Fergie Rises E-Book

Michael Grant

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 565

Beschreibung

FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED 'The finest Fergie book of them all' – Tom English, BBC Sport When Sir Alex Ferguson retired at the end of the 2013 season he was the most successful football manager Britain had ever seen, having won twice as many trophies as his nearest rival. But that success had not come easily. Thirty-five years previously he had arrived at the rain-swept training ground at Aberdeen F.C. as the recently sacked manager of St Mirren. Already a divisive figure, this Alex Ferguson came with a reputation for trouble and a lot still to prove. Not for nothing, many thought he was a risky choice. Fergie Rises returns to a time when Ferguson was lucky to get Aberdeen, not the other way around. It's the story of an eight-year revolution that saw the Dons and their ambitious young manager knock the Old Firm off their perch, taste victory in Europe for the first time, and electrify Scottish football. When Ferguson finally left the club for Manchester United, in 1986, fans and rivals were unanimous in believing he had engineered one of the most astonishing upheavals in the game's history. The author also examines the personal tragedies Ferguson overcame – the deaths of his father and his mentor Jock Stein – and the rivalries, setbacks and triumphs that shaped a sporting genius. 'A masterful retelling of how Ferguson was "made" at Aberdeen' – Alan Pattullo, The Scotsman

Leseprobe

Fergie

Rises

‘The finest Fergie book of them all. It takes you to the heart of the magnificent absurdity of Aberdeen being kings of Europe’

TOM ENGLISH, BBC SPORT

‘The glut of books on Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United Revolution is exactly why this one is so interesting. A neat idea by an author whose account is superbly written’

THE SCOTSMAN ‘BEST SCOTTISH SPORTS READS OF 2014’

‘This is a book that takes the evidence from a series of witnesses to burgeoning genius. The testimonies are stunning, insightful, sometimes bitter, mostly awed and regularly funny’

HUGH MacDONALD, THE HERALD

‘Having interviewed many of those under Fergie’s Pittodrie stewardship, he brings much fresh insight into a period covered too briefly in his autobiography’

FOURFOURTWO

‘The most fascinating part of Alex Ferguson’s career is his eight years taking Aberdeen from no-hopers to beating Real Madrid in a European Final. All the greatest stories have a beginning and this is it’

SHORTLIST

‘An excellent new tome’

STEPHEN McGOWAN, SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL

‘A masterful retelling of how Ferguson was “made” at Aberdeen’

ALAN PATTULLO, THE SCOTSMAN

‘It is Grant’s own passion that permeates and defines Fergie Rises and makes it the book that all of us would have loved to have written’

DAVID INNES, ABERDEEN VOICE

‘Grant has painted a vivid tableau of a bygone age on a giant-sized canvas’

NEIL DRYSDALE, STV ABERDEEN

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTD

c/o Aberdein Considine

2nd Floor, Elder House

Multrees Walk

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Text copyright © Michael Grant, 2014 & 2023

First published by Aurum Press in 2014

ISBN: 9781915359179

eBook ISBN: 9781915359186

The right of Michael Grant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The views expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or policies of Polaris Publishing Ltd (Company No. SC401508) (Polaris), nor those of any persons, organisations or commercial partners connected with the same (Connected Persons). Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed by third parties are not those of Polaris or any Connected Persons but those of the third parties. For the avoidance of doubt, neither Polaris nor any Connected Persons assume any responsibility or duty of care whether contractual, delictual or on any other basis towards any person in respect of any such matter and accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by any such matter in this book.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh

Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

ONE: ‘Cup finals are too big for some players’

TWO: A discreet call to the Jolly Rodger

THREE: Rescuing Alex Ferguson

FOUR: ‘Be arrogant, get at their bloody throats’

FIVE: The cull of the ‘Westhill willie-biters’

SIX: ‘Doug Rougvie Is Innocent’

SEVEN: 1980: The Champions

EIGHT: Liverpool

NINE: Crime and punishment under the Beach End

TEN: Ipswich fall to the Jock bastards

ELEVEN: Declaring war on the Glasgow press

TWELVE: The Old Firm: ‘We didn’t like Aberdeen, they didn’t like us’

THIRTEEN: The march to Gothenburg

FOURTEEN: Real Madrid

FIFTEEN: The hairdryer and the baseball bat

SIXTEEN: European Team of the Year

SEVENTEEN: Summer 1984: the rebuild

EIGHTEEN: ‘This season’s target is two trophies . . . minimum’

NINETEEN: Nasty, toxic, and violent: welcome to Aberdeen-Rangers

TWENTY: Fergie goes to Mexico

TWENTY-ONE: Souness

TWENTY-TWO: A death in the family

TWENTY-THREE: The days of our lives

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The revolution begins: a thirty-six-year-old Alex Ferguson stands front and centre before the 1978-79 Aberdeen squad at Pittodrie. Mirrorpix

The twin pillars of the Aberdeen board: chairman Dick Donald (left) and vice-chairman Chris Anderson (right) flank Ferguson in 1980. SNS Group

Aberdeen were taught a painful lesson by Liverpool in the European Cup at Anfield. Jim Leighton (left), Alex McLeish (centre, in white) and Willie Miller (grounded) are helpless as Alan Hansen completes a 4–0 route in 1980. Getty Images

Two Glasgow hard men show their emotions moments after Aberdeen win the league at Easter Road in 1980: Miller and Ferguson. Eric McCowat Photo Archives

Champion! Ferguson displays the 1979-80 Scottish league trophy during an open-top bus tour of Aberdeen. Mirrorpix

Gordon Strachan, Neale Cooper, Mark McGhee and Alex McLeish were cornerstones of the Ferguson era. Mirrorpix

Ipswich manager Bobby Robson (centre) upset Aberdeen fans and the Scottish press with provocative comments before a 1981 UEFA Cup tie, but he remained a respected friend and ally to Ferguson. Getty Images

Real Madrid’s legendary coach, Alfredo Di Stéfano, was wrong-footed when Ferguson presented him with a bottle of whisky. Eric McCowar Photo Archives

That’s number one! Eric Black scores the opening goal against Real Madrid in the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup final. Getty Images

John Hewitt celebrates as he beats Real Madrid’s goalkeeper Agustin to score the winning goal in extra-time. Getty Images

The on-field leader and icon, captain Willie Miller with the European Cup Winners’ Cup. Eric McCowat Photo Archives

The ‘bad cop-bad cop’ combination: Ferguson and assistant manager Archie Knox (right) celebrate at full time in Gothenburg. Alamy

