Dark Savante
09 Nov 2007, 10:33 AM
The Wise Old Fox
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g71/Apex_Zwei/Thoughtful.jpg
Chapter 1: A Basic Introduction
He wasn’t always this way, you know? This guise, the apparent calm and thoughtful fox, impossible to ensnare; quick and precise when it’s time to strike, silent, wily and candid otherwise.
Indeed, the old man has changed. Changed with the times, with the climate of the modern game and with acknowledgement of age encroaching on the years he has left to satisfy the few burning desires that remain. Or has he? That would depend on who you asked, I would wager.
The reputation that Alexander Chapman Ferguson has forged for himself, intended or otherwise, is that of a fiery, ambitious and often foul-mouthed Scot who will stop at nothing and crush everything in his path to achieve his goals. Past players, fellow managers, journalists and anyone else who has been on the more abrasive side of his personality will tell you he’s a fearsome man, quick to anger when provoked, steely stubborn and hardened to the glibness of the game.
Fans of the clubs he has resided over will have their own tales to tell, not all of them will show the Wily Old Fox in the most positive of lights, but even the sourest of supporters, if not polluted absolutely, will tell you that this man is great at what he does. As an overseer and pioneer, there have been few in the entire history of the sport able to match what Ferguson has done or continues to do in the game.
This is a man who takes a club on as a project, grabs it by the ankles and dangles it upside down before setting it upright again with all undesirable elements removed. If these requirements are not met, Alex is out, closing the door behind him as the then Scottish second division side, St. Mirren, found out to their displeasure all of thirty years ago. *
Despite my father’s attempted indoctrinations I incurred from the age of eight months until around five-years-old (so my mother tells me), the reason why I became a Manchester United fan, before anything else was considered, was the red shirt and black socks. No, not the earliest recollections of a fetishist, just a natural draw to both colours. Little does my dad know that his propaganda had no affect on my early leaning toward Manchester United! Anyway, my dad had been trying to get me into Hibernian, a Scottish side for whom he had a strange secondary interest (which I’ve never actually got round to asking him about come to think of it.) Little did he know that whatever it was he would say to me wasn’t registering at all. Indeed, my leaning toward red had me pick Aberdeen – a team managed by none other than Mr. ‘Alec’ Ferguson. Back then, there was no such thing as cross-national coverage, no Internet, obviously, so all the information I had was the sparse news reports of Aberdeen’s unheard of jaunts in Europe and my Panini sticker albums from the early 80’s (The claimant of the majority of my pocket money at the time!! Damn doubles and getting the same player nine times, when you needed the one next to him!!) Yes, Ferguson was creating a storm well before he came to Manchester United. Breaking up the duopoly of the Old Firm was a legendary achievement given his squad and the funds available to him, which was as unthinkable and ‘impossible’ then as it is now. In my sticker album, I was drawn to both he and his captain, one Willie Miller, whose moustache was the stuff of legend. Yes, a young Savante used to run around the house with a hairbrush under his top lip, making psychotic eyes at the ball, pretending to be him. Ah, good times!
As anyone who is old enough to remember the original version of the TV show, Taggart, will tell you, our manager is the spitting image of the now deceased Mark McManus ( http://www.taggart-fanclub.co.uk/mark.h1.jpg) and as most kids around the country were copying sayings from the show, in particular the word: “mud--daaa” in the harshest Scottish brogue young voice-boxes could muster, Ferguson did feel like a bit of celebrity to me before he’d joined Manchester United on the 6th of November 1986.
At the time that he joined United my understanding of players outside of the attacking positions was finely under-developed. Outside of Robson, Hughes and Whiteside, my interest in the rest of the side left a fair bit to be desired and as the Kraken’s gargantuan tentacles were attempting to envelop the club I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. What I do remember is that the angry Scotsman wasn’t a fan-favourite primarily because he was seemingly taking away our wanton abandon and trying to make us a hard-to-beat, solid and robust team. The club motto before Ferguson was to win with as much verve and panache as possible, or die trying. These were basic principals instilled and upheld since Sir Matt Busby had turned ‘little’ Manchester United into a world famous football club some thirty years prior. If we lost whilst being heroic it was acceptable just as long as the other side knew they’d been in a scrap. As far as ideals are concerned, that’s all well and good when the team is also winning with this philosophy, but we were not and Ferguson wanted us to be winners first and foremost. To many United fans he was just a dour Scot who looked like Taggart and had done well in the relative small-time of the Scottish league. For all intents and purposes, the task at hand here was too much for him.
