Wazza and the Boss
HOW MANY TIMES have we seen the boss doubted? And how many times has he made all those critics look like fools? I’d have thought people would know better, but within a year of us reaching consecutive Champions League finals for the first time in the club’s history there was a sense of doom and gloom around Old Trafford.
The loss of Tevez and Ronaldo was, in the fans’ eyes, the end of an era. We were champions of England and still among the very best in Europe, but suddenly the terraces were plunged into pessimism. The fans and the media were convinced we were in a period of decline. Failing to win a trophy in 2009/10 was taken as proof of that.
The supporters were twitchy that we’d not lured a marquee signing to replace either of our departing strikers. Antonio Valencia was a very shrewd buy in the summer of 2009, as he has proved, but he wasn’t a name. We had a look at Karim Benzema but he went to Real Madrid for £35 million and the manager complained publicly about the lack of value in the market. The fans decided that he’d had his hands tied by the owners. So suddenly, despite all the success, the Green and Gold campaign started.
It’s very difficult for anyone within the club to comment on the Glazers. I grew up as a United fan and the last thing I did as a young kid was look to see who was in the directors’ box. My thoughts were with the team, the players, the fans, the atmosphere. I have never allowed that youthful enthusiasm and innocence to turn to cynicism.
In all my time supporting the club I’ve never known any owners who were popular. Even when the club was a plc there were unhappy fans. But inside the club we have not been affected by changes of ownership; you wouldn’t have a clue that anything is different under the Glazer family. David Gill and the manager have been allowed to run the football side without interference. And make no mistake, in the boss and David Gill, United have the best possible people.
When I look at the success of the last five or six years, the stability of the club, and the fan base, I would bet that 99 per cent of clubs wish they were in our place. You hear stories at some big clubs where owner interference and politics are rife, and I think United are in an excellent position.
This has been an historic period for the club, but there is no doubting that the fans saw the glass as half empty in 2009. Rio had started picking up a few injuries, and at the time Vidic hadn’t signed a new contract. We’d lost Cristiano, and any team would miss the best player in the world. Chelsea, under Carlo Ancelotti, were making a new assault on the title and we had dropped off the pace.
It wasn’t a vintage season for either club. We lost seven league games, they lost six. We put in some poor performances but still only lost the title to Chelsea by a single point. I admire Ancelotti, a good manager with a lot of class who never deserved the sack a year after the Double, but Chelsea weren’t particularly convincing.
They had a little helping hand to win that 2009/10 title. Some thought it would be a big test for Chelsea playing at Anfield with a couple of games to go and the title still up for grabs, but at United we knew that Liverpool would ease off if that meant depriving us of the championship – especially a nineteenth championship that would take us past their record. We’d heard rumours during the week that some Liverpool players had turned round to one of their young lads and said, ‘There’s not a fucking chance that we’re going to let United win this league.’ I’ve no idea whether that rumour was true or not, but you could see that the game was a nice end-of-season stroll for Liverpool. You could see half their players on their summer holidays.
We couldn’t complain, not publicly. It was up to us to make sure we weren’t in a vulnerable position. But it didn’t say much for Liverpool, or what they’d been reduced to under Rafa Benitez.
With no trophy to show, surely Manchester United was going through a wobbly patch? But it was yet another example – and I’d seen it on enough occasions – of everyone outside the club leaping to wild conclusions that the rot had set in at Old Trafford. We’d be back in another Champions League final a year later, but you’d never have guessed that from the public mood.
I ask again, how many times, going right back to the eighties, had the club and the manager been doubted? I couldn’t believe people had fallen into the old trap of questioning him. He was soon to prove why he is one of the great managers the game has seen.
In October 2010, Wayne stunned everyone by deciding he wanted out of United.
I say ‘stunned’, but it wasn’t a complete shock. There had been rumblings through pre-season that he was unsettled and it was clear his head was all over the place. England and Wayne had had a poor World Cup in South Africa and he was being attacked professionally and personally. He didn’t look happy in himself. Wazza is normally one of the most bubbly, noisy players in the dressing room. But after the World Cup he’d lost all that spark, that energy. We all noticed, though it was still a surprise when it leaked out that he was thinking about leaving.
If a player wants to go elsewhere, that’s his concern. I’ll never understand someone who wants to leave United, but that’s their issue. But with Wayne it wasn’t just the decision but the way it was handled that was so bad. He acknowledged that himself when everything calmed down.
With so much turmoil in his head and his form poor, what he needed was good advice. The last thing he needed was disruption and controversy. Going public was crazy. Like the fans, the players were discovering most of the club’s news through the papers, which was a massive mistake on Wayne’s part. It’s simply not the United way to agitate for a move through the media. In the end, the manager didn’t have any choice but to go public himself.
The boss’s performance at that press conference when he talked about Wazza was unbelievable. My jaw hit the floor when I switched on the TV. You could see the boss was hurting that a senior player was questioning the club, but you could also see the defiance. He wouldn’t stand back and let United be picked apart by any player, however talented. It was like watching one of the manager’s team talks played out in public. The rest of the world could see what a great, inspiring leader he is.
From the way the manager spoke, the situation seemed irretrievable. I think that is honestly the way the club felt at that point. And that was before Wayne escalated the situation the next day.
We were just walking into the dressing room an hour or so before our Champions League game against Bursaspor and, as usual, the televisions were on in the corner. That’s when we saw on the bottom of the screen ‘Breaking News’. Wayne had put out a statement saying that he wanted to leave because the club lacked ambition and the squad wasn’t good enough. It would have been a bad thing to say at any time but it was madness to be putting it out an hour before a big game. He knew there was a match on, and so did his representatives. He’s a good lad, Wayne, not a troublemaker, so we were dumbfounded.
