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6) Page 307 - Talks about John O’Shea smiling broadly when Ferguson came onto the pitch for the presentation of the naming of the stand. O’Shea was neither in the first XI or on the bench that day for Sunderland.
7) Page 178 - Talking about Gianfranco Zola skinning Gary Pallister before scoring at Stamford Bridge in ’97. “Oh the stick Pally got that day. Bryan Robson said ‘Any chance of you staying on your feet?”. Which was an astute observation considering he was managing Middlesboro to a 1-0 home defeat to Newcastle at exactly the same time.
8) Page 229 – When talking about Henrik Larsson’s last game at Middlesbrough in the cup:- “we were winning 2-1 and Henrik went back to play in midfield and ran his balls off” United were actually losing 2-1 but forced a replay thanks to a Ronaldo penalty.
9) Page 349:- ”Andrea Pirlo’s passing rate for Milan had been 75%. When we played them with Ji-Sung Park in the hounding role we reduced Pirlo’s strike rate to 25%.” Does Hayward seriously, seriously expect us to believe that Andrea Fucking Pirlo gave the ball away three out of four times in a Champions League game for an entire 90 minutes? Jesus wept.
Much has already been said about Fergie’s decision to comment upon individual players. As has been well publicised, the likes of Roy Keane, David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Wayne Rooney all face criticism of some sorts. Ex-players such as Mark Bosnich, Owen Hargreaves, Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez receive criticism of various forms and even current players do so such as Nani (blamed in the 2012 1-0 defeat at The Etihad) and Antonio Valencia (criticised for his performance against Barcelona in 2011). What is disappointing is that players who have served Ferguson loyally are in many cases belittled, where instead surely a respectful comment would be better served. Hargreaves for example played through massive pain in 2007-08 to an outstanding level to help the club win the league and Champions League and doesn’t deserve to be singled out in this way.
If Fergie is insistent on honesty throughout the book as a justification for all of these criticisms, would it have been refreshing for him to deliver an equally honest appraisal of the Glazer family and their ownership and focus on how he was hamstrung by the lack of transfer funds?? Unfortunately, it appears that ex-players remain far easier targets than the owners.
In summary, this could have been a compelling book. It sadly isn’t due to a variety of features. The structure is nonsensical, important issues and players are either ignored or hurriedly glossed over and there are factual mistakes littered throughout. While it remains interesting, the sense remains that there is a lot more that could be said and we are only hearing whatever Ferguson wants us to. That the master of media manipulation should maintain such a stance should not be surprising. However, when paying £15+ for the privilege, the reader should expect a full and frank explanation of events as seen in the best autobiographies (McGrath, Keane, Gascoigne, Collymore etc). Such is the feeling of missing content and lack of detail, that I wouldn’t be surprised if another edition was around the corner. Lets hope if there is, that it resembles the McIlvanney version rather than this one.
