The Rough Guide to Manchester United 2003/04

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MAN UTD A Fan’s Handbook in association with UNITED WE STAND INTRODUCTION Thank goodness for Cathy Ferguson. It was the Boss’s wife, so it seems, who was responsible for the best piece of news for United fans in the 2001–02 Sir Alex was staying on. As recently as Boxing Day, the United manager had been insisting he would retire at the end of the season as had been long planned. "I’m absolutely going," he said then. "I won’t be making comebacks like singers do. It’s a decision me and my family have made." Just over a month later and there he was in full Sinatra mode, with the United fans teasing him in "It’s Cathy that wears the pants." Perhaps it was the thought of having him under her feet round the house all day that did it. The prospect of him complaining that the washing machine had an anti-Red agenda, or standing there in the kitchen tapping his watch because the kettle was taking too long to boil, or telling the cleaning lady not to come on Friday, because he was resting her for the big one next week. Whatever, Cathy suggested he still had too much energy in him not to be working. So he decided to stay on. In many ways, 5 February 2002, the day it was announced that Sir Alex was to remain in his office at Carrington, was the highlight of the Red season. Another three years of the greatest club manager the English game has ever known was unquestionably the best news fans could receive. Particularly since, as the manager himself suggested, his impending retirement – and the soap opera developing around his successor – had unsettled the team during the weeks now known to United historians as the black autumn, the period which cost the club a record fourth title on the bounce. Sir Alex, remembering the shabby ends of managers such as Bill Shankly and Jock Stein, had rightly wanted to go out on his terms. Giving good notice, he thought, would allow the club the requisite time to find a replacement, and with the European final scheduled in his home city, it seemed the perfect finale was written in the script. But it didn’t quite turn out like that. For a time in the autumn of 2001, minds were focusing on the manager’s departure rather than the job in players were unsure whether to sign new contracts until they knew who the new man was to be, coaching staff were worried that this might be their last year, and in the board room energies were channelled into trying to find an adequate replacement for the manager instead of a centre back. Speculation rather than concentration was the order of the day. Hindsight is the football fan’s clearest field of but last autumn Reds didn’t need any retro-spex to know that a crisis was enveloping their club. When West Ham won at Old Trafford in early December, it was the sixth defeat of the league campaign; before Christmas had arrived, United had suffered more losses than in the whole of the previous, Championship-winning season. This wasn’t the standard Red autumnal wobble. It was more like a collapse. For some commentators, Ferguson had become a lame-duck just as Sven Goran Eriksson had found at Lazio, when he had tried to give notice to quit for the England job, football is an unforgiving business. Try to do things properly, to leave to a timetable and the momentum of departure takes Eriksson was eased out of his job less than three months into his final year. There were several pieces in the press suggesting Fergie, too, might not even make it to the last verse of his swansong. But such speculation miscalculated the enormous will to win the man possesses. Determined that his legacy was not to be one of failure, he re-engaged with the team, put aside thoughts of leaving, once more ignited a feud with his long-running sparring partner the press. And he started to enjoy himself again. As did the team, putting aside their losing habit to embark on a New Year’s run of nine successive victories. It was, apparently, when Gary Neville, looking at the fixture list after a wonderful away win at Sunderland, said to his manager that he only had 12 more league games left, that it hit him. He was having the time of his life, loving the challenge from Arsenal and Liverpool, turning round the fortunes of a team whose potential had barely been explored, did he really want to give all this up? After he decided to stay, the rest of the season shaped itself entirely in his image. His team refused to accept all available logic that they had blown the league. Led by the remarkable new centre forward Ruud van Nistelrooy, they climbed from the pit of autumn through a glorious spring. And triumph was so close. Until the last fortnight of the season, there was still the mathematical possibility of a Premiership and Champions League double. That it didn’t come was, naturally, profoundly disappointing. If Reds had become blasé in all those victories these past few years, one thing is we miss triumph when it isn’t there. But the truth is, there is something admirable in the way this side never gave up until the fat lady cleared her throat.

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