Alex Ferguson’s legacy continues to grow everyday as, over 5 years after his retirement, Man Utd fail to live up to the standards set during the ‘Fergie era’. Ferguson stands almost unquestioned as the greatest manager of the Premier League era with his consistent success placing above rivals like Arsene Wenger.
Fergie Rises is an in-depth look at the job which made Ferguson’s reputation and made him the obvious choice as Man Utd manager. After a relative successful, if at times frustrating playing career, Ferguson took over East Stirlingshire for a year before a 4 year spell at St. Mirren. Losing his job there, largely due to personal differences rather than the team’s performance, worked out exceptionally well as he was free when Aberdeen needed to replace the Celtic-bound Billy McNeill.
The scale of Ferguson’s achievement at Aberdeen is probably overlooked by many fans. He won three Scottish League titles, four Scottish Cups, a League Cup and most remarkably the European Cup Winners Cup and the European Super Cup. Since he left 34 years ago they have never again won the league – although this partly relates to the rising financial dominance of the Old Firm as Celtic and Rangers benefited disproportionately from the growing commercialisation of the game.
While Ferguson inherited a very strong team, his initial genius was to recognise that fact and limit his changes in the early days. While he struggled to win over some players in his first season, he had the support of key dressing room figures and was able to mould the team in his own image through introducing young players like Alex McCleish. Ferguson also seems to have been able to learn from mistakes – he came close to losing the dressing room on occasion but always managed to bring the team back together.
All of the characteristics that the world would see in Ferguson as Man Utd manager are evident from his time at Aberdeen – man management skills, use of youth team talent, selective use of praise, creating a siege mentality, displays of extreme anger, an eye for talent players, and above all, a relentless need to win.
Fergie Rises is brilliantly written and a great read. Grant has read widely and picked up various of discrepancies among how certain events are remembered. He also appears to have conducted countless interviews with seemingly every major character from the book who are open and frank in their memories of the period. From the detailed quotes from the players it really struck me that, looking back, they all see their years under Ferguson at Aberdeen as a key period in their lives.
Overall, I highly recommend Fergie Rises for any football fan. It works as a standalone brilliant story of the rise of a provincial football team to national and international glory. It’s also a brilliant insight into the formation of one of modern football’s greatest managers. Grant gives a real sense of who Ferguson was at this time in his life and the influences that shaped him before he embarked on the job that would come to define him.
P.S. Fergie has written a fair few books himself, including one covering this period called A Light in the North – I’m hoping to track down a copy and add some further thoughts to this review. I have read his two autobiographies – one from 1999 and another from 2013. I loved the 1999 book but found his much-hyped later book almost unreadably bad.
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