Seven Alex Ferguson moments that sum up his greatness

Despite languishing in the bottom half of the Premier League table, it hasn't always been this bad for Manchester United.

You don't need to look too far back to a time when they were winning league title after league title and establishing themselves as one of the best teams in Europe. (And one of the teams that other football fans loved to hate.)

One of the key architects of that success was Sir Alex Ferguson, who is now the subject of a BBC documentary called 'Sir Alex' that explores the life and career of one of the most memorable and successful managers in sporting history.

Here, Yahoo News UK looks back at some of the moments which made him great.

The 'Sliding Doors' moment

Thirteen Premier Leagues. Two Champions Leagues. Five FA Cups. Four League Cups. This is the trophy haul that backs up why Sir Alex is regarded by many as the best football manager of all time.

But these 24 trophies probably wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for Mark Robins, one of his lesser-known players.

Sir Alex was appointed United manager in 1986, but his first few years were difficult. If it hadn't been for a Robins goal to win an FA Cup tie against Nottingham Forest in 1990, it is widely believed Sir Alex - whose team was 15th in the league at the time - would have been sacked.

As it happened, United won the cup later that year and the rest is history... including a banner unfurled at one game in 1989 urging him to resign ("3 YEARS OF EXCUSES AND IT'S STILL CRAP… TA RA FERGIE").

Pete Molyneux, the fan who made the banner, reflected in 2011: "I've had the mickey taken out of me for years."

Master of the mind games

It was the finger jabs that did it.

Kevin Keegan’s “I will love it” interview probably wouldn’t have been as memorable if it wasn't for his extraordinary body language as he spoke to Sky Sports about Sir Alex.

It was those finger jabs - delivered as he yelled at the presenters and his eyes watered - that ensured it became an infamous moment and the most extraordinary example of what Sir Alex’s mind games could do to fellow managers.

Sir Alex’s United team, for context, were in a title race with Keegan’s Newcastle at the end of the 1995/96 season. After United scraped to a 1-0 victory against rivals Leeds, Sir Alex insinuated Leeds would make less effort when they played Newcastle 12 days later. Newcastle also beat Leeds 1-0 in that game. But Keegan had something on his mind afterwards...

“I’ve kept really quiet, but I’ll tell you something: he went down in my estimations when he said that… I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them [to the title]. Love it!”

Unfortunately for Keegan, Newcastle went on to squander an 11-point lead and the title was United and Ferguson's... again.

Sir Alex's mind games became more subtle over time but ensured he often got the upper hand over rivals such as Arsene Wenger and Rafael Benitez.

And such was his aura that even players on the pitch could get caught up. After being sent off in a 2012 game against United, Liverpool player Jonjo Shelvey bizarrely blamed Sir Alex for his red card.

The hairdryer treatment

Sir Alex could be a scary man in the United dressing room. His most famous tool was the "hairdryer": intense verbal volleys that underperforming players risked facing at half-time or full-time. Very few players, if any, managed to escape it.

The one time the hairdryer treatment became visible to the world was in 2003 when David Beckham was caught - accidentally - by a boot kicked by Sir Alex following a defeat by Arsenal. He later said: “It was a freakish incident. If I tried it 100 or a million times it couldn’t happen again." Beckham, who showed the world his battle scars after the incident, left the club that summer.

The hairdryer wasn't just reserved for first-team players, either. Speaking on the Ben Heath Podcast, Wes Brown, a seven-time league winner under Sir Alex, recalled how, as a 16-year-old, "he would come and watch the Youth Cup games. I played for two years. We got knocked out both times. He would absolutely give it to everyone.

"I used to love it... it made me understand to get into the first team, you need to do better."

Player fallouts

"I wasn't going to allow anyone to be stronger than I was," Sir Alex said in a 2012 Harvard Business Review interview.

His control over his players was part of what made him so successful. Any player who stood up to him could expect to be turfed out.

One example was Beckham. The boot incident came amid a tense power struggle between the pair. Sir Alex had long been annoyed at his player's pursuit of celebrity and there would only be one winner, with Beckham sold to Real Madrid.

Another famous fallout was with Roy Keane: his captain and seven-time league winner. While out injured in 2005, Keane appeared on United's in-house TV station and gave a damning assessment of some of his team-mates’ performances in a defeat to Middlesbrough. Keane claimed "none of the players had an issue" with him. Sir Alex did, though. He cancelled his captain's contract.

Ruthless, perhaps, but Keane and Beckham were arguably past their best when Sir Alex got rid of them and he was also willing to admit when he got player departures wrong. Speaking in 2013 about forcing out colossus defender Jaap Stam in 2001, he admitted: "I made a bad decision there."

Thorny relationship with the media

Daniel Taylor, who covered United for The Guardian, wrote in 2020 that Sir Alex's press conferences could be "tense, joyless affairs" for journalists, "crackling with friction".

"There were days when he was rude and appalling and so infuriatingly obstinate you wanted to drop a flowerpot on his head," Taylor said, though he added: "At least there wasn’t the deliberate blandness that so many managers prefer these days."

But the most famous example of his difficult relationship with the media was his seven-year boycott of the BBC.

This was sparked by a 2004 documentary, Fergie and Son, about Sir Alex's business relationship with his football agent son, Jason, and his involvement in transfers.

Unhappy about the portrayal of his son, Sir Alex imposed a "lifetime ban" on the BBC. For seven years, this meant it was his assistant managers who would speak on programmes such as Match of the Day. The feud ended in 2011 after a face-to-face meeting with then-BBC director general, Mark Thompson.

Fergie time

A defining characteristic of a Sir Alex United team was the ability to win a game from behind.

Down 3-0 at half-time, as United once were at Tottenham in 2001? Not a problem. United won 5-3.

Winning goals would regularly come in stoppage time: most famously Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer's strikes in the 1999 Champions League final to clinch the treble, or Steve Bruce's goal against Sheffield Wednesday in 1993 to set Sir Alex on the way to his first league title.

Indeed, it was United's propensity for last-gasp goals that drove the "Fergie Time" narrative. First labelled as such in a 1998 Guardian match report, it was the idea that, under pressure from Sir Alex, match officials would give United extra time to score.

A 2012 BBC article found there was no statistical proof to confirm this was the case.

The myth, though, was real. One of United's most famous "Fergie Time" victories was against Manchester City in 2009, when Michael Owen scored after five-and-a-half minutes of stoppage time. Only four minutes had been given.

But a furious City manager Mark Hughes, who played for United under Sir Alex, comically captured why the issue was so subjective as he complained afterwards: "I was in teams here who had that benefit [of extra time] and I never thought it was an issue because I actually thought we had a bad time by referees.

"Since I left I have probably changed my view."