Alex Ferguson's Appointment to Manchester United: The Times Report

By 1986 it had been 19 years since Manchester United had been England’s football champions. In that time, the club had seen a succession of managers come and go in attempt to steer the club back to the glory years it had enjoyed under Sir Matt Busby. Yet, despite the club’s wealth and support, they had all been unable to reverse the years of relative failure that at one point in the mid-1970s had even seen the side relegated from the top division. By the mid-1980s Ron Atkinson was manager. After spending millions in the transfer market, however, his return of two FA Cups in five years was deemed to be not good enough, and after a poor start to the 1986-1987 season he was dismissed by the Old Trafford hierarchy. Instead the club turned to Alex Ferguson, who in the 1980s had been able to break the dominance in Scotland of the two Glasgow clubs—Celtic and Rangers—by making modest Aberdeen a major and successful force in the game there. This report of Ferguson’s succession appeared in The Times on November 7, 1986. Afforded time and money, Ferguson was eventually to transform the club. Yet his first few years returned no trophies, and at one point in 1990 it looked as though he too would lose his job. However, an FA Cup success that year, followed by victory in the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991, turned the fortunes of both club and manager, and a period of success unprecedented in Manchester United’s history was to follow, crowned in 1999 by a treble of Premiership, FA Cup, and European Cup victories.