There was no inkling back then that Fergie was trying to turn the club around from the bottom up just as he had always done whilst managing in Scotland. Fergie was trying to create a team and a club in his image with his ideals, his ambition and most of all, his pride! At the time, however, the old boy’s network was firmly in-place and the stars at our club had a culture of drinking and gambling forged long before Fergie’s arrival. ‘Big Ron’ Atkinson is somewhat of an infamous face in England these days, but in the 80’s he was known first and foremost as the big hair perming, copious amount of gold displaying, over-tan having, pastel and cream fancying, brown-tinted shades dandying, big flare and collars wearing face of Manchester United who the fans and media alike loved and who would surely one day get great things done his way, or take us on a fun ride while trying. In truth, as far as I remember, from at least 1983 onwards, talk of winning the league was incidental; a ‘we’ll do it next year’ carried with no conviction at all. I know that for me, the league was just something that Scousers, red and blue, won.
The league hadn’t been won in my lifetime and there wasn’t a genuine platform from which we were springing off from season to season; a sort of take it how it comes approach rather than direct focus on winning the league, affectation rather than any type of structure to genuinely build off of. At that time we were the typical cup team and atypical league-challenging side. Put us in the FA Cup or in Europe and over that seven game stretch in a set of winner takes all, high pressure, high octane fixtures we could stand up to any one on any given day, but over a league campaign, the general malaise and moodiness as well as a complete lack of preparation and fitness was our downfall time and time again.
The drinking culture that ‘Big Ron’ had put in place meant we just couldn’t put all the talent we had together for anything like the pre-requisite amount of time necessary to win the league. We could go on a winning streak, unsurprisingly rounding off at the same amount of games needed to win a cup, give or take, but after that there would be a dip and an erraticism to us that would close any door we had prised open. You must then factor in the constant injuries to most of our best players from a lack of conditioning (because they were always drunk or close to it during training) and consider the effects that would have to any attempted continuity and you will be closer to having an idea of the shambolic and unprofessional way we were as a club. Whilst those who were winning the league ran in a straight line, we would break off at some point and create a bemusing squiggle. I was used to it. It wasn’t any kind of deviation for me. It was Manchester United and a club, in most instances, beats to the drum of its manager, after all, and that incarnation of United was Big Ron through and through.
Whilst Fergie was supposedly the man in charge, the fans and players held Captain Marvel, Bryan Robson, in sole regard as ‘the man’ at the club. If you’ve read any of Fergie’s autobiographies you’ll know of the power struggle between, this Scotsman who marked the new order, and the boss-man, Robbo, who led the troops on and off the field. Robbo was a legendary merry-man, a drinker supreme and gambler who along with Whiteside and McGrath was everything to the fans and to any success or chance of it this club was going to have. This triumvirate had to be reined in, and Fergie knew that whilst they had his dressing room, any ideas, any authoritative reproach would be rebuked and ridiculed. The recalcitrant element had to be removed from the club if they were not to be tamed.
One of the things that may grate for older fans who saw Bryan Robson in action is perhaps the unwitting way in which newer fans consider Roy Keane to be more of a lion than Captain Marvel, more of a competitor or a more driven man. The bare bones of it is that there hasn’t been a captain who led by superior example than Bryan Robson in decades, he was called Captain Marvel because he would routinely win games for us on his own. When Robbo set his mind to something there was no such thing as a superior competitor and Fergie tapped into what drove Robson and was able to harness the player in part and integrate him into his plans. The problem Ferguson had with Whiteside and especially McGrath is that they weren’t as driven nor as readily able to face their demons as Robson was. In his autobiography: Managing My Life Fergie states that his inexperience of dealing with deeply troubled players and inability to reach Paul McGrath hurt him deeply and taught him a lesson he has taken with him into the present day. McGrath was too far gone for a manager with other problems to contend with to save and invariably had to go. Whiteside, who was also heavily injury prone, was McGrath’s drinking brother-in-arms and he too was a player Fergie had to let go for the good of his own ambition and peace of mind.