Ferguson’s trusted aides: Knox (left), trainer Teddy Scott (centre) and chairman Dick Donald (peering over his shoulder) on the jubilant return flight from Gothenburg. Mirrorpix

Ferguson felt that Aberdeen touched true greatness when winger Peter Weir was on form: he was the perfect balance of pace, strength and skill. Getty Images

The ultimate Aberdeen team? The line-up for Gothenburg and the 1983 Scottish Cup final (from left to right): Ferguson, Willie Miller, Jim Leighton, John McMaster, Mark McGhee, Gordon Strachan, Eric Black, Neil Simpson, Doug Rougvie, Peter Weir, Neale Cooper, Alex McLeish, John Hewitt, Andy Watson. Colorsport

Aberdeen-Rangers became the ugliest fixture in Scottish football in the 1980s. Referee George Smith hauls Ally McCoist to him, with Stewart McKimmie, Stuart Munro and Brian Mitchell nearby, during the most ill-disciplined match of all, at Ibrox in 1985. Bob Thomas Sports Photography

Mentor, inspiration, confidant: Jock Stein hand-picked Ferguson as his assistant manager for eight Scotland games over thirteen months, from 1984 to Big Jock’s death in 1985. Getty Images

Feeling the heat: Ferguson was Scotland’s manager and Graeme Souness his captain at the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico. They were about to clash as the rival bosses of Aberdeen and Rangers.

Heading off into the sunset. Ferguson grips the last trophy he won north of the border, the Scottish Cup, in 1986. Eric McCowat Photo Archives

Ferguson returns to Pittodrie in 2022 to unveil a statue cast in his honour. Alamy

For my family, old and new,and in memory of Donald and Ruby Grant,with love and thanks

PREFACE

The problem with Sir Alex Ferguson is that his mind games continue indefinitely, and they make unintended victims of the clubs and the supporters who idolise him. Wherever he worked he conjured the illusion that the sun will never set. Then he left, the world turned, and his clubs fell back into shadow. All four of the football clubs he managed in his thirty-nine-year career look back on their period of ‘Fergie time’ as the very best of days. Decades after he left them, East Stirlingshire, St Mirren and Aberdeen continue to cherish their fading memories and the ageing fans who lived through it yearn for a return to the way things were under Ferguson. Even Manchester United have felt the sting of his departure in 2013. United’s global army of supporters may have to resign itself to the truth that the club may never again be so relentlessly successful. So far, Ferguson’s unwanted legacy has always been anti-climax and decline for those he left behind.

Nowhere has the chill been more keenly felt than at Aberdeen because nowhere else has his influence raised a team to such unprecedented heights. For seventy-five years that modest club on Scotland’s north-east coast had been decent and respected, rising occasionally to make a brief challenge to the Old Firm only to settle back into its accustomed place in Scottish football. Before Ferguson they won one league title and four cups. And then the tornado struck. In his eight and a half years there, Aberdeen won ten trophies.

Between 1978 and 1986 he turned the Dons into one of the most formidable forces the Scottish game has seen and in 1983 one of the greatest to leave these shores and win a European final. For more than 125 years football in Scotland has been a tennis rally, its main honours rebounding back and forth between Rangers and Celtic. Ferguson changed that, leading Aberdeen as the senior partner in a ‘New Firm’ with Dundee United. The passing of time has only made his impact shine all the more vividly in the record books. Ferguson’s Aberdeen remain the only club to challenge and topple the Old Firm over a sustained period.

He lifted Aberdeen, and the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup final defeat of Real Madrid in Gothenburg elevated him. That was the towering achievement that made his a world-renowned name. When he took his first training session on an Aberdeen public park on 17 July 1978, he began a narrative which would continue beyond Scottish football and find its ultimate fulfilment at Manchester United. Aberdeen was the blueprint. He faced down early disruption and opposition from troublesome players at Aberdeen, as he did at United. There were trophyless early seasons before the floodgates opened for Aberdeen, as there were for United. He imposed an iron will on Pittodrie, as he would at Old Trafford. He built a side around an exceptional leader, Willie Miller, as he did later with Bryan Robson and Roy Keane. He forgave an errant talisman, Steve Archibald, as he did Eric Cantona. He knocked Rangers and Celtic ‘off their fucking perch’, as he did Liverpool. Crucially, he strived to create an aura around Aberdeen, as he would around United. Aberdeen lost their first two cup finals under Ferguson and then won all of their subsequent six. That was not entirely down to being the better team on the day; part of it was because Ferguson had learned how to prey on opponents’ doubts and vulnerabilities.

His post-match Hampden rant about Aberdeen’s ‘disgrace’ of a performance in the 1983 Scottish Cup final, when they beat Rangers, was an iconic incident which captured the energy, hunger, temper and rawness of the young Alex Ferguson. In an official history to celebrate the club’s centenary in 2003, he told author Jack Webster: ‘There is no doubt that Aberdeen made me as a manager.’ That was no hollow platitude, but the truth goes further: his years with Aberdeen made him as a man. Between 1978 and 1986 he lost his father and he lost his mentor, Jock Stein. He also won his first major honours at home and in Europe, saw his sons grow up, and became one of the most provocative, admired and recognisable figures in Scottish life. The transformation was profound: from being not good enough for St Mirren, to being good enough for Manchester United.

From the start, my intention was that Fergie Rises would offer a fresh and deeper perspective on Alex Ferguson’s time at Aberdeen. I interviewed every member of the Gothenburg team and dozens of others who served under him including his three assistant managers and other club staff. It was hugely rewarding to sit with fine players like Dom Sullivan, Ian Fleming, Jim Leighton, Gordon Strachan, Mark McGhee and Eric Black, all of whom had their problems with Ferguson, either at Aberdeen or subsequently, and all of whom gave their views candidly. Whether favoured or not, these men relayed their personal ‘hairdryer’ anecdotes like badges of honour. It was soon clear that working with Ferguson was a blast in more ways than one. What came through clearly was what a laugh they all had. Ferguson was controlling, dictatorial, moody and inconsistent, but he was often cracking good fun.

No previous book has been devoted entirely to that eight-and-a-half-year period and none has interviewed players from Rangers, Celtic, Dundee United, Hearts and others to ask how it was to play against those Aberdeen teams. Prominent Old Firm figures, such as Ally McCoist, Charlie Nicholas and Davie Provan gave insights into Ferguson’s competitiveness and cunning. They were front-line eyewitnesses to – and sometimes casualties of – those bloody battles at Pittodrie, Ibrox, Parkhead and Hampden. And these guys were winners too, which maybe explains why they spoke approvingly of Aberdeen’s nasty streak.

