Is Ferguson the greatest manager of all time?

Originally Posted by dodger

It's a kind of half hearted shake of his arms a pigeon-toed run

Originally Posted by Sparky***

Yes. the greatest ever. No doubt.

"there's no question about that", surely

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo....html?ITO=1490

You know, it makes me incredibly sad reading stuff like this. Not just because he'll be gone soon (and I hope he is able to enjoy his retirement) but my old man never saw what he did. Died the year we first won the league under Fergie.

A real shame. I went to a lot of games with him, spent some time in the company of his old school friend listening to loads of football stories and tomfoolery as kids (Brian Horton). He'd always talk about the club fondly - even after he'd gone and seen them chuck a two nil lead away. I had no choice when it came to who I supported, it was Utd, and I'll be forever thankful for that.

Originally Posted by Whalefish

You know, it makes me incredibly sad reading stuff like this. Not just because he'll be gone soon (and I hope he is able to enjoy his retirement) but my old man never saw what he did. Died the year we first won the league under Fergie.

A real shame. I went to a lot of games with him, spent some time in the company of his old school friend listening to loads of football stories and tomfoolery as kids (Brian Horton). He'd always talk about the club fondly - even after he'd gone and seen them chuck a two nil lead away. I had no choice when it came to who I supported, it was Utd, and I'll be forever thankful for that.

Sorry to hear that mate, we are all incredibly fortunate that we are associated with such a fine club. It's a way of life for a lot of us and we should never forget how lucky we really are.


Hopefully your little lad will be able to see the greatest manager of all time at the helm of the best team on the planet for a few more years yet

Originally Posted by Carrick

Sorry to hear that mate, we are all incredibly fortunate that we are associated with such a fine club. It's a way of life for a lot of us and we should never forget how lucky we really are.


Hopefully your little lad will be able to see the greatest manager of all time at the helm of the best team on the planet for a few more years yet

One of the main reasons I got hooked on history was through him telling me I had to learn about the club.

Early teens, used to moan like £#%&! if we weren't winning at a canter. Used to drive him nuts. He was incredibly patient, we'll win it soon etc etc etc. If he was alive now I have no doubt that his favourite players would be Tevez, Vidic, Rooney and Carrick. Re the latter he always said it's great if you can tackle in midfield but if you can't pass what's the point?

Edit: My two lads have had their first kits bought for them by a Liverpool fan. Funny that.

Originally Posted by Whalefish

One of the main reasons I got hooked on history was through him telling me I had to learn about the club.

Early teens, used to moan like £#%&! if we weren't winning at a canter. Used to drive him nuts. He was incredibly patient, we'll win it soon etc etc etc. If he was alive now I have no doubt that his favourite players would be Tevez, Vidic, Rooney and Carrick. Re the latter he always said it's great if you can tackle in midfield but if you can't pass what's the point?

Edit: My two lads have had their first kits bought for them by a Liverpool fan. Funny that.

Be careful mate, they've probably been robbed

Born in 85, all i know is Alex Ferguson, it is going to be absolutely surreal without him.

Originally Posted by Fatboy Shrek

Born in 85, all i know is Alex Ferguson, it is going to be absolutely surreal without him.

pretty much same here. he took over when I was 6 years old.

My eldest boy was born two months before we won that first title after 26 yrs.

He is 16 now and has never known any other manager or anything other than titles, cups and quickly seeing off any competitors who interspersed them.

My teen memories were relegation promotion an FA cup
and two losing finals.

he's done okay

Originally Posted by Fatboy Shrek

Born in 85, all i know is Alex Ferguson, it is going to be absolutely surreal without him.

I thought you were late 20s

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo....html?ITO=1490



Sir Alex Ferguson fell out with his late father at the start of his career in professional football. They didn’t speak for months after Alex Snr took umbrage at his teenage son’s headstrong impatience to make the grade with Queen’s Park in Glasgow.

The rift was soon healed, of course, but now, at the other end of his remarkable 50-year career in the game, Ferguson wishes only for one last chance to impress a man whom he dubbed — with or without irony — ‘Old Thunder Face’.

