Sir Alex’s biggest mistakes

Letting the Glazers 'no value in the market' stance happen in his last few years in charge

He managed to get RvP and give it one last shot but the squad he was left with in 2012/2013 was pretty mediocre he dragged that squad to a title. We ended up blowing a billion on shite, id rather he had that money to build a young up and coming squad in his last couple of years.
 
In all honesty I do wonder what he thinks of his final years when he delivered five titles in seven seasons whilst only being bested on points only once in the league in that period is scoffed at by fans who gleefully throw his ‘no value in the market’ thing up in his face far, far more than they indicate they give any kind of a shit about what he achieved from 2007-2013

Honestly think it isn’t an exaggeration to say the most successful domestic period in our history means little to fans simply because City outspent us.
 
stw2022 said:
In terms of mistakes, selling Beckham when he did is an underrated one. The narrative now is we still Beckham and got Ronaldo but that overlooks the fact it took Ronaldo a long time to get anywhere close to the player he would become and the whole journey went via Ole’s stint or wide. He was decent but nowhere near the level of assists and or dead-ball contributions.
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It is obviously very difficult to criticise Sir Alex Ferguson, but the Beckham thing was, with hindsight, a mistake and it points to a general and bigger issue: SAF didn't like the way David Beckham (and his wife too) were becoming so BIG, bigger than the club and bigger than himself. Sir Alex always wanted to be the top dog so to speak. Sir Alex's influence went way beyond that of a normal club manager, he combined the roles of Chief executive/Coach/Director of Football and probably even chose which pies to sell at half-time too!

This was OK whilst Sir Alex was in post, but it has had repercussions following his retirement. In the Moyes and Van Gaal period both were having to work in the vacuum his retirement created and furthermore because the club technically kept him on the staff (in an ambassador role) he felt he had a right to still get involved in key decisions which were not always for the best e.g. the return of Christiano Ronaldo.

So to summerise, I would say two big mistakes: i) not stepping away fully once he decided to retire and ii) becoming so influential in the successful period that he in effect became bigger than the club, which ironically is something he never let any player become, as was beginning to happen with brand Beckham in the early noughties.
 
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Ronaldo money should have been spent, SAF knew a year in advance that he was going to be sold having made a gent's agreement for him to stay one more season the summer before. One or two marquee signings would have given the team the boost it needed, which the RVP signing demonstrated later on.

Not signing a CM for years - especially when Fletcher had his illness, Scholes' legs has gone, Hargreaves was a crock and Anderson had given up any pretence of professionalism. Phil Jones starting in midfield was a particular low point. A top CM would have made a big difference. Tbh Hargreaves was probably one of his worst signings, even when fit he wasn't good enough to start in centre midfield.

Wasn't all that fussed about Tevez as many others are though. We should have brought in a forward to replace him though, someone with pace and strong in the air to compliment Rooney and Berba. Frequently moving Rooney between 9 and 10 didn't help either. Would have loved to see peak Rooney playing behind a CF like Benzema or someone of that ilk.

Not using Nani enough. At points Nani had incredible form, was coming into his peak years, and he'd find himself on the bench for two of Young, Park and Valencia - individually all good and useful players, but Nani had the extra flair and skill that meant he should have been the main man. The signing of Young in particular was underwhelming, he was worse than what we already had, and at the time were in more need of a CM if budget was really an issue.
 
Stack said:
Choosing Moyes as his replacement was his single biggest mistake.
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I agree with this, but that was also due to the fact the club basically didn't have a structure, it was SAF +Gill making all the decisions.
 
Plenty of individual errors, which you’d expect over the course of any career that long. However the most significant structural errors which seriously impacted on our potential for even greater success:

1. Failure to seriously build on the success of the 99 and 08 CL-winning sides.

2. Complete failure to implement a serious succession plan from around 2011 onward.
 
Falling out with McManus and Magnier, as that opened the door for the Glazers to do their hostile takeover. All over a bit of horse spunk. When you're already a multi-millionaire, does it really fecking matter?
 
KetilOwren88 said:
Choosing Moyes as his replacement and saying that Ronaldo should always play on camera springs to mind. The latter wasn’t his biggest mistake, but it made a difficult situation even worse for Solskjaer. Penny pinching over Hazard was a big mistake, and he played too long with the likes of Alan Smith in midfield before he went on to buy Carrick. I also agree to already written posts.
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Agree with all of this. The Hazard one I still can't fathom. Teams, squad and tactics for 09 and 2011 also littered with mistakes. Not asking for Robben and Sneijder as part of the Ronaldo sale also a mistake.

