the most coveted domestic prize on offer: the league title.

When Ron Atkinson was relieved of his duties as manager, the club’s board unanimously agreed to turn to the man whose work with Aberdeen had broken Scottish football’s seemingly unbreakable duopoly of Glasgow giants Celtic and Rangers. Furthermore, Ferguson had masterminded an astonishing victory over Real Madrid in the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup final. He was an unmistakeable winner, plain and simple. “When we actually met him,” recalled then-chairman Martin Edwards, “and realised what a firebrand he was and saw the way he conducted himself, that really just confirmed how impressive he was.”

Ferguson had already insisted on a clause in his contract with Aberdeen which would release him if he was offered the job at Old Trafford, and he admitted negotiations were far from difficult. “To a great extent I was a captive candidate, and happy to be so,” he later conceded. But, upon arriving at Old Trafford, the Scot found a club amid an identity crisis; divorced from the prestige and romance which first enticed him to the job.

United’s scouting and youth systems were in disrepair, while the senior set-up was hampered by poor fitness and a social drinking culture. But while he acknowledged there was a long road ahead, Ferguson outlined his stance in his very first column for United Review, the matchday programme: “Taking over a club of Manchester United’s magnitude is an awesome task,” he wrote. “I am not really interested in what has happened here in the past. I don’t mean any disrespect to the great achievements of Manchester United over the years. It’s simply that there is now only one way to go, and that is forward.”

With Alex Ferguson at the helm, United’s course was set on the right path. Few could have envisaged, however, that it would take the club beyond the moon and the stars.

Credit: manutd.com