Canāt stand the fella but he put them on top and won loads of titles, building and rebuilding the side a few times over. He bowed out leaving them as champions.
Having a go at his football record seems churlish.
If the team was at the end of a cycle when he left, the financial picture was such that they could build another one, as their income streams were (still are) ridiculous.
The issue was they didnāt get the right people in place and then they compounded it by going after names, both on and off the pitch, and nothing gelled together. Bad decision followed bad decision, and they seem further away than ever.
Good!
As for the Ā£2M a year ambassador money, that is ridiculous and undeserved, and is rightly being chopped. Still, if I were in his shoes and someone wanted to give me 2M for a ceremonial role, I would take the dough.
The dressing room stuff is dead wrong, if he ever did that. As a football man he should have known it was not his domain any more, and stayed well clear.
It is a part of his legacy that he will have to deal with. At the executive level people are judged not just by the success they have in their time, but by the public park rule - leave it better than you found it.
Fergie found himself at a cross roads with bad new owners and with attempts to refresh the side post-Ronaldo not working well so was increasingly relying on players with no long term (many not even a near term) future at the club. Faced with a situation of having been usurped by City he chose the path of trying to win one last title, a decision that made the clean up job for the next guy that much harder, not just because he had dug a bigger hole, but because the win masked the problems with the squad Fergie had allowed to develop.
It is part of his legacy and unless we want to just only talk about the good bits, it is part of his self-centeredness, about winning awards for himself not for Utd, that needs to be part of it.
Iām struggling to engage because it will sound like Iām defending him. Still, Iāll do it briefly.
Leave it better than you found it? He added 13 Premier League titles, 2 Champions League titles, and other domestic cups too.
The money in football grew exponentially with the advent of the Premier League, but Man Utd exploited it better than others, and Ferguson left behind a financial juggernaut too.
He left them as champions, albeit with the team at the end of a cycle.
Had the new man been able to spend wisely, set up a good back room team, and utilize all the advantages Ferguson left behind - name, pull, money, culture of success - they would not have had to slip back so much.
I am glad that they did fall away, and I am glad that it has been a decade and counting for them. Hopefully they will have a lot more football heartache to come!
Still, the difference in the level of the whole club before Ferguson came and after he left is night and day.
Now, Iāll say no more about it. Had it been a perfect handover it would have been all the above, plus a young hungry team, full of talent, ready to rise up under the new manager and do it all again. But he handed over a team at the end of its cycle and all the bad decisions they have made since then have given me much joy
Those were wins that put honours on the trophy board, but that is not what anyone means who criticizes him for the state of the club at the time he walked away.
One of the most widespread misconceptions of the Premier League era. Man Uās success was more down to Rupert Murdoch and his influence than to any other individual.
It is also to be rememberedā¦ Howard Webb, Mike Riley and many others were part of the Slur Alex squad - This is how they were allowed to cheat their way to many such wins