The Moyes one I am always torn on, I blame Gill and the Board for that as much as Fergie, he shouldn't have been allowed to make that decision in first place.

Lastly bringing Ronaldo back last season, I believe this was mostly down to Fergie, no player is bigger than the club? Well Ronaldo is, he has 400m Instagram followers being one example. Fergie broke his own golden rule there.
 
He did make many mistakes but the biggest was appeasing Glazers. We should have dominated world football after 2008 but we just gave it away. I still can't believe we replaced Ronaldo and Tevez with Valencia, Owen and Oberton. That was the start of decline.
 
"No value in the market." We needed new players, letting go the ones who were no longer at their peak, and instead we kept a largely spent team.

Agree with everyone mentioning appeasing the Glazers.

I personally didn't like seeing Michael Owen in our shirt, even though that goal for the 3-4 win over Mark Hughes' City was a thing of joy. Getting Owen at that point made me think the boss had lost it. Playing Owen in the CL over Berbatov was a big mistake.

Selling Stam and Beckham over petty things was a mistake. Exiling Keane like he did was a mistake. Backing Moyes was a mistake.

I guess after a quarter century in charge a person is bound to rack up a few beauties, and Fergie was no different.
 
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Castia said:
Letting the Glazers 'no value in the market' stance happen in his last few years in charge

He managed to get RvP and give it one last shot but the squad he was left with in 2012/2013 was pretty mediocre he dragged that squad to a title. We ended up blowing a billion on shite, id rather he had that money to build a young up and coming squad in his last couple of years.
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Agree.
Many say "Moyes inherited a title winning side", but i disagree. That wasn't a title winning side, it was a title winning manager. Well, obviously the side won it, but you understand what i mean…
Not defending Moyes, i never agreed with signing him, but he had no chance with that squad, no other manager in the history would win with that squad.
 
RpluB567 said:
Starting Chicharito in the Champions League final 2011. We would have still lost the game but we wouldnt have been outclassed.
He would have made a better subsitute during that game
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Every time we won the ball back in that game, he was offside. Some of the Spanish media were calling him "Offsidito" by the end of the game. Barca were too good in that game, but we never got any foothold in the game.
 
Grylte said:
Agree.
Many say "Moyes inherited a title winning side", but i disagree. That wasn't a title winning side, it was a title winning manager. Well, obviously the side won it, but you understand what i mean…
Not defending Moyes, i never agreed with signing him, but he had no chance with that squad, no other manager in the history would win with that squad.
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I don't think anyone expected him to win the title, and the squad wasn't that bad, he let the new manager rebuild as he saw fit. No one expected that joke of a summer where we ended up with fellaini.
 
Selling Stam
That period where we signed duds like djemba twins, bellion, obertan.
And finally, Moyes....
 
Is the Biggest mistake being agree to sell the club to American vampire？
 
Recommending Moyes and the "stand by your manager" quote. It led to blind faith in failing managers for far too long.

Not starting Pogba more in 2011/12. Sure Pogba proved not to be worth it in the end but it would have saved us £89m in the long run.

Neglecting the midfield in his final years. This became a long running frustration that it became a joke. I really wish Fergie could explain what was going on in his mind those final years.

Not being as pragmatic in CL ties earlier in his career as he became later on. From 2007 he became a master in his tactical approach in those games. If he did the same earlier, we have at least one more CL.

Not signing Hazard because of agent fees.

Announcing his retirement so late into the season and so abruptly. Nobody likes to mention it but it fecked us. We had no lead time to do any proper planning so resulted to his consultation only.
 
SAF had promised the Maltese a few years before that he would one day bring the entire team back to Malta, and he saw this occasion as ideal to keep his promise. Ok Birkirkara committed themselves to pay for all the expenses but from what I know Manchester United had earned nothing out of that game.

SAF knowing how much the Maltese love Manchester United brought all the players to Malta even those who were injured but could afford to miss the therapy. In fact if I remember well only Brown and Bosnich missed the trip to Malta. As usual, I was one of those who were given the task of taking care of the players, an easier job than I first thought thanks to Gary Neville’s help (man that is what I call a leader)

My limited experience with Manchester United players had thought me three things. A) They are professionals in and off the pitch. B) They are the most down to Earth people in the world. C) They know how to enjoy themselves, and it was the C which had put us into unneccassary trouble

The evening before the game we decided (with SAF consent) to go and enjoy the Maltese nightlife. The Nevilles and Beckham were the ‘veterans’ of this Islands and knew the right places to go without the need to consult the us. Therefore at 10 pm wearing baseball caps we (2 Maltese ‘guides’, the Nevilles, Beckham and May) were all off to Paceville, a place 10 minutes away (with a taxi) from our hotel.

