Top 10 Managers Of The Season #2: Sir Alex Ferguson

In Sportskeeda’s exclusive “Top 10 European Managers of the Season”, let’s take a look at the Number 2 on the list.

Read #3 in the Managers’ Series here (Stay tuned on www.Sportskeeda.com, Each day a new manager)

#2: Sir Alex Ferguson

I’d just like to make it clear at the outset- This is a dashed difficult thing for me to do. Years and years of supporting Arsenal has led to an anti-Ferguson reflex being hammered into the subconscious, a pretty big one. So now I have to do the following things, in the order mentioned-

- Evade any wanton vegetables and knives, and smilingly bear any heckles and jeers thrown in my general direction by Gooners, who now obviously consider me a blood traitor of the most odious kind.

- Play a very competitive game with the aforementioned anti-Ferguson reflex; tell it to take a momentary hike, fish for some carp, sip some pina colada or whatever it is that reflexes sip, just go away instead of being an ever-present zit on my subliminal layers.

- Reluctantly roll my sleeves up, pucker my nose and get right down to the very unpleasant business of praising Sir Alex Ferguson.

I could start this piece with some needless history, like how Ferguson was born into humble surroundings in 1940 Glasgow, became an average professional footballer with clubs like Rangers and St Johnstone, before he embarked on the managerial career that would bring him fame, fortune, a fuck lot of silver and Christmas cards for life from Wrigley’s. But, unlike Liverpool fans, one thing massively to Ferguson’s credit is that he lives in the present.

He has always been a vociferous advocator of the ‘next season is always the most important season’ school of thought during the summers, and all his signings, formation tweaks and hairdryer upgrades are made keeping that fact in mind first and that fact only, everything else can wait. Of course, part of it has to do with the Institution that is Manchester United, which expects and demands success on a yearly basis and doesn’t do pansy things like hope for success. But it has a lot to do with the individual as well. It may seem evident, but the biggest reason for Ferguson’s extended triumph is that he has never gone ‘Cool, these look like some comfy laurels. Let’s rest on them’

No resting on laurels

Yet the season of 2010-11 was perhaps when he came closest. Usually so astute and ruthless in his transfer activity, comedy buys like Bebe and Obertan seemed a bit off on the Fergie-radar. Rooney hadn’t been himself since injuring his knee against Bayern Munich in March, and with the added pressure of finally knocking Liverpool off their dust-gathering perch, you could say that there were more eyes on Ferguson this year than ever before. But come May, Fergie was looking back steadfastly at all those eyes, holding aloft the Premier League trophy, having knocked Liverpool off their perch. Some of the main reasons Manchester United lasted the marathon this time round are as follows (in my opinion at least), and Ferguson had a hand in all of them-

Imperious Home Form: The glass half empty brigade will say that United won the League this season in spite of their patchy away form, but the glass half full brigade (and they have a trophy to back it up) will say that they won it because of their home form. United absolutely swept through every single team that came their way at Old Trafford, winning 18 out of 19 games. Ferguson had them set up like some sort of point-guzzling machine, super solid at the back, scarily potent up front. There wasn’t anything particularly opponent specific, I hardly think there were Villas-Boas like dossiers handed out before every game, but all of the players knew when to push on, when to slow the game down, which team to bombard from the wings and which team to tackle straight on. And it’s the manager, with his infinite experience and comfort levels at Old Trafford, who was most responsible for it.

Cases in point: The games against Blackburn and Arsenal. United started the Blackburn game at warp speed because Ferguson knew that they would be harder to score against the longer the game went on. They would start playing for a draw if they got to half-time level on scores. So the old guzzard told them to go and ram the ball down Blackburn’s throats right from the outset. The result- a goal within the first minute and a 7-0 romp overall. Contrary to this, United flooded the midfield against Arsenal and were happy to let them have the ball for the starting minutes of the match. They knew that Arsenal were weak on the counter, from long balls and, if United kept their defensive discipline, Arsenal possession couldn’t do much. And it didn’t do much. And United won the game 1-0. With a Park goal after a long ball.