There is testimony from European opponents within these pages, too. ‘They were a really difficult team to play. Tough bastards,’ said Terry Butcher, a member of the Ipswich team who were Uefa Cup holders until Aberdeen knocked them out. Players in the Bayern Munich and Real Madrid sides laid low by Ferguson’s Aberdeen spoke as well. The great Karl-Heinz Rummenigge remembered, thirty years on, how the Dons ‘fought like hell, to the last second’. Referees and journalists also shared their tales. There were exceptions, but the overall feeling was warmth and fondness towards the man, if not always his methods. What became clear was just how relentlessly eventful it all was: cup finals, European adventures, broken tea cups, fallings-out, red cards, and always the threat of that ‘hairdryer’ should anyone step out of line. Never a dull moment.

Occasionally colleagues would ask if Ferguson himself had contributed. Those who have written about him, or about Aberdeen, are aware that for years he has declined requests to be involved with books about himself or his clubs, unless they are official publications or he is providing forewords. But I had never intended to ask. I had interviewed him in the past and wrote about him at length for a previous book, The Management: Scotland’s Great Football Bosses. But Ferguson’s version of his Pittodrie adventures is already so well-known, thanks to his 1985 account of the Aberdeen years, A Light in the North, and his more revealing 1999 autobiography, Managing My Life. What more could or would he say now? A time comes when even the sharpest mind has no more nuggets left to mine. What others had to say would be far more revealing.

For those of us who follow Aberdeen, there is a temptation to recoil from the inexorable decline of the last four decades and find sanctuary in the memory of Fergie’s revolution. I started to take a serious interest in football around 1975, aged six, when the club had won the sum total of two trophies in the previous nineteen years. Under Ferguson, in those late 1970s and early 1980s, they became a force unrecognisable to previous generations of their fans.

My father was never the type to keep a record of such things but he reckons he missed very few games at Pittodrie between 1948 and 1966, before he moved too far away to attend. He was a regular when they won the league in 1955 but for the most part he watched also-rans in red. The disappointments were endless. In 1953 he travelled to Glasgow and squeezed into Hampden as one of 129,000 who saw them draw with Rangers in the Scottish Cup final. True to form, they lost the replay. A year later he was back when they faced Celtic in front of 130,000. Another defeat. In later years he endured the setbacks from the safety of his armchair.

Around the time I began writing this book, Dad, by then elderly, was hospitalised by an illness. After ten days he seemed comfortable and I was given the all-clear to fly to Luxembourg as one of the football writers covering a Scotland friendly. There, on the media coach to the stadium, I received a call to say he had deteriorated rapidly over the previous few hours. Then a subsequent call: it might be advisable for the family to gather at the bedside. With their gentle euphemisms the doctors hinted that he was unlikely to get through the night. The family duly gathered but it was impossible for me to get back to him for another nine hours. Numbly, I sat in a little football ground, 800 miles away, quietly trying to compose a match report about a game that did not matter, asking players questions that did not matter, noting answers which did not matter, fearful that at any second the phone would ring with the dreaded conclusion. You think of childhood at a time like that, of shared experiences, of laughter and celebrations. For me, those thoughts were inextricably bound up with Aberdeen under Alex Ferguson.

I made it back to Dad’s bedside. He made it through. Over the coming days he improved and after a few weeks he was allowed home. A couple of years later, in March 2014, Aberdeen won the League Cup, their first trophy for nineteen years and only the fourth since Ferguson left. Dad watched it on television. His two wee grandsons were at the final among 43,000 Aberdeen supporters, a bigger following than even the unsurpassable 1980s teams drew. By the time my reports on this new cup glory had been filed for The Herald that evening it was too late to call him. I knew he would be away early to his bed but it was lovely to know how pleased he would be. Dad passed away in 2015 and Mam, another Dons fan from Torry in Aberdeen, the following year.

Any mention of ‘Fergie’ always brought the same reaction from my dad: a laugh, a shake of the head and a remark along the lines of ‘What a boy he is’. It was a response that still makes me smile, too, because it affectionately painted Britain’s greatest manager as a likeable, irrepressible rogue. Not a legend, not a genius, not the fearsome dictator whose place in history is assured. Just a hugely charismatic leader we all loved having at our club. Fergie could do no wrong in our eyes.

Only once, in the barren years, did Dad show the strain of being a supporter of an underachieving club. It was the afternoon of the 1978 Scottish Cup final, Aberdeen’s last game before that ‘boy’ turned on the lights. I remember being puzzled that Dad’s seat was vacant and he was not at home to watch the game on television. A couple of hours later he meandered in after a session at the local. He was rarely a drinker, so why hit the bottle on a miserable day with nothing to celebrate? ‘Drowning my sorrows, son,’ he said, smiling.

What happened at Hampden that day? Rangers 2, Aberdeen 1.

Now read on.

MICHAEL GRANTMay 2023

ONE

‘CUP FINALS ARE TOO BIG FOR SOME PLAYERS’

Glasgow is a city that has always had its no-go areas; neighbourhoods even the streetwise would do well to avoid. In 1978 there was a case for saying Hampden Park was one of them. The famous old home of Scottish football was dirty and dilapidated, so neglected it had been reduced to an eyesore. ‘Hampden is dying,’ said the Scottish Football Association (SFA) secretary Willie Allan in a mournful plea for external funding. The vast stadium’s exterior walls had become a canvas for graffiti about gang rivalries, or bigotry, or the English. Before big matches the area outside the turnstiles was littered with broken glass and muck from police horses. Inside, supporters had to endure an obstacle course of empty whisky and wine bottles, squashed beer cans, discarded ring pulls, carrier bags, food wrappers, cigarette ends and other human debris. Once the crowd was in, streams of urine would slowly snake down the terraces. Those enormous slopes were made out of cinder embankments. They were filthy.

There could be blood, too. The law still allowed fans to bring ‘carry-outs’ into the ground and segregation between opposing supporters was not strictly enforced. Drunkenness and Scottish football rivalries meant casual violence was inevitable. Heavy beer bottles would be thrown to smash down brutally on rival fans’ heads.

On cup final days the sweeping terraces would be filled with block after block of Rangers or Celtic supporters: 30,000, 40,000, maybe 50,000 of them, all noisy, cocksure, an elemental force not just confident of victory but insistent upon it. It felt as though any other team was only there to make up the numbers; to lose without a fuss and clear off home while the trophy was presented to one of its two rightful owners. In Glasgow, and especially at Hampden, day-trippers from Edinburgh, Dundee or Aberdeen were expected to know their place.