At about 11am David May left the group, and it took us 2 hours to find him. We found him into another discoteque, flirting with the local girls and drunk. Gaz immediately opted to go back to the hotel and that caused an argument inside the group expecailly with Beckham who was really enjoying himself and didn’t want to end everything just because Maysie got drunk. In that argument Maysie managed to return to the dance floor, and until we could notice that, we suddenly heard a scream, and a beautiful girl turning around and slap Maysie on his face.

We ran towards Maysie and I remember Gaz asking him what was going on. Maysie told us with a smile on his face that he had touched the girls butt and that she hit him back. Yet Maysie smile was soon going to change into fear when from the right side an angry 6ft bodybuilder (+ 4 friends of his) raced angrily towards him, to break his face.

Me and Beckham moved towards the guy to calm the girls boyfriend down but it was as if trying to calm a raging bull. He started to shout at us as Gaz and co tried to move out of the scenes. Seeing that, the man got more nervous and hit Beckhams cap which felt down, exposing his face to the entire public

Luckily for us this man happened to be a Manchester United supporter and meeting Beckham face to face was enough to melt away man’s anger. He ‘forgiven’ Maysie and helped us get out from the people (who turned into signature predators) as long all of them gave him a signature something that seeing the situations Becks and co were more happy to give to him

We returned to the hotel as soon as we got out of the discoteque. Silence ruled as Gaz called the Gaffer to tell him the entire story (for fear that he would know it from someone else). At the hotel we fount SAF waiting in the reception. He was furious but kept himself calm in front of us, and only said that he wanted to talk with the players ASAP.

The day after May packed everything and left Malta. Official reports said that May got injured but we all knew the story.
 
For me it's always been that we should have demanded Robben and Sneijder as part of the Ronaldo deal. We were objectively the 2nd best team in the World at that stage so I can't imagine they wouldn't have wanted to come here, both were also out of favour at Madrid. Let's say 40m plus those 2 would have been a far superior deal to what we got (and lets be honest in hindsight Madrid fleeced us in the Ronaldo deal and 150m was closer to his worth). Hard to know if this is a Fergie mistake though as maybe there were constraints at the time which made this type of deal impossible, but if it had worked out that way then we would have had a hell of a team going into that season.
 
Retiring the same year as David Gill was by far his biggest and most damaging mistake
 
DeGea’sFeet said:
VDS chose Juventus over United because our board were very stingy with wage structure and transfer fees. Same with BatiGoal he wanted to come but our board never wanted to finance it. What a striker he was, if I remember he went to Roma in 2000 and they won Serie A.

But credit to our board during the 90s and early 00s they invested a lot of the clubs revenue on expanding the stadium and also building Carrington
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Pat_Mustard said:
Fergie wanted him but Martin Edwards wouldn't get with the program and pay him what he wanted. I'm pretty sure we paid very poorly compared to the big continental clubs right up until Keane signed that new contract in 2000.



It must have been well before the Treble-winning season that we wanted him as Fergie was talking about him as a potential partner for Cantona, which is just footballing porn really.



https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11667/2213771/fergie-barca-wont-let-rivaldo-go

Same article (it must be from 2001 when we signed Ruud and Veron), Fergie says that we tried to sign Rivaldo a few times but Barca refused to sell.
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Thanks mates. I take it back about VdS in that case. Sounds like he was let down by the board. I do recall the wage structure now and such a fuss being made nationally when Keane got 50k per week.

I do think bringing in VdS and keeping Stam would have alone banked us another EC or two.

That Batistuta piece is interesting as I do recall us being linked heavily. Would have loved to see how he would have done in the PL as he was built for it. When you look at how Shearer did you know he’d of smashed it. I guess Fergie trying for Shearer shows he wanted that kind of striker to play ahead of Eric and how he thought it would function.

Strange he never ended up getting that type of player in the end.

It seems like I’m both eras of the club (pre Glazer and current) we’ve lacked that bite to spend money and build whilst at the very top.

Shame we didn’t learn from that period after 99 and do more after Moscow.
 
TheReligion said:
I think there were two key decisions he got wrong which has he got right would have resulted in at least one, if not two, more European Cups from 99-04.

1) Not replacing Schmeichel with Van der Sar.

2) Selling Jaap Stam.

That 99 team should have won at minimum another EC and those two decisions above cost us dearly and set us back a great deal.

It’s fine margins I know, and you can look at these things throughout his career and not just a short period as I have there but I’ve picked them as I believe they had the greatest impact to the club.