I had no real understanding of football politics at that time; with the naiveté of youth things are taken at face value, but I do remember listening to a lot of the banter my dad would have with his friends at that time about his discontent with Fergie and most of it revolved around the way we played. Letting two of our truly great players go so ‘readily’ was also seen as a cardinal sin by some.
The first intentions of Fergie’s regime before any of the in-house politics are considered, was to make us a name to be feared, a team that was hard to beat and one who would not be involved in any ‘enjoyable’ high-scoring losses. The mantra I’ve always had instilled in me, is that win, lose or draw, playing the ‘United Way’ is far more important than anything else (I guess one part of the indoctrination subliminally slipped the proverbial net) and to many fans of that time this is what Fergie was removing – ‘The United Way’. We had some dour times towards the end of the 80’s; rough, uninspired football, backed up with scoops of aggression and workmanlike ardour. I remember the 1987/’88 season in particular for this because the Scousers were playing the best football I’d ever seen to that point in my life and John Barnes was simply awe-inspiring… I think this is the time the ‘Anfield Rap’ was released and went to #1 in the national Pop charts as well, a genuine all-time low season for me that, especially as we finished second to them in the table, which with only a nine-point differential looks far less of a gulf in performance and class on paper than it actually was. That season of theirs added more than discontent to the ranks up against Fergie. There then became a demand for success that I don’t remember being there with such palatable vehemence before.
It’s around this time that I recall a split starting to form amongst Reds I took my lead from at that time. Some were saying Fergie was clearly creating something, whilst others were still going on about Big Ron’s side and style and wanting it back. The now legendary story of Lee Martin keeping Fergie in his job wasn’t status quo for the time, but as with most things, the most favourable story will be taken and propelled into the spotlight and taken as fact. With hindsight, what I think is fair to say is that the chain of events from that point onward is what kept Fergie here. Just as you have now, there were many pessimists who held no faith in us doing well simply because of one good omen.
*Pages 156-158. Managing My Life
Next Chapter: The Great Teams
Released: 16th November
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g71/Apex_Zwei/Thoughtful.jpg
Chapter 1: A Basic Introduction
He wasn’t always this way, you know? This guise, the apparent calm and thoughtful fox, impossible to ensnare; quick and precise when it’s time to strike, silent, wily and candid otherwise.
Indeed, the old man has changed. Changed with the times, with the climate of the modern game and with acknowledgement of age encroaching on the years he has left to satisfy the few burning desires that remain. Or has he? That would depend on who you asked, I would wager.
The reputation that Alexander Chapman Ferguson has forged for himself, intended or otherwise, is that of a fiery, ambitious and often foul-mouthed Scot who will stop at nothing and crush everything in his path to achieve his goals. Past players, fellow managers, journalists and anyone else who has been on the more abrasive side of his personality will tell you he’s a fearsome man, quick to anger when provoked, steely stubborn and hardened to the glibness of the game.
Fans of the clubs he has resided over will have their own tales to tell, not all of them will show the Wily Old Fox in the most positive of lights, but even the sourest of supporters, if not polluted absolutely, will tell you that this man is great at what he does. As an overseer and pioneer, there have been few in the entire history of the sport able to match what Ferguson has done or continues to do in the game.