Asked this week about the opportunity to win his third Champions League final in Rome against Barcelona on Wednesday, Manchester United’s manager eschewed the opportunity to make comparisons between himself and Bob Paisley, the great Liverpool manager of the 1970s.

Instead, Ferguson said only: ‘I just wish my father was alive. He would’ve loved to have seen me achieve that.’

Such is Ferguson’s regrettable mistrust of the modern media, it is rare that, at 67, he offers any great insight into what drives him.


Nevertheless, even Ferguson is not immune to the flushes of sentiment prompted by moments of supreme achievement. And briefly this week he allowed himself to look back and acknowledge the debt he owes to his late parents, Alex and Lizzie.

‘I think you have the personality you are born with but then that personality grows up,’ said Ferguson. ‘You have your own personality. It’s difficult to say what you are getting, it is something you are born with. It’s in your genes.
Sir Alex Ferguson with the Champions League trophy


‘My father was very quiet. My mother was the one with the real determination. My father was a hard-working man, who just read books. He was always reading.’

In his autobiography, Ferguson thanked his father for passing on ‘his intelligence’, as well as acknowledging the ‘temper and stubbornness’ that came as part of the deal.

This intelligence, he conceded, has been allowed to develop over the course of his 23 years at Old Trafford. Only on the securing of the club’s first Premier League title in 1993, however, did Ferguson feel the confidence to really benefit from it.

‘Yes, I have changed,’ he acknowledged. ‘Maturity brings a different type of person. How would I put it?

‘Well, I’m far more intelligent than when I first started. The best way to sum it up is that now I am in control. When I first came, I was never in control.
Sir Alex celebrates winning the Cup Winners Cup with Aberdeen in 1983



‘You can’t be in control when you are not winning. It’s only when you have success that you can get that control. That applies to every coach who goes into a football club. He will never have control until he is successful. If you don’t have success, then for control you may as well go to Mars.

‘I first got control when I won the Premier League for the first time. I’d achieved what I set out to achieve.

‘I felt also at the time it would open the door and that we would leap forward in every department of the club because that was the millstone round everyone’s neck. We hadn’t won it in 26 years and it was a burden, absolutely no doubt.

‘The previous year we’d lost it to Leeds, when we had to play four games in six days. That cost us when we should have won it.

‘But the funny thing about adversity is that some people thrive on it. This club thrives on it and we showed it that year.’

Like many men of reasonable intellect, Ferguson has a long memory. He doesn’t forget. One of the reasons — some imagined and some real — for his dislike of the media is the manner in which the majority, this correspondent included, wrote him off when his team finished bottom of their Champions League qualifying group in the miserable winter of 2005.
Bob Paisley with one of his three European Cups


Ferguson has not forgotten, and why should he?

Asked again about comparisons with the greats such as Paisley, he said: ‘It’s one of those things that I don’t pay much attention to.

‘Whenever there is a bit of success it leads to more expectation, and then you’re into that kick in the teeth, when you see another headline that reads: “Ferguson is finished”.



Another trophy: Sir Alex with the Barclays Premier League trophy he won this year

‘Next it will be that my shelf-life is gone, it’s time to get the bathchair out for me at Torquay beach.

‘That’s why I don’t pay too much attention to it because I know what the flipside is.

‘If you have a couple of bad results, you see what’s happened to Arsene Wenger. I find that incredible. It’s unfortunate that we’re in that culture where if you’re not winning every game then, swoosh, you are gone.’

In common with other great leaders, Ferguson remains fuelled by — among other things — a desire to please some people and prove others wrong. He continues to believe that the world is against him, that the dice are loaded.

If he wins another European Cup, though, he will surely cement his position as British football’s greatest post-war manager. Paisley won his first in the same Rome stadium, against Borussia Moenchengladbach in 1977, and the Eternal City would be the perfect place for Ferguson to lift his third.

Were he alive, Paisley — himself an expert at regenerating his teams — would have been impressed. Ferguson, though, would have preferred the opportunity to seek approval from much closer to home.

of course he is doesn't matter in terms of the question if we win on Wednesday - which we WILL - he is the best manager United have ever had and the best manager in Britain/Europe there is no comparison

had it not been for Munich he would have been the second best manager ever but we are so lucky to have him