Why Sir Alex Ferguson could have doubts about Man United’s new path

It is a rather sad footnote to Sir Alex Ferguson‘s career that his last success story at Old Trafford came not with Manchester United but Wigan Warriors.

Ferguson was invited to give a pep talk to the Wigan players and hand out their jerseys at the team hotel before last weekend’s Super League grand final victory over Hull KR at the stadium where he celebrated so many famous triumphs as United manager.

‘The players hung on his every word. You could hear a pin drop,’ said Warriors coach Matt Peet.

By then, the 82-year-old knew that United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe is tearing up his £2.16million-a-year contract as a club ambassador at the end of the season and that he can no longer visit the dressing-room which was once the beating heart of the empire he built.

The face-to-face meeting with Ratcliffe at Old Trafford a week last Monday is said to have ended amicably. Ferguson is still a friend of the club and welcome on match days, although he will not attend Saturday’s home game with Brentford due to a long-standing personal engagement, and it remains to be seen what becomes of the club’s token football board on which he still theoretically sits as a non-executive director.

Is he convinced about the direction United are taking under Ineos? Some sources are not so sure. They question how happy Ferguson is with the new arrangement amid a deepening gloom at United over how Ratcliffe is conducting a cost-cutting exercise that has slashed 250 jobs.

Either way, the decision to jettison the Scot as a paid employee after 38 years severs the main tie that has bound him to United since he retired from the dugout in May 2013.

No longer will he charm the sponsors or travel the world as a club figurehead, representing the team he helped transform into a global brand worth billions. One United source described him this week simply as ‘the crown jewel’. Now Fergie will be a little more than a guest at his Theatre of Dreams; an ex-manager like the rest of them.

The club say it is one of a number of commitments Ferguson is stepping back from as he approaches his 83rd birthday on New Year’s Eve. But in many ways it feels as though he is leaving United for a second time, and once again he will need to adapt.

‘There are no demons in my mind about the horrors of not going to work. I also had a list of things that I wanted to do, so I could not imagine that I was going to be bored,’ Ferguson wrote in his 2015 book Leading, recalling his decision to retire.

‘I imagine some people thought I would have trouble letting go and ceding the authority that I had enjoyed for so long to others, but I wasn’t confused about the difference between the role of being a United director and ambassador and the club’s manager.’

Ferguson talked about enjoying getting up at 8am rather than dawn and having breakfasts with his beloved wife Lady Cathy, until her sad death a year ago, at the home in Wilmslow where they lived for the majority of his 26 years as United manager.

He made sure to follow the maxim: ‘Don’t put your slippers on’. It was always shoes for Sir Alex and then off into the town centre where he wiled away many mornings at Petit Delice, a French cafe in Wilmslow popular with many of the football fraternity and TV celebrities, reading the Racing Post and enjoying his favourite egg and mayo baguette washed down with a coffee.

Mostly Ferguson was left alone but he has always possessed outstanding people skills and was happy to chat with staff and customers and grant autograph requests.

Whether he was having his hair cut at the barbers on the hill to St Bartholomew’s Church in Wilmslow or running errands around town, Ferguson always looked much like anyone else enjoying his retirement.

‘Just a normal bloke,’ says one resident. ‘If you didn’t know who he was, you’d never guess.’

Sunday lunches with Cathy often took place at the Alderley Edge Hotel. Among Ferguson’s other favourite haunts in the Golden Triangle of Alderley, Wilmslow and Prestbury included Italian eateries Cibo — where he was pictured dining with Erik ten Hag in February last year — and Osteria in Mottram St Andrew.

He was such a regular there that it wasn’t uncommon for him go into the kitchen and chat with the Polish pot-washers, demonstrating his incredible knack for remembering everyone’s name.

In Manchester, Ferguson is among the many famous clients of Wings Chinese restaurant and Stock — now owned by Gary Neville — where he entertains guests in the private dining room.

It’s a far cry from his upbringing close to the Govan shipyards and an early career at the Remington Rand typewriter factory in Glasgow where he first met Cathy in the early Sixties before getting married and buying their first house, a semi in the south of the city for £3,000.

Retirement in 2013 meant the couple could enjoy their usual summer holiday in the south of France without the interferences of United chasing signings for the new season, and taking a boat trip up the west of Scotland once he had recovered from a hip replacement.

Sir Alex attended the Oscars, ticking off one of the items on a bucket list that also included the Kentucky Derby.

Horse racing has played an increasingly important part in Ferguson’s life, famously putting him at odds with former United shareholders JP McManus and John Magnier over Irish thoroughbred Rock of Gibraltar.

Nowadays, he is known to travel to race meetings by helicopter, taking off from a pad at Mottram Hall with his close friend Ged Mason, the chief executive of recruitment firm Morson Group who also sponsor the Sir Alex Ferguson Golf Day at the Belfry.

Racing offered him an escape when Cathy passed away last October after 57-and-a-half years of marriage. Ferguson was first seen in public the following month when he celebrated Spirit Dancer’s win in the Bahrain International Trophy.

The family home went on the market almost immediately and Ferguson had relocated to Goostrey by the time it sold for £3m five months later, so he could be closer to Darren — one of three sons — and his grandchildren.

The picture postcard Cheshire village has just two pubs and a bakery and is quieter than Wilmslow and even further from Old Trafford, where his bronze statue stands in front of the north stand named in his honour.

Of course, United aren’t Ferguson’s only club. In February last year, he was invited back to Aberdeen for the unveiling of another statue at Pittodrie, this one of a younger Sir Alex raising his arms in triumph after breaking the Old Firm’s grip on Scottish football by winning the first of his three titles with the Dons in 1980.

Two weeks ago, Ferguson was back in Scotland at Ibrox to watch his old club Rangers face Lyon while United were playing FC Porto in the Europa League. He could be seen checking his phone and muttering ‘Maguire 3-3’ after the defender scored a late equaliser in Portugal.

As well as speaking to the Wigan Warriors players last weekend, he was invited to make a speech to Sale Sharks before their rugby union Premiership final in May 2023, and also spoke to the Australia squad before the Ashes series. He’s still a man in demand.

Most of all, however, he will be intrinsically linked with Manchester United, and there is a feeling of shock and sadness that last week’s meeting with Ratcliffe may have forever altered that association.

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