That was what awaited Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final against Rangers on 6 May 1978. Whenever Rangers and Celtic played each other the two sets of fans would divide the ground evenly. When one of them faced any other club their fans would make up three-quarters of the crowd, and maybe more. It took strength of character to turn up in Glasgow knowing that your fans would be outnumbered to that extent. The Old Firm imposed their will on teams. Few who came to Hampden could cope.

Aberdeen were one of the perennial also-rans, outsiders who struggled to withstand Glasgow’s psychological onslaught. They had no real pedigree as winners and their only year as league champions had been nearly a quarter-of-a-century earlier. A few sporadic cup successes meant that by the 1970s their history was respectable but Rangers and Celtic usually had the beating of them when it mattered. When Aberdeen routed Rangers 5–1 in the 1976–77 League Cup semi-final it was such a shock that even their own players struggled to comprehend what they had done. They stopped off at the studios of Scottish Television to watch the game again before getting back on the bus for the long drive home. They went on to beat Celtic in the final, too.

That triumph was sufficiently fresh in the memory to make the 1978 Scottish Cup final more interesting than usual. Their recent form had turned Aberdeen into the best team in Scotland. They began a 23-game unbeaten run in December 1977 and chased Rangers all the way to the last day of the league campaign. Between the start of the season and the cup final they had beaten Rangers and Celtic six times. Their impressive young manager, Billy McNeill, was tall and handsome. He was only thirty-eight, had been the iconic captain of Celtic’s Lisbon Lions, and came fresh from a decade of lording it over Rangers. The match was a major event. Denis Law turned down an FA Cup final ticket so he could be in Glasgow to support Aberdeen, his home-town club. As one of the BBC’s commentary team he even got paid for being there. It felt like the whole northeast migrated to join him. British Rail scheduled five special trains direct from Aberdeen to Hampden and many more fans made the journey in a huge fleet of buses. The Daily Record’s front page headline read: FEVER PITCH – HAMPDEN RED ALERT AS BILLY’S ARMY ROLLS INTO TOWN. But this was an army rolling into Glasgow unprepared for the battle. As the Aberdeen support poured off the trains and buses, negotiated the broken glass and the shit from the police horses, and climbed the steps into Hampden, it suddenly hit them. Their first sight of the massed Rangers support, occupying vast swathes of the great open bowl was overwhelming. Suddenly Aberdeen’s 20,000 seemed puny. Under the baking May sunshine they listened to the pipe bands and watched an Alsatian dog display team and a balloon competition on the pitch. And as kick-off approached, they grew nervous.

Still, even if they were outnumbered on the terraces and in the stands, surely their representatives on the pitch would be up for the fight? After all, Aberdeen had three men about to go to the World Cup finals in Argentina as part of Ally MacLeod’s Scotland squad: big, solid Bobby Clark in goal, tenacious Stuart Kennedy at right-back, the wee barrel of a goalscorer, ‘King’ Joey Harper, up front. And then there was the captain, the unflappable rock of their defence, Willie Miller. Those four were not the type to buckle. But something was not right. Aberdeen had not been in a Scottish Cup final for eight years and that seemed to prey on some of the players’ minds – and on the manager’s. On the eve of the game McNeill gave off strange signals to the newspapers. ‘There’s always tension for everyone involved,’ he told the writers. ‘But even being in the final is a marvellous thing for the city of Aberdeen.’ Some supporters felt uneasy. McNeill was a born winner but with that throwaway line he sounded content – perhaps resigned – simply to be taking part. No Old Firm manager would sound so passive.

There was more. ‘It’s a big day in their lives,’ said McNeill of his players. ‘Of course they will be nervous, but I’m sure they will get over that and settle down.’ Jock Wallace, Rangers’ grizzled, battle-hardened manager, took it all in. Their great wee winger, Davie Cooper, appeared in the papers on the morning of the game to give an entirely different message. He was photographed playing pool in his training gear as if he did not have a care in the world. There was no talk from Rangers about it being a big day in their lives, no mention of any of them being nervous. Cup finals were what Rangers did: 1978 was their ninth of the 1970s.

Aberdeen fell to pieces at Hampden. They were jittery and hesitant, repeatedly giving the ball away and making the wrong decisions. For Rangers, the final became a stroll in their own backyard. Aberdeen no longer looked like a rising force, just another team of pretenders who could not handle the pressure. Rangers’ little midfield terrier Alex MacDonald ghosted between static defenders to force a header through Clark’s hands after thirty-five minutes. A thunderous, rumbling roar rose up from the Rangers end. Midway through the second half, striker Derek Johnstone planted another header past the goalie. 2–0. Hampden throbbed again to Rangers’ support in full voice. Aberdeen pulled a goal back five minutes from time. But even that seemed pathetic. Left-back Steve Ritchie swung his leg at a low cross and scuffed the connection. The ball scooped high into the air and came down to hit the Rangers crossbar and post before going in as goalkeeper Peter McCloy swung on the bar with his back to the ball. The ball did not even touch the net. Aberdeen’s performance was so bad even their goal was embarrassing.

They had five minutes to find an equaliser but were too beaten and broken to try. STV’s archives have only five minutes of highlights from the game, but even that brief footage says it all. It shows Ritchie brushing off a couple of team-mates as they run up to celebrate; he is shaking his head, muttering gloomily to himself. For a team with momentum five minutes is long enough to score a second goal against suddenly nervous opponents. Aberdeen had no fight for that. No one in red even raced to grab the ball out of Rangers’ goal to force a quick restart. They were waiting to lose, waiting to get it all over with. Soon enough they were put out of their misery: Rangers 2, Aberdeen 1.

As the Rangers fans let rip, the Aberdeen end melted away, cursing another let-down. The familiar conclusions swirled around: same old Aberdeen, bottle merchants. Where were the leaders to stand up to Rangers and Celtic? Aberdeen had been men all season but under the pressure of Hampden they turned into mice. Later Joe Harper made another comparison. ‘We simply froze and performed like a bunch of rabbits caught in the headlights. We were an embarrassment to all and sundry at Hampden.’ More than forty years later the Aberdeen players who lined up that day still shake their heads at the memory. John McMaster, the elegant midfielder, knew they let people down. ‘It just caught up with us: the atmosphere, being anxious to do well in front of our families,’ he said. ‘The next thing it was, “What the fuck am I doing? I’m having a nightmare here.” All I did was frustrate myself. I chased Alex MacDonald all over Hampden. I didn’t play at all. A boy I’d grown up with said to me later, “John, you’re a legend, you’ve played in a Scottish Cup final.” I just thought, “How can you be a legend when you get beat?”’