This is a man who takes a club on as a project, grabs it by the ankles and dangles it upside down before setting it upright again with all undesirable elements removed. If these requirements are not met, Alex is out, closing the door behind him as the then Scottish second division side, St. Mirren, found out to their displeasure all of thirty years ago. *
Despite my father’s attempted indoctrinations I incurred from the age of eight months until around five-years-old (so my mother tells me), the reason why I became a Manchester United fan, before anything else was considered, was the red shirt and black socks. No, not the earliest recollections of a fetishist, just a natural draw to both colours. Little does my dad know that his propaganda had no affect on my early leaning toward Manchester United! Anyway, my dad had been trying to get me into Hibernian, a Scottish side for whom he had a strange secondary interest (which I’ve never actually got round to asking him about come to think of it.) Little did he know that whatever it was he would say to me wasn’t registering at all. Indeed, my leaning toward red had me pick Aberdeen – a team managed by none other than Mr. ‘Alec’ Ferguson. Back then, there was no such thing as cross-national coverage, no Internet, obviously, so all the information I had was the sparse news reports of Aberdeen’s unheard of jaunts in Europe and my Panini sticker albums from the early 80’s (The claimant of the majority of my pocket money at the time!! Damn doubles and getting the same player nine times, when you needed the one next to him!!) Yes, Ferguson was creating a storm well before he came to Manchester United. Breaking up the duopoly of the Old Firm was a legendary achievement given his squad and the funds available to him, which was as unthinkable and ‘impossible’ then as it is now. In my sticker album, I was drawn to both he and his captain, one Willie Miller, whose moustache was the stuff of legend. Yes, a young Savante used to run around the house with a hairbrush under his top lip, making psychotic eyes at the ball, pretending to be him. Ah, good times!
As anyone who is old enough to remember the original version of the TV show, Taggart, will tell you, our manager is the spitting image of the now deceased Mark McManus ( http://www.taggart-fanclub.co.uk/mark.h1.jpg) and as most kids around the country were copying sayings from the show, in particular the word: “mud--daaa” in the harshest Scottish brogue young voice-boxes could muster, Ferguson did feel like a bit of celebrity to me before he’d joined Manchester United on the 6th of November 1986.
At the time that he joined United my understanding of players outside of the attacking positions was finely under-developed. Outside of Robson, Hughes and Whiteside, my interest in the rest of the side left a fair bit to be desired and as the Kraken’s gargantuan tentacles were attempting to envelop the club I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. What I do remember is that the angry Scotsman wasn’t a fan-favourite primarily because he was seemingly taking away our wanton abandon and trying to make us a hard-to-beat, solid and robust team. The club motto before Ferguson was to win with as much verve and panache as possible, or die trying. These were basic principals instilled and upheld since Sir Matt Busby had turned ‘little’ Manchester United into a world famous football club some thirty years prior. If we lost whilst being heroic it was acceptable just as long as the other side knew they’d been in a scrap. As far as ideals are concerned, that’s all well and good when the team is also winning with this philosophy, but we were not and Ferguson wanted us to be winners first and foremost. To many United fans he was just a dour Scot who looked like Taggart and had done well in the relative small-time of the Scottish league. For all intents and purposes, the task at hand here was too much for him.
There was no inkling back then that Fergie was trying to turn the club around from the bottom up just as he had always done whilst managing in Scotland. Fergie was trying to create a team and a club in his image with his ideals, his ambition and most of all, his pride! At the time, however, the old boy’s network was firmly in-place and the stars at our club had a culture of drinking and gambling forged long before Fergie’s arrival. ‘Big Ron’ Atkinson is somewhat of an infamous face in England these days, but in the 80’s he was known first and foremost as the big hair perming, copious amount of gold displaying, over-tan having, pastel and cream fancying, brown-tinted shades dandying, big flare and collars wearing face of Manchester United who the fans and media alike loved and who would surely one day get great things done his way, or take us on a fun ride while trying. In truth, as far as I remember, from at least 1983 onwards, talk of winning the league was incidental; a ‘we’ll do it next year’ carried with no conviction at all. I know that for me, the league was just something that Scousers, red and blue, won.
The league hadn’t been won in my lifetime and there wasn’t a genuine platform from which we were springing off from season to season; a sort of take it how it comes approach rather than direct focus on winning the league, affectation rather than any type of structure to genuinely build off of. At that time we were the typical cup team and atypical league-challenging side. Put us in the FA Cup or in Europe and over that seven game stretch in a set of winner takes all, high pressure, high octane fixtures we could stand up to any one on any given day, but over a league campaign, the general malaise and moodiness as well as a complete lack of preparation and fitness was our downfall time and time again.