Chicharito: This was the only non-comedy signing Ferguson made in the summer and what a non-comedy signing it was. In the 2009-10 season, the highest scorer United had after Rooney was ‘own goals’. This smacked of over-reliance on one player for goals, and Ferguson was thinking of a pure, unadulterated goal-scorer when he plucked Javier Hernandez from Mexico and put him into the Manchester limelight. This Latino Solskjaer has been a runaway success in his first season, scoring 20 goals, and most of them important ones. Ferguson realized that United needed someone to be on the end of 18 out of the 20 chances they created, and if they had that then they would be very tough to beat. Hernandez is that simple goal, tap-in dispenser that all rivals find so annoying. Masterstroke of a signing from Sir Alex.

Buy of the Season. Masterstroke from Sir Alex

Caviar Players Coming Of Age: Ferguson doesn’t pamper his players; he just drops them when they aren’t playing well. Any caviar players either buckle down and perform before they have a shoe thrown at their faces or, well, they have a shoe thrown at their faces. In the season just gone by, I can name Berbatov and Nani as two such players. Nani was very much a nutmeggy kind of bird when he came to United, but 2010-11 saw him finally add a consistency and ‘bread-and-butter’-ness to his game. Magnificent crosses were seen more than magnificent dolphin double flip celebrations, more goals, less ole!’s, he basically became less frills and more efficiency.

Berbatov is another egg who discovered that everyone has to run when playing for Man United, even if you have silky hair. From sulky reject to top scorer in the Premier League (to sulky reject again, but that was because of Chicarito being on form more than Berbatov being off it), the Bulgarian Count came a long way this season, and he came by embracing that most undervalued of footballing traits-simplicity.

Berbatov and Nani became more Ferguson-like

Simplicity: Ferguson’s United of last season was sometimes the most simple team I’d ever seen. Although I wish it were otherwise, I mean that wholeheartedly as a compliment. I’d like to take the readers back to a week of Premier League action, when Man United were playing Birmingham and Arsenal were facing Wigan, both at home. I was being made to switch channels every fifteen minutes by United fans frothing at the mouth in my college common room.

The first fifteen minutes were spent at Old Trafford, where the match was evenly contested and yawningly so. Both teams were misplacing passes and I actually think Birmingham had more possession in the first quarter of the half. I ‘hoo’ed, I ‘hah’ed, I snatched the remote and changed the channel. The next thirty minutes were spent looking at the screen in disbelief as van Persie contrived to miss three goals hat-trick opportunities and Walcott tried to pass to Cesc when he had an open goal in front of him. Although I diligently hoarded the remote for most of the half, they tickled me into submission and changed the channel again, just to see United going 3-0 up.

It was a remarkably simple goal. Rooney played a one-two with Berbatov, United’s Severus Snape sped down the touchline and but it across for Giggs to hit home. I remember thinking ‘How can the other team play so badly so as to give away such a laughably simple goal?’ But Birmingham hadn’t played badly, I had seen the first fifteen myself and they were decent on the ball in the second half too. It’s just that Ferguson’s United gets the basics right most of the time, and that’s all that is needed really.

(United won that match 5-0, it should probably have been 2-0. Arsenal won 3-0 when it probably should have been 30-0)

And this simplicity just seems to get more and more audacious. When Ronaldo finished having his season on steroids in 2008-09, he was sold to Real Madrid, and Tevez went off to Manchester Lite. The detractors rubbed their hands and said ‘United can’t play without Ronaldo and Tevez’. Well, they did play, won the Carling Cup and just fell short of the League title. When Rooney was having problems this season, the detractors rubbed their hands and said ‘United can’t play without Rooney’. Well, they did, won the Premier League and reached the finals of the Champions League without losing a single game. And this was in a season where even most United fans admit that the team didn’t play that well. The simplicity is scary, and Ferguson is scary.

And Ferguson is as hungry as any of his critters in Red, a hatred for being second best fuelling a perennial ‘what next?’ approach. After a successful season by all accounts, the maddening goop is talking about how he can best Barcelona next season instead of kicking it back and relaxing for a bit, as he is completely entitled to. And who’s to say he won’t best Barcelona, via a simple Rooney goal from a simple Nani cross?

Bottom line is- the person United will really find trouble playing without is the suited Scot who swears like a drunken sailor at the ref every second game, and who makes other managers swear like drunken sailors at the end of the season as he practises weight lifting with the League trophy. And I’m not even going to imitate the detractors and rub my hands, because this drunken sailor doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere soon.

Urgh. I think I’m done. Humble pie tastes like boogers.

Also read #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 and #10 in the Sportskeeda Managers’ Series