Stuart Kennedy could not believe what he was seeing. ‘Cup finals are too big for some players. We’d beaten that Rangers team four times, beaten them 3–0 at Ibrox, but when you tell some people it’s a cup final I just don’t know what happens to them mentally. It’s like there’s more pressure on them. It didn’t bother me. I strolled through that game.’ McNeill had spoken softly to the players at half-time, assuming they would improve after an ‘awful’ first half. What they actually needed was a collective boot up the backside, and, too late, he realised it. The newspapers dismissed Aberdeen. ‘As one side was so far ahead of the other the 1978 Scottish Cup final will not be remembered as one of the classics,’ said the Glasgow Herald. ‘The Aberdeen heads went down and the shoulders slumped as Rangers turned it on as if taking part in an exhibition.’

By the time the team bus pulled away from Hampden and began the long retreat from Glasgow, the streets were thronged with jubilant Rangers fans, knocking back bottles and cans and pausing to jeer and flick V-signs at the losers from the north-east. Miller scowled out of the window. The captain was quietly seething. He was a hard, born-and-bred Glaswegian who had grown into Aberdeen’s leader and icon. He knew the day had been a surrender from start to finish. ‘I swore that I would never allow a team that I was captaining to freeze on a big occasion,’ he said. But Miller could not change the entire club’s mentality on his own. Aberdeen needed someone to worm inside their heads, someone to tell them they were as good as the Old Firm. Better, even. They needed someone unafraid to get right into Rangers’ and Celtic’s faces. None of that came naturally to the earthy, reserved folk of the north-east.

Back home an open-top bus parade had been organised for the day after the cup final, win or lose. The players wondered if anyone would have the appetite for it but it was a sunny holiday weekend and 10,000 made the effort to line the streets of Aberdeen’s city centre, and another 10,000 greeted them inside Pittodrie. They came to acknowledge the fine football their team had played in the five months before Hampden. Such was the dominance of the Old Firm that, as midfielder Gordon Strachan put it: ‘Even to appear in a Scottish Cup final was apparently cause for celebration.’ A HEROES’ WELCOME FOR GALLANT LOSERS, said the Glasgow Herald. It was not meant to sound like a backhanded compliment, but the fact remained that Aberdeen were losers. As they disembarked from the bus and walked out at Pittodrie the players looked glum. Their movements were slow and their shoulders drooped. Some held out their empty hands to the supporters in a gesture of apology.

McNeill tried to lift the mood with talk of what Aberdeen were building. Finishing second in the league and cup was only the beginning, he said. Next season they would bring home a trophy, he promised. The north-east had heard it all before. No one really believed anything would change: Rangers and Celtic would share the trophies again the following season, and again the season after that. Who was going to stop them?

A piece of lesser football news made one of the newspapers on the morning of the cup final. FERGIE STAYS ON, reported the Daily Record. ‘St Mirren manager Alex Ferguson is to stay at Love Street. Ferguson turned down an offer from the United States after meeting with the St Mirren board last night.’ It was an apparently insignificant story tucked away on one of the inside pages. Up in Aberdeen, one man read it and made a mental note.

TWO

A DISCREET CALL TO THE JOLLY RODGER

Scotland fans had one thing on their minds going into the summer of 1978. After another long season there was little appetite for the ins, outs and intrigues of club management. There were now bigger fish to fry: Scotland were going to the World Cup finals in Argentina. Their effervescent Pied Piper of a manager, Ally MacLeod, whipped the public into a state of collective hysteria. He was asked what he was going to do after the tournament? His answer: ‘Retain it.’

There was no ridicule of ‘Ally’ and his bombastic declarations. The country hung on his every word. When he decided it would be a good idea for supporters to come to Hampden and give the squad a send-off to the airport, more than 30,000 turned up to wave them away. MacLeod had mobilised a big football crowd, in a big football stadium, just to look at players standing on an open-top bus. Scottish comedian Andy Cameron captured the growing sense of expectation when he submerged himself in tartan and appeared on Top of the Pops to plough heroically through his World Cup novelty song ‘Ally’s Tartan Army’. Feverish excitement propelled the record to 360,000 sales and number six in the UK charts. Scotland had qualified for World Cups before, in 1954, 1958 and 1974, but they had never travelled with this sort of swaggering confidence. Fans were talking about Córdoba, Mendoza and the Pampas as if these places were to be invaded by a friendly but conquering army.

The newspapers’ ‘number one’ football writers had already been despatched to Argentina when the tectonic plates moved back in Glasgow. Suddenly, the World Cup was knocked from the top of the football agenda. In the newsrooms and journalists’ watering holes the conversations revolved around two clubs, two men and two dramatic vacancies. It is a major story in Scotland when one of the Old Firm clubs changes their manager. For both of them to do so in the same week amounted to unprecedented turbulence. The sports desks of the Scottish national newspapers – all based in Glasgow, other than The Scotsman in Edinburgh – were in ferment. Now the real stories were at home. First the back pages were dominated by the bombshell about Jock Wallace walking out on the Rangers job, without explanation, just days after that cup final defeat of Aberdeen secured the domestic treble. Wallace’s reasons remained vague and the sense of affront in the blue half of Glasgow hardly lessened when he took over modest Leicester City a few days later. Who would land the Rangers job? ‘St Mirren’s Alex Ferguson, the live-wire who has taken the Paisley club to success, became the favourite,’ wrote Hugh Taylor in Glasgow’s Evening Times. Taylor was wrong. Within hours of his paper hitting the streets Rangers had appointed from within. Their long-serving and distinguished captain, John Greig, was given the reins. Ferguson was never an option.

Jock Stein’s exit from Celtic after thirteen years as manager was less surprising or confusing, but more momentous given the slew of trophies he had brought the club, including the 1967 European Cup and nine consecutive Scottish titles. ‘Now comes the news which will rock the game in Scotland, down south, and indeed in any country where the game is played,’ declared the Evening Times. If this amounted to a footballing earthquake for Glasgow a secondary tremor was soon to hit Aberdeen. Twelve months earlier the SFA had raided the manager’s office at Pittodrie, prised MacLeod out of Aberdeen and given him their top job. When the news about Stein broke, it was immediately obvious that Celtic would attempt the same with Billy McNeill. He was as ‘Celtic’ as anyone could get: the cornerstone of the Stein era, the first British captain to lift the European Cup, a colossal Parkhead figure. He was also emerging as a young manager with terrific prospects. It was Stein himself who first approached McNeill at an awards lunch in Glasgow and quietly offered him the position as his replacement.