Any other thoughts?
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We barely won one and you think we should have at least won another?
 
I get that not much is happening right now.
But what I don't get is the fascination for always looking backwards.
And as a result I don't care whether Sir Alex made mistakes.
The most important fact is that he was responsible for transforming Manchester United into the very best and most successful football team in recent history.

But Sir Alex is not the future.
Hopefully ETH will be.
 
Buster15 said:
I get that not much is happening right now.
But what I don't get is the fascination for always looking backwards.
And as a result I don't care whether Sir Alex made mistakes.
The most important fact is that he was responsible for transforming Manchester United into the very best and most successful football team in recent history.

But Sir Alex is not the future.
Hopefully ETH will be.
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I think it’s an interesting thread and nice to see the variety of views and opinions. I’ve also learnt a few bits.

We can always stick to the moaning about the current side though or discussing swapping Ronaldo for Messi if that’s more fun..
 
TheReligion said:
I think there were two key decisions he got wrong which has he got right would have resulted in at least one, if not two, more European Cups from 99-04.

1) Not replacing Schmeichel with Van der Sar.

2) Selling Jaap Stam.

That 99 team should have won at minimum another EC and those two decisions above cost us dearly and set us back a great deal.

It’s fine margins I know, and you can look at these things throughout his career and not just a short period as I have there but I’ve picked them as I believe they had the greatest impact to the club.

Any other thoughts?
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It was in his book that we wanted Edwin but we were too far down the line with negotiating for Bosnich and Martin Edwards wouldn't go back on his word.
 
Letting Tevez go to City was the only one that really annoyed me. Selling Stam at a time when we looked like we could dominate Europe was poor too.
 
Trequarista10 said:
Ronaldo money should have been spent,
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I don't think spending the Ronaldo money was ever a possibility at the time. We were paying insane amounts of interest on the unsecurred part of the debt at the time, something like 15% on 200 million if I remember correctly.
 
Fergie being a geeedy bastard and wanting the stud fees from Rock of Gibralta after been given the winnings of his races and consequently falling out with the 'Coolmore mafia'. This lead to them selling their 29% of the club to the parasites. That makes all his other mistakes minor ones imo.
 
Berbatov over Tevez ... Consistently

This second one is unverified but blaming a very young Anderson for the loss to Barca and proceeding to relegate him to the bench mostly, would be terribly unfair if true
Obviously the boy didn't help himself either.
 
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A lot of them are down to club penny pinching, or just out of his control. We wanted so many players we couldn’t get either due to financial restrictions or just red tape. We had R9 wrapped up in ‘94 but he couldn’t get a work permit. Imagine him next to Cantona - we’d never drop another point again!
 
This thread sounds a bit like my wife, leave a list of 100 things to be done, I'd do 98 and then she'd only complain about the two that didn't get done.

He got feck all wrong and what he did is totally over shadowed by what he got right. So what if he missed a transfer here or there or let a player go too soon. He was the greatest football manager the world has ever seen, the like of which will never be seen again.
 
I think people are demonstrating a complete lack of understanding in some of their suggestions here. Fergie built his teams largely on the collective working together and when people stepped out of line in his eyes they were gone. If they put themselves ahead of the team they were gone and if they were perceived to be getting bigger than the manager they were gone. If you look back on the last decade since he left we have seen how signing individuals rather than building a team doesnt work for us. He was right about Pogba that why he got rid. £90m and 6 years later we know it now too. Berbatov didn't have the work ethic, listen to Rio talking about him, thats why he faded out of the picture. People talking about not signing Hazard need only look at the character traits Hazard has shown since to see why perhaps he wasn't a Fergie player.

We had teams with players many of us didn't think were "good enough" on the pitch but its become clear they were the hardest workers and had the right character and that takes you further sometimes.

I agree that Fergie suggesting Moyes was a mistake but I would argue its not up to him to plan his own succession and the real mistake was having a situation where he was given that level of control in the first place. I think he picked Moyes in the hope that he would still be consulted whereas the likes of Mourinho was secure enough in his own status to go his own way.

The one I disagree most with here is the sale of Jaap Stam, I remember him coming back from his injury and looking like an absolute shadow of the player he was, his sale at that point looked great business to me because I thought he was finished. I dont think anyone watching him at that point could have foreseen the comeback he made in Italy to the level he got to.

I think his biggest fault is also his biggest strength. We did need bigger players at various times to kick on in Europe and I think after being burned with Veron (and to an extent Stam and Van Nistelrooy) he wasn't willing to go back for these types of big names from abroad. The other side of that coin however is that he continued to build teams that worked together with little friction and still won titles so its hard to be too critical.
 
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