I stood stunned in the dressing room. ‘What idiot has allowed him to put that out?’
I know he must have been stung by the manager’s press conference but Wayne just needed to keep his head down. He’s a proud lad, a fighter, but his advisers should have been taking a deep breath, not putting out statements to the media.
The manager came into the dressing room. He was pumped up. He’d had his team talk written for him.
It was a testing moment. Our form wasn’t good. We were behind in the league and our star player was kicking off. But that’s when the manager is at his best. Something is triggered inside him. If he’s challenged, he fights back with everything he’s got. And that boldness transmitted itself to the team.
It was all the motivation we needed to go out and win the game that night, and you could feel the fans rallying right behind the lads. The manager had taken the bull by the horns with his press conference. He’d shown once again that no player is bigger than the club, and never can be. The fans will have their idols but they know that’s the way it has to be.
The next morning, I saw Wayne at the training ground.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m staying.’
‘Fuck off! Really? Well, if you are, I think you’re going to have to apologise.’
I don’t think he needed telling. Already his people were involved in damage limitation as well as sorting out a new contract with David Gill.
Within twenty-four hours Wayne had called the players together at the training ground and said sorry to the lads. Then he’d say it to the supporters.
It was a massive moment for him, and for the club. As usual, the lads started taking the piss. Patrice Evra told Wazza he must have crapped himself when he saw the gang of United fans outside his house. ‘So you shit yourself, eh Wayne, when you saw the balaclavas?’
Genuinely I was happy that he’d made the best decision of his life. He’d made a mistake and misread the situation, but you had to wonder about the advice he was getting.
Now that he’s committed to staying at United, I believe Wayne can become the new Keane or Robson. He’s in a different position but he has the power, the ability and the talismanic qualities. He’s still got that temper in him and always will have. But he’s approaching his peak years now. We’ve seen with many top players that you can’t take anything for granted once you are over thirty. In Wayne’s case, with the way he throws himself into the game, the running he does, the physicality in his football, I can’t see him still doing it at thirty-five. He started so young, a regular for club and country at eighteen. The next few years should be his best, and I look forward to watching him from my seat in the stands.
He’s great around the changing room. He’s funny and good company. And he gives a hundred per cent every single match. You have a lot of time for players who are talented and also give their all like he does. United need special players like Wazza. The fans have embraced him again. They know what a player he is and how important he is to the future of the club. He’s always had it within him to be a United legend.
He was bound to feel guilty, and, in one way, that could only help the club. The best way for him to make amends was to play better and to help the team win trophies. The manager could count on a new, improved Rooney now the whole nonsense was behind him.
Only our manager could turn a crisis to the club’s advantage. You can imagine other teams being rocked for months. Look at how the sacking of Ray Wilkins unsettled Chelsea. It was still being talked about months later. But the manager has such authority that the Rooney situation was dealt with in a matter of days. Everyone else was going into overdrive but he kept his nerve yet again and played his hand brilliantly.
The manager has seen everything and he knows how to use that experience. He’s seen Eric Cantona threaten to quit at his peak and chased him around Paris. He’s seen Ronaldo want to leave and talked him into staying for another season.
For twenty-four hours I genuinely did think that the Wazza situation had gone too far, but the manager retrieved it, and a couple of months later we were top of the league, unbeaten. And Wayne was back to his best world-class form as we made a mockery of the talks of a crisis by charging towards another title and another Champions League final.
This was the manager at his very best, proving at sixty-nine why he’ll be an impossible man to replace. There’ll be other United managers, perhaps very successful ones. But to have stayed on top for as long as he has, inspiring young men to give their very best for United for twenty-five years, steering the club through crisis after crisis, proving the critics wrong time and time again to win trophies – well, the truth is we may never see his like again. When the statue is built for him outside Old Trafford, fans will stop in their droves to marvel at what he did.
I know what loyalty he inspires in people. I’d trust him with my life. Sometimes I wish his detractors could see him around the club, the way he looks after the staff. It’s thanks to him that we’ve had receptionists and lots of backroom staff who’ve worked at the club for twenty years. He makes everyone feel important.
He treats the club as a family he has to protect, and that’s why he defends it so ferociously.
Plenty on the outside have criticised him for being blindly loyal to his club, to his players. But look at it from his perspective. United has been central to his life. He’s been devoted to the club every hour of every day. And how do you, how does anyone react when their family is attacked? They defend it with their lives.
It’s why he reacts to media intrusion like it’s a personal insult. To come into his club and unsettle his players is like criticising his family. He might slaughter a player in private but like any good mother or father he will never, ever allow those private rows to be played out in public.
It will be a very sad day when he finally bows out. It may be a while yet judging from his enthusiasm, so who can guess who the candidates to replace him will be? The obvious names people come up with are José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. They’ve both enjoyed incredible success in very different ways. I do think style of football has to figure in the deliberations. United, deservedly, have a reputation for playing good, attacking football. The boss has kept the philosophy passed down by Sir Matt Busby that the team has a duty to entertain. The next manager of Manchester United will have to be true to that spirit. He’ll have to be bold and he’ll have to have balls. It’s the way United was under Busby: he told the football authorities that he was taking his team into the European Cup whether they liked it or not. Our boss has also been a pioneer.
I’ll be as interested to see how the club handles the transition, because perhaps the boss’s greatest achievement has been in proving that no one is irreplaceable. We cannot possibly allow the club to falter as it did after Sir Matt left. Hard as it is, the club will have to move on even without the boss, which is what he’d expect.
In words and deeds he has made it clear to us that United is a conveyor belt. You fall off at the end and someone else gets on at the start. That’s a culture encouraged by the manager, and rightly so. You’ve never cracked it. There’s never a time to put your feet up. Celebrate your successes, but be ready to report for work first thing the next day.