McNeill had been with Aberdeen for less than a year. No one had to tell him he had a squad of outstanding potential or that he might be on the brink of something special despite that cup final let-down. His players liked and respected him, the north-east had embraced him and McNeill and his wife enjoyed the city’s comfortable, relaxed way of life. The obvious and sensible thing to do was thank Celtic for their interest but reluctantly let them know the timing was not right. He felt grateful to Aberdeen, too, for giving him a platform in management by taking him away from Clyde and giving him a job with real profile. And yet, and yet . . . The thought nagged away at him that the chance to manage Celtic might never come his way again. Against his better judgment he listened to heart rather than head and tendered his resignation.

In Paisley, Alex Ferguson had turned down that offer from the United States but the story about him ‘staying on’ at St Mirren remained accurate for only twenty-four days. On 30 May the club’s exasperated board decided they had had enough of a manager they had come to see as confrontational and controlling, and unanimously decided to sack him for breach of contract. Ferguson was summoned to Love Street and a typed, numbered list of thirteen offences was read to him before he was dismissed. A curt statement was issued: ‘Because of a serious rift which had occurred between the board and the manager, and because of breaches of contract on his part, it would be in the interests of both parties that the manager’s contract be terminated.’ The club’s supporters could not believe what they were hearing. Many thought Ferguson the best thing to happen to St Mirren in the nineteen years since their last major trophy in 1959. To most of Paisley the decision to sack him seemed as insane then as it has to the rest of football ever since. In essence, the issue was an irreparable personality clash with the chairman, Willie Todd. Ferguson visited his solicitors and insisted he would take St Mirren to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal. That decision would become a saga that drained his energy for months, distracting him as he tried to come to terms with his next job, the biggest of his managerial career to date.

The managers of Partick Thistle and Dumbarton, Bertie Auld and Davie Wilson, and the Southampton assistant Jim Clunie, were all linked with the Aberdeen vacancy when Billy McNeill departed. But not for long. It was quickly clear that Ferguson was the man Aberdeen wanted. They were impressed that under his tenures at East Stirlingshire and St Mirren the attendances had leapt significantly, and also that he had built squads without troubling either board for money. In fact, the exciting young team at Love Street was assembled for no transfer outlay and had quickly won promotion to the Premier Division. Yes, the charismatic manager was clearly a handful for both sets of directors, but Ferguson’s results spoke for themselves. The more background checks done by Aberdeen chairman Dick Donald and vice-chairman Chris Anderson, the more convinced they were that Ferguson’s talent and potential outweighed any questions over impulsiveness or control issues. Anderson had been the interested reader of that snippet in the Record about Ferguson turning down the American offer on the day of the cup final. Donald and Anderson were confident in their judgment, having been so successful with MacLeod in 1975 and McNeill in 1977 that both managers were quickly poached for ‘bigger’ jobs.

Alex Ferguson and unemployment were never likely to suit one another. On leaving St Mirren he was out of work for a matter of hours. Given how quickly he would demonise ‘the Glasgow press’ for their hostility to Aberdeen it was ironic that the club first made contact with him through the quintessential Glasgow football writer, Jim ‘The Jolly’ Rodger. Rodger was in his mid-fifties and had been a prominent journalist for thirty years. He was a short, stout, bald, bespectacled man who enjoyed enormous influence and contacts. He was on first-name terms with Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher and in football circles he routinely acted as a go-between in transfers and managerial appointments, effectively an agent in an age before agents. Ferguson had been similarly sounded out by Aberdeen about taking over when MacLeod left in the summer of 1977 but then he had turned them down; ‘Insanity,’ he admitted in a subsequent autobiography.

St Mirren have always disputed the timing of Rodger’s first contact with Ferguson. Their chairman, Todd, later said that Ferguson had let it be known around St Mirren that he was moving to Aberdeen ‘four days before he eventually left’. If true, it would mean Ferguson had done so while McNeill was still deliberating over his move from Aberdeen to Celtic. Todd considered that a clear breach of contract because Aberdeen had made no formal approach to speak to him about the job. He claimed he sacked Ferguson because he could not tolerate a manager who was trying to work his ticket out of the club. It was always Todd’s view that Ferguson had been ‘tapped up’ by Aberdeen days, even weeks, before he actually went. But Aberdeen could not have known they were about to lose McNeill. They would have been unaware that Stein was about to leave Celtic. In fact, McNeill later admitted he had been embarrassed that the story broke on 26 May before he had spoken to the Aberdeen board. Whenever the call was made by Rodger, though, Ferguson told him he would jump at the Aberdeen job and the journalist relayed that news to Donald. Ferguson and Donald then spoke by telephone and the following day the young manager travelled north for negotiations. These were concluded so swiftly that a press conference was called for later the same evening.

‘I’m thrilled at joining Aberdeen because I want to win things,’ Ferguson told the reporters who rushed to Pittodrie. ‘You only need to look at the stadium and you can see it is ready for success.’ He looked relaxed and comfortable, answering all the questions before posing for pictures alone and with his new chairman. FERGIE HUSTLES NORTH TO BOSS THE DONS, said the headline on the front page of the Glasgow Herald the following morning. Journalist Ian Paul wrote that Aberdeen’s board ‘can be commended for the speed at which they moved’ in capturing ‘one of Scotland’s most exciting managerial prospects’. It was the end of a dizzying spell of activity. Wallace resigned on 23 May, Greig was appointed on 24 May, the Stein story broke on 26 May, McNeill resigned on 29 May, St Mirren’s board decided to sack Ferguson on 30 May, Celtic confirmed that Stein would become a director and appointed McNeill to replace him on 31 May, and Aberdeen appointed Ferguson on 1 June.

At last Scotland could take a breath and focus its attention solely on the World Cup. Soon the collapse of that particular dream felt apocalyptic: Scotland lost to Peru, drew with Iran and watched Archie Gemmill score a mesmerising goal in a futile win over the Netherlands. The country turned viciously on MacLeod. Andy Cameron joked that there was a garage somewhere storing tens of thousands of copies of his record. He reckoned ‘Ally’s Tartan Army’ did not sell another copy from the day Scotland went out.

