The truth was that the FA’s so-called ‘Respect’ campaign, to which Benítez alluded, was having a coach and horses repeatedly driven through it by a leading light of the League Managers’ Association, which had pledged full support to this worthy attempt to improve behaviour towards referees and linesmen at every level of the game.
Was Ferguson always setting a good example to the young and impressionable? Amid all the scorn he expressed for aspects of the young society around him – tattoos, earrings, self-adulation – there was seldom a glimmer of self-recognition or acceptance of any personal contribution to change or decay. While maintaining admirable discipline at Manchester United, did his behaviour towards authority undermine that very quality in the world outside the stockade that was always fundamental to his professional
modus operandi
? And, finally, did the more extreme elements of his workplace behaviour ever infinge the principles supplied to him in that Govan youth? The answer to each question would have to be a guarded ‘Yes’.
It was Mark McGhee, Ferguson’s first signing for Aberdeen and as perspicacious a man as any to whom I have spoken in connection with this book, who confirmed the impression that Ferguson’s life has been, in essence, a quest to please his father. ‘I think he would feel he is proving himself to his father more than anything else,’ said McGhee. ‘I think he would want to prove to his father that he could maintain his standards. Everyone who gets close to him feels that, if you are performing badly, you are letting
him
down and I think he doesn’t want to let his family down. It’s a very working-class ethic.’
If a thing’s worth doing, said Alexander Ferguson Senior, it’s worth doing well. Sir Alex Ferguson has done football management so extraordinarily well for so long that his life in the game is not only unprecedented but, in near-certainty, unrepeatable.
Discipline and good manners were also in the family tradition. Along with something else. And, before we come to that, let it be said with utter confidence that, if Alexander Ferguson Senior were here to be asked what he felt of his elder son’s life, he would – after manifesting a reluctance to be boastful or effusive – express nothing but pride.
But, then, the Fergusons always did believe in loyalty.
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