The drinking culture that ‘Big Ron’ had put in place meant we just couldn’t put all the talent we had together for anything like the pre-requisite amount of time necessary to win the league. We could go on a winning streak, unsurprisingly rounding off at the same amount of games needed to win a cup, give or take, but after that there would be a dip and an erraticism to us that would close any door we had prised open. You must then factor in the constant injuries to most of our best players from a lack of conditioning (because they were always drunk or close to it during training) and consider the effects that would have to any attempted continuity and you will be closer to having an idea of the shambolic and unprofessional way we were as a club. Whilst those who were winning the league ran in a straight line, we would break off at some point and create a bemusing squiggle. I was used to it. It wasn’t any kind of deviation for me. It was Manchester United and a club, in most instances, beats to the drum of its manager, after all, and that incarnation of United was Big Ron through and through.
Whilst Fergie was supposedly the man in charge, the fans and players held Captain Marvel, Bryan Robson, in sole regard as ‘the man’ at the club. If you’ve read any of Fergie’s autobiographies you’ll know of the power struggle between, this Scotsman who marked the new order, and the boss-man, Robbo, who led the troops on and off the field. Robbo was a legendary merry-man, a drinker supreme and gambler who along with Whiteside and McGrath was everything to the fans and to any success or chance of it this club was going to have. This triumvirate had to be reined in, and Fergie knew that whilst they had his dressing room, any ideas, any authoritative reproach would be rebuked and ridiculed. The recalcitrant element had to be removed from the club if they were not to be tamed.
One of the things that may grate for older fans who saw Bryan Robson in action is perhaps the unwitting way in which newer fans consider Roy Keane to be more of a lion than Captain Marvel, more of a competitor or a more driven man. The bare bones of it is that there hasn’t been a captain who led by superior example than Bryan Robson in decades, he was called Captain Marvel because he would routinely win games for us on his own. When Robbo set his mind to something there was no such thing as a superior competitor and Fergie tapped into what drove Robson and was able to harness the player in part and integrate him into his plans. The problem Ferguson had with Whiteside and especially McGrath is that they weren’t as driven nor as readily able to face their demons as Robson was. In his autobiography: Managing My Life Fergie states that his inexperience of dealing with deeply troubled players and inability to reach Paul McGrath hurt him deeply and taught him a lesson he has taken with him into the present day. McGrath was too far gone for a manager with other problems to contend with to save and invariably had to go. Whiteside, who was also heavily injury prone, was McGrath’s drinking brother-in-arms and he too was a player Fergie had to let go for the good of his own ambition and peace of mind.
I had no real understanding of football politics at that time; with the naiveté of youth things are taken at face value, but I do remember listening to a lot of the banter my dad would have with his friends at that time about his discontent with Fergie and most of it revolved around the way we played. Letting two of our truly great players go so ‘readily’ was also seen as a cardinal sin by some.
The first intentions of Fergie’s regime before any of the in-house politics are considered, was to make us a name to be feared, a team that was hard to beat and one who would not be involved in any ‘enjoyable’ high-scoring losses. The mantra I’ve always had instilled in me, is that win, lose or draw, playing the ‘United Way’ is far more important than anything else (I guess one part of the indoctrination subliminally slipped the proverbial net) and to many fans of that time this is what Fergie was removing – ‘The United Way’. We had some dour times towards the end of the 80’s; rough, uninspired football, backed up with scoops of aggression and workmanlike ardour. I remember the 1987/’88 season in particular for this because the Scousers were playing the best football I’d ever seen to that point in my life and John Barnes was simply awe-inspiring… I think this is the time the ‘Anfield Rap’ was released and went to #1 in the national Pop charts as well, a genuine all-time low season for me that, especially as we finished second to them in the table, which with only a nine-point differential looks far less of a gulf in performance and class on paper than it actually was. That season of theirs added more than discontent to the ranks up against Fergie. There then became a demand for success that I don’t remember being there with such palatable vehemence before.
It’s around this time that I recall a split starting to form amongst Reds I took my lead from at that time. Some were saying Fergie was clearly creating something, whilst others were still going on about Big Ron’s side and style and wanting it back. The now legendary story of Lee Martin keeping Fergie in his job wasn’t status quo for the time, but as with most things, the most favourable story will be taken and propelled into the spotlight and taken as fact. With hindsight, what I think is fair to say is that the chain of events from that point onward is what kept Fergie here. Just as you have now, there were many pessimists who held no faith in us doing well simply because of one good omen.
*Pages 156-158. Managing My Life
Next Chapter: The Great Teams
Released: 16th November