THREE

RESCUING ALEX FERGUSON

Glaswegians have always laughed loudest at jokes about Aberdeen. Scotland’s population is concentrated in the central belt, especially around greater Glasgow, whose citizens tend to view the smaller north-eastern city as an inferior outpost. Many would struggle to place it on a map. Others think of Aberdeen as remote, rural, cold and dour. They imagine an all-pervading odour of fish. They call the locals ‘sheepshaggers’ and make wisecracks about a perceived meanness: ‘Copper wire was invented by two Aberdonians fighting over a penny’; ‘The first people in Scotland to get double glazing were Aberdonians so that the bairns couldn’t hear the ice cream vans’; ‘An Aberdonian found a pair of crutches so he went home and broke his son’s leg’.

So when Ferguson moved to the north-east of Scotland he stepped into a different culture and way of life. He was old enough to know Aberdeen as a popular holiday resort during Glasgow Fair, the July fortnight when Glaswegians traditionally took their summer break. Until the 1970s many had flocked to its guesthouses and its long, sandy beach. Then the sudden availability of cheap air travel to the Mediterranean broadened horizons and the traffic between the two cities dwindled. Not that Aberdeen had really enjoyed a picture postcard reputation. For decades its income had been based on agriculture, fishing, textiles and quarrying the famous granite – hence the nickname, ‘The Granite City’. The imposing stone made Aberdeen look steadfast and regal, but grey and unwelcoming, too. It also ensured stolidity. For decades the city’s population was static and its economy stagnant. During the 1960s it was little more than a regional backwater with no obvious prospect for growth, while 150 miles to the south Glasgow clung to its proud self-image as the second city of the British Empire and one of the world’s great hubs of heavy engineering.

But by the time Ferguson arrived at Pittodrie the economic and social landscapes were shifting. In 1969, American drilling rigs struck oil in the North Sea 135 miles east of Aberdeen and by 1975 the first ‘black gold’ arrived in the city. Then everything changed. The offshore industry needed headquarters and Aberdeen was the only contender. The economic transformation was rapid. Industrial estates were built and money and workers flooded in. Thousands of jobs were created for locals. From a population of around 200,000, by 1978 more than 30,000 were employed in the oil industry. The entire focus of Scotland’s economy shifted from the old, declining heavy industries of the central belt to the newly vibrant north-east coast. The boom paid for new housing, offices and schools as Aberdeen gained a reputation for prosperity and affluence. At a time when many parts of Scotland faced decline and hardship, the city was cocooned. The contrast with Glasgow was stark. The great hub of engineering felt blighted. Its tenement slums had been replaced by high-rise flats and soulless suburban housing estates, ‘the schemes’. The collapse of manufacturing industries like steelmaking, shipbuilding and the engine factories led to mass unemployment, deprivation and urban decay. If Glaswegians thought of the north-east as a backwater, then Aberdonians looked down their noses at uncouth ‘weegies’ and the widening economic gap only fuelled the conviction.

Aberdeen supporters never resorted to waving bundles of cash at Rangers or Celtic fans, as fans of London clubs would do during matches against Liverpool, Everton or Newcastle United. But their taunts were no less vicious: ‘In your Glasgow slums,’ they chanted, ‘you rake in the bucket for something to eat/you find a dead rat and you think it’s a treat/in your Glasgow slums.’ Ferguson never commented on these songs publicly but their mockery of his home city, of its growing poverty and deprivation, must have sat uneasily with a man whose working-class upbringing and socialist beliefs were matters of fierce pride.

Alexander Chapman Ferguson was born in his grandparents’ council house in the Drumoyne area of Glasgow on 31 December 1941. His father, also Alex, was a shipwright in the Govan shipyards and brought up Ferguson and his brother, Martin, in the shadow of the Clydeside cranes. The family lived comfortably but had no car, television or telephone during young Alex’s childhood.

He was a popular boy, a rough diamond, bright and competitive. Fellow Glaswegians recognised him as ‘gallus’ – in other words mischievous, opinionated and unabashed. He was also ‘handy’ – able to look after himself – and could be hot-headed when slighted. He lived life on the front foot. In 1958, aged sixteen, he left school to begin a five-year apprenticeship as a toolmaker in Hillington, four miles from the shipyards. Being street-smart with a readiness to stand up for himself quickly established him as a natural leader and a barrack-room lawyer in the workplace. He was soon active in the trade union movement, becoming a shop steward and taking a prominent role in two apprentices’ strikes. He was a product of his time and place. The Fergusons were Labour voters, born and bred.

By the time he was a qualified toolmaker his parallel career as a footballer was already underway. He had played throughout his childhood and earned a reputation as a strong and prolific goalscorer as he rose from playing in the street, through Boys’ Brigade and amateur teams, before entering the senior game with Queen’s Park in 1958. Ferguson could terrorise defenders and goalkeepers. He was awkward, brave, physical and robust, often inviting retaliation from grizzled Scottish centre-halves. His elbows seemed as important to his style of play as his feet and he would barge his way into scoring positions. Nor did he keep his opinions to himself: he shared them with opponents and officials and was not shy of berating his own defenders or goalkeeper when they conceded goals.

Spells with Queen’s Park, St Johnstone and Dunfermline saw his promise steadily grow and when he signed for Rangers in 1967 the fee of £65,000 was a record for a transfer between Scottish clubs. It was the realisation of a personal dream: Rangers were the team Ferguson had supported since boyhood. Yet his twenty-nine months at Ibrox turned out to be the most demoralising of his career. The manager who signed him, Scot Symon, was soon dismissed and Ferguson was bounced between the first team and the reserves, drifting in and out of favour. He felt he was made a scapegoat when Rangers lost the 1969 Scottish Cup final 4–0 to Celtic. He was instructed to mark Billy McNeill but as a striker he lacked defensive instincts and left McNeill unattended at the first goal. The game became unfairly synonymous with Ferguson’s inability to cope with McNeill. He also believed his wife’s religion had counted against him. He was twenty-four when he married Cathy Holding in 1966. Cathy was a Catholic, Alex a Protestant, and sectarianism at Rangers was an open secret. His spell at the club ended sourly in 1969. Almost a decade and a half later, when Rangers held out a hand to take him back, the episode would rebound on them.

Ferguson’s playing career wound down at Falkirk and Ayr United. Though never called up for Scotland, he was a prominent figure of his day, scoring 222 goals in 432 appearances. Regulars at Pittodrie were familiar with him and not only because he scored eight goals in twenty appearances against them. During a Scottish Cup tie in February 1973, he was embroiled in a scrap with Aberdeen defender Willie Young and was sent off before half-time.

