The Godfather technique

Alex Ferguson with Hugh McIlvanney

Hodder & Stoughton, #18.99

There are newspaper serialisations which are launched with a fanfare and played out to a bombastic soundtrack. The released extracts of Sir Alex Ferguson's autobiography are reminiscent of the final scenes of The Godfather as Bach soars and the Corleone opponents fall.

This cut-shot technique reduces Ferguson to damning Willie Allison as a demonic Rangers PRO, Paul Ince as a posturing and malign influence on his Manchester United team, and the caporegime Brian Kidd as squealer who had to be silenced. The Godfather technique also includes a box containing #40,000 which was handed to Ferguson by Andrei Kanchelskis's agent, allegedly. It is infinitely preferable to a horse's head at the bottom of the bed.

But the edited highlights of the book simply conspire to give a misleading impression, indeed they obscure a deeper truth which lies at the heart of the Ferguson story.

In the age of football plc, Alex Ferguson has tenaciously held on to certain values. In his relationships, familial or professional, he demands loyalty. On a personal level, he craves, indeed insists on, control. ''Only through success can a manager gain the control that is indispensable to him,'' he writes.

Ferguson has pursued that success with a single-mindedness that was bolstered with a confidence imbued in him as a youngster in Govan. ''A precious reassurance,'' he writes, ''that came from knowing that our parents put our own interests ahead of theirs.'' Invariably when Ferguson clashes with someone it is because they have breached loyalty or attempted to make an incursion into his stoutly defended areas of control.

Paul Ince, a hero of Manchester United fans, was discarded after he took to calling himself The Guv'nor. ''If players think they are above the manager's control there is only one word to say to them - goodbye.'' Case closed.

There is also a palpable feeling that Brian Kidd, Ferguson's able deputy, was treading dangerous waters when he exposed doubts to the chairman about the signing of Dwight Yorke. The invisible cord of loyalty had been broken. Kidd is now at Blackburn Rovers.

The drinking trio of Paul McGrath, Bryan Robson, and Norman Whiteside that Ferguson inherited at Manchester United was disbanded. Robson was rehabilitated, the other two were dispatched, and Ferguson immediately signalled who was in control.

However, if harsh words are said of those who have crossed him, they are invariably accompanied by perceptive and generous comments about the person's strength.

There is one exception. The Rangers PRO, Willie Allison, who is accused of ''poisonous hostility'' and dismissed as ''dangerous and despicable''. Allison's crime was to undermine Ferguson's career as a Rangers player. Ferguson's crime was to have not only a Catholic mother but a Catholic wife.

Ferguson, a scion of a line of mixed marriages, has a healthy contempt for sectarianism. But it is important to note that Ferguson was questioned about where he was married when he arrived to sign at Ibrox. The register office was a suitable reply, although the question still rankles with Ferguson.

Indeed as recently as the seventies, Ferguson signed the Roman Catholic Frank McGarvey after a Rangers official tipped him off that the centre forward was a fine player but could not go to Ibrox because he did not ''suit us''.

These revelations and the condemnations are a motif of the frankness and honesty in the book. As Hugh McIlvanney writes in the introduction: ''Alex had made it clear to me that he felt an obligation to be honest and comprehensive, to avoid the hypocrisy and bland fudge that are often found in an account of a career delivered by somebody who still worked in it.''

It is also clear that Ferguson's insistence on loyalty and control meant he could not take the managership of Rangers when it was offered to him. His loyalty to the then incumbent John Greig and his insistence that religious background was an irrelevance made it impossible for him to accept the post.

He does admit to once singing sectarian songs. But that was when he was invited to do so when surrounded by a bar-room full of Orangemen when Ferguson was manger of a Bridgeton pub. Those with a knowledge of the area and the clientele would testify that the Pope himself would have acceded to such a request.

The confrontation, then, with Allison was an isolated case. That was personal, the other rows were purely business. And Ferguson takes his business seriously. Imbued with a work ethic that would shame Calvin, he is the last of the once seamless line of great Scottish managers. Their ethics were bred in the working-class communities that reared them.

They - Stein, Shankly, Busby, and Ferguson - were socialists. Their belief was that the team was all. Talent was praised and encouraged, but hard work was a prerequisite. Ferguson may be New Labour but he is unashamedly Old Football. His hero was Jock Stein. Ferguson devotes a chapter to the former Celtic manager and remains awestruck at his character and charisma.

Ferguson however is now earning his living in a different ball game from Stein. Ferguson played in an era of the soccer slave. He now manages in a time when the player is king. He straddles that chasm with obvious discomfort.

One story has him driving to Lee Sharpe's home where he and another United star, Ryan Giggs, are partying with apprentices in violation of Ferguson's rules. ''I went berserk. I ordered them out of the house and gave the apprentices a cuff on the head.'' This has echoes of Stein and Jimmy Johnstone but it is hard to imagine Arsene Wenger doing the same to an errant Nicholas Anelka.

There is an impression too that Ferguson retains a innate disaffection with the corporate image of football. When his talisman, Eric Cantona, decided to retire both revealed a tension with Manchester United plc. Indeed, money is a cause of concern for Ferguson. He earned more at Aberdeen than was on offer when he joined United.

The issue of his contract may be dormant, but Ferguson is merely mollified, not satisfied.

English readers may be surprised about how little of the book is devoted to United, but Fergie is an egalitarian and there is ample space for his upbringing, both in life and football management.

The book is pervaded by a sense of community that started in Govan tenements and stretched to the portals of Old Trafford. It flourished most famously at Pittodrie where Dick Donald and Chris Anderson gave their almost paternal support in what I believe were the years of Ferguson's most astonishing achievements. But this spirit of community exists for him outside football. Ferguson is now a knight who still carouses with mates he met at nursery school 50 years ago. He can still name and speak fondly of his first canteen lady.

He has gathered the baubles of professional success. But when he writes that the game he loves is not about tactics or formations but ''flesh and blood and feeling'' there is an inescapable sense that he is talking about life itself.

Managing My Life is provocative, stimulating, emotional, and honest. The demons of insecurity have never driven Ferguson to seek approval in his career, but in this respect - if in no other - his autobiography now fails him. It would be a perverse reader who did not warm deeply to the man to be found here.