S hould any football club fit the Great Man theory of history it is Manchester United . In the past 100 years, only Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson have knocked the club into shape. A pair of 20th-century Scotsmen, born 15 miles apart in Bellshill and Govan respectively, found the key. Otherwise, United has been a managerial dustbin, Michael Carrick the latest likely lobbed on the pile.
Busby and Ferguson built the club around themselves, possessing the charisma to convince others that theirs was the path to follow. Carrick, an insider, a club man, is falling victim to the same isolation as his predecessors in failure . Bruno Fernandes and Lisandro Martínez going off-piste in TV interviews to depth charge Carrick were actually following club tradition. With glamour comes decadence, the faded grandeur that has so often chased a United manager out the door.
Beyond Busby and Ferguson, each United manager who also served felt the lash of desperation of a falling giant. Each of their defenestrations has featured an infighting that would not have been out of place in ancient Rome. Favouritism, nepotism, self-interest, entitlement, complacency and sentimentality have been the betrayal of a legend, to use the title of Michael Crick’s and David Smith’s “ j’accuse ” book from 1989. Living with the legend and influence of those two managers leads the list of difficulties.
United fans know such history too well. “You lousy bastards, you let him down,” Brian Kidd told teammates when the bullet came for Wilf McGuinness, Busby’s immediate successor, in December 1970. Busby himself had done the deed. A December 1972 meeting at Selhurst Park with Tommy Docherty as Crystal Palace beat United 5-0 hastened the end for Frank O’Farrell.
Docherty’s turn came. His sacking in 1977 after an affair with the physio’s wife was announced by the club secretary, Les Olive, from behind the oak door of the chairman Louis Edwards’ Cheshire mansion. Dave Sexton was sacked in 1981 despite winning his last seven matches. Falling attendances at “Cold Trafford” did for “Whispering Dave”. Ron Atkinson turned his November 1986 sacking into a party in the office that also housed the club sunbed. Big Ron’s parting gift was the hangovers that greeted Ferguson’s first day in charge.
Ferguson’s predecessors had been intimidated by the fog of pipe smoke wafting down Old Trafford’s corridors. O’Farrell had needed to ask Busby if the former manager could vacate the manager’s office. “A fantasy world” is how O’Farrell described Busby’s coterie of gossipy former players who teed off with “the old man” at Davyhulme golf course. “There was no reality in the myth,” the Corkman dubbed “O’Failure” said in 1991.
Busby’s indulgence of George Best, careering towards oblivion, created problems O’Farrell found unsolvable. Docherty showed the political wiles to jettison Best in January 1974 but also shelling Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Paddy Crerand created enemies. Falling in love with Mary Brown, with whom Docherty remained for the rest of his life, was enough for a boardroom moral majority to rid themselves of their turbulent manager.
Ferguson’s successors must deal with his continued presence, the face in the crowd photographers and TV directors seek. His patronage of Malcolm Glazer’s 2005 takeover is a dubious legacy dragging down those who have followed him. Ferguson mostly keeps his own counsel, a well-remunerated club ambassador until Sir Jim Ratcliffe cancelled a £2m annual stipen d in 2024. There have been slips. “You should always start with your best players,” Ferguson told the mixed martial arts fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2021 when Ole Gunnar Solskjær had dropped Cristiano Ronaldo , loose talk escaping to social media.
Ferguson’s part in Ronaldo’s disastrous return to Old Trafford evidenced continuing back-channel influence, echoing Busby and Best. Carrick, during his press conference last Friday, mentioned his chats with his former boss. The omission of Fernandes for the Bournemouth game , left to sulk on the bench in club tracksuit, was classic Fergie politics.
A Ferguson facsimile is a fool’s errand. Carrick might have learned the lessons dished out to Solskjær, to whom he was assistant. After refusing to use Ferguson’s parking space and misty-eyed chat of “the boss”, nobody was buying the affable, gentle Norwegian cosplaying as a Glaswegian hard man.
Not that an injection of the alpha male has been much more use. Time has been kinder to the Louis van Gaal and José Mourinho regimes as subsequent failures pile up, but both failed to embrace the expectations of attacking football.
Not that other club traditions were avoided. The subterfuge that brought in Mourinho was as dastardly as any of the post-Busby knifings. “People know him as a larger-than-life character,” the executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward said on Van Gaal’s 2014 appointment. “My wife had to find out when she was in the lift with Woodward’s family,” Van Gaal said of finding, in the haze of celebrating the 2016 FA Cup final victory, that he was being replaced . His former Barcelona assistant had successfully lobbied Woodward. Attempts have been made by the Glazers’ operatives and, since December 2023, Ratcliffe’s Ineos, to corporatise and professionalise but United’s innate excess and anarchy keeps overtaking rationale.
Using the means of a Netflix special, Mourinho has retrofitted his part in the story, he and Ferguson revealing together the fact he turned United down in 2013 . The inference is that if Mourinho had arrived then all would have been roses. It is an unconvincing attempt at airbrushing both men’s reputations. Where does that leave David Moyes, the immediate successor painted as afterthought? In July 2013, Ferguson was celebrated as kingmaker, Moyes the rightful heir.
Moyes’s reputation is another enhanced by failures that followed, including Mourinho’s grumpy, fractious tenure. When emerging reluctantly from his Lowry Hotel bolthole, the Portuguese reduced himself to mocking club history with “football heritage” rants. Such a scorched-earth policy was echoed by Ruben Amorim, while Erik ten Hag’s retention by Ineos in summer 2024 was as confusing to Ten Hag as to everyone else.
An unmanageable club? Busby and Ferguson showed it can be done, though the chance of another empire recedes the longer the vanity, plotting and self-interest that personify United continues. And for that, Busby and Ferguson deserve a share of the blame.