By that point he had been a qualified SFA coach for six years. Those who held such qualifications were always welcome at the SFA’s refresher courses but few bothered to return. Ferguson was one of the exceptions. There was no question that he would try to make a career for himself in coaching. His manager in 1973–74, his final season at Ayr, was Ally MacLeod. When MacLeod was flying out to the 1974 World Cup finals in West Germany he bumped into a friend, Bob Shaw, a director at East Stirlingshire. Shaw had admired Ferguson’s competitiveness and forceful personality from afar and wondered if he might be available for his club’s vacant managerial position. More than twenty men had applied for the job but after meeting chairman Willie Murihead at a Falkirk hotel, and sailing through his interview, it was Ferguson who was appointed to the part-time role in June 1974. His wage was £40 a week.

‘The Shire’ are one of those little clubs routinely mocked for bumping along in Scottish football’s basement. Firs Park was demolished in 2012 but in 1974 it was a tiny ground tucked away in an otherwise drab part of Falkirk; its little stand was barrel-roofed and painted in black and white to match the club’s home colours. Ferguson’s 117 days as manager remain a badge of honour in their history. Summer departures meant he inherited a squad of only twelve players and a budget to rebuild it of just £2,000. The team was made up of part-time journeymen with recent memories of watching or reading about Ferguson at Rangers. When their new, 32-year-old boss spoke, they listened. From the outset he demanded the discipline and attention to detail that would remain constants throughout his four decades as a manager. Players were told to turn up in collar and tie. He restructured training sessions and started to give them thorough briefings on the opposition. He even told them the local paper, the Falkirk Herald, was biased towards the town’s larger club, Falkirk. This was nonsense but he repeated it so forcefully the team began to believe him. ‘The Shire’ had finished sixteenth in Division Two the previous season but under Ferguson they climbed as high as third, with seven wins and only three defeats in his first dozen league games. Attractive, attacking football also reflected through the turnstiles and average attendances rose from around 400 to 1,200.

It was quickly apparent that Ferguson’s idea of management involved much wider control of club affairs than any of his predecessors had enjoyed, or expected. When he was challenged by the board for unauthorised spending – he had given £40 to a junior team to come and play a friendly – he startled the directors by threatening to resign. The issue was smoothed over but the club had been served notice: they had a young revolutionary determined to shake ‘The Shire’ by its roots. As Willie Muirhead would later put it, Ferguson was the best thing that ever happened to East Stirlingshire.

Ferguson’s impact did not go unnoticed and in October 1974 St Mirren inquired if he would take over when Willie Cunningham resigned. It was effectively a step down because at the time ‘The Shire’ were two places above St Mirren in fourth spot in Division Two. The offer left Ferguson uncertain. Both clubs were part-time and he felt a sense of loyalty to the players he had worked so hard to improve. Only when he made a call to Stein, the Celtic manager and Godfather of Scottish coaching, did those doubts clear. Stein told him to sit in the highest point of the stand at Firs Park and then do the same at St Mirren’s Love Street. The advice was cryptic but shrewd. St Mirren’s ground was far bigger (in the 1970s it had a capacity of almost 50,000, nearly all of it terracing) and Ferguson needed only a brief look to compare the scale of the two clubs’ potential. St Mirren had always been one of the substantial names of the Scottish game. They had won the Scottish Cup in 1926 and 1959 and had finished in the top six as challengers to Rangers and Celtic three times since the end of the Second World War. St Mirren had no business languishing in Division Two, down with East Stirlingshire and the other minnows.

After just seventeen games with ‘The Shire’ he took the job and began a crusade to rebuild and reposition St Mirren as a force. His immersion in the task was absolute, to the frequent detriment of time with Cathy and their sons: Mark, who had just turned six, and twins Darren and Jason, who were two. Further time was devoted to running ‘Fergie’s’, a pub in Glasgow within walking distance of Ibrox Stadium where he was often found serving behind the bar. His working day at Love Street could last for twelve hours or more and again he tried to exert himself over every aspect of the operation, even secretarial duties and maintenance. With East Stirlingshire Ferguson had shown ambition but at St Mirren he had a vision. Paisley, an industrialised town in the shadow of Glasgow, had suffered an economic downturn. The area was depressed and unemployment was climbing. Ferguson wanted to give the dispirited locals a football team of which they could be proud and he bubbled with energy and ideas. A weekly club newspaper was introduced, as was a column by Ferguson in the Paisley Daily Express. He drove through the streets with a loudhailer trying to drum up interest ahead of home games. It was an imaginative, almost comic, ploy which made him look like a political candidate ahead of polling day.

After early inconsistency the results came. Due to league reconstruction the top six in the 1974–75 season would be rewarded with promotion. St Mirren just made it, finishing sixth. Instead of being in the second of two divisions they were now in the second of three. Ferguson’s confidence grew and he became increasingly decisive. At the end of his first season he released eighteen players. In 1975–76 St Mirren finished sixth again but this was a team coming together. In 1976–77 they clicked. Ferguson led them back to the top flight for the first time since 1971. Between September and March they remained undefeated for twenty-eight consecutive league games and won the title by four points. They scored ninety-one league goals in thirty-nine matches. The most electrifying performance came in the Scottish Cup when they routed Dundee United 4–1 on 29 January 1977. The following month more than 15,000 fans followed them to Motherwell in the next round, where they lost an ugly game 2–1.

The team was young, brash, exciting and dangerous. Ferguson inherited an elegant midfielder, Tony Fitzpatrick, and made him captain at the age of eighteen. Alongside him the tall, languid, curly-haired Billy Stark was good for more than ten goals a season from midfield. Frank McGarvey was a penalty-box livewire and prodigious goalscorer. The team crackled with other young talents, most notably midfielder Lex Richardson and centre-half Bobby Reid. But in signing left-back Iain Munro from Rangers and centre-half Jackie Copland from Dundee United, Ferguson showed he also understood the value of tempering youth with experience. And it did not matter how old anyone was: he dominated them all, even issuing warnings not to dare coming back into the dressing room if they had not won. The players feared him but responded. Fitzpatrick remembers being wrong-footed when Ferguson tore through the team after a comprehensive victory. ‘I was silly enough to say, “What the fuck are you looking for? We won 5–0! Are you not happy?” He came over and gave me a Fergie special. He told me in no uncertain terms that he was the manager and it was his standards that counted.’ Another time, Ferguson outlined his vision to Fitzpatrick: ‘“We’re going to build a club that’s going to overtake Celtic and Rangers.” That was his ambition.’