Ferguson basks in his 34th trophy for Manchester United

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Sir Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney play a game at the Manchester United training ground. Ferguson says: "He's the best at coming up to me and asking: 'What's the team?' I say: 'You're not playing.' He says: 'Come on, give me your team.' I say: 'No, I won't, I'm still thinking about it.'

"Then he says: 'I'll give you my team.' And he gives me his team. He's brilliant at it. He's never far wrong. He thinks about it, you see. He knows the game."

This is Ferguson in his element, larking about with a world-class footballer whose development he has overseen from the star's late teenage years. Rooney is the great individual delight in a season of immense challenges for the manager, who is hunting down a record fourth consecutive English league title, and a 19th in all for the club, in a season beset by mounting disquiet among supporters over the £700m-plus of debt loaded on to United by the Glazer family's borrowings.

Ferguson, who remains bullish despite yesterday's 3-1 defeat at Everton, has built a succession of illustrious United sides since his arrival in Manchester in November 1986, and now Rooney has become the Eric Cantona or Cristiano Ronaldo of the next era. There is a touch of Roy Keane in there, too, judging by Rooney's eruption at half-time in the thrilling 3-2 win over Milan in Italy on Wednesday night. "I was very frustrated in the first half with a lot of things," Rooney said. "Some people were not doing their jobs and I let my feelings be known."

"He keeps telling me he's centre-back. Then a right-back. Then he says: 'Oh, and I can play midfield,'" Ferguson says, in an exclusive interview granted to coincide with today's Observer relaunch. "He's a one-off in terms of the modern type of fragile player we're getting today, cocooned by their agents, mothers and fathers, psychologists, welfare officers. Rooney's a cut to the old days. His attitude is: 'Give me the ball, I'll tell you how good I am.' He's a throwback. I don't think he has any inhibitions about that. He knows what he is.

"What we're seeing now is a terror of a player. What he's got that he can't lose is an in-built hunger, in-built energy, in‑built desire. Some people are born with these things. We've seen many players like that, by the way, and they've all been great players. Some really ordinary players have made great careers because they've got this drive inside them."

Unceasing vigour explains not only Rooney's endless foraging on the field but the tightness of his manager's grip on power since the early 1990s, when the Premier League winning class of 1992-93 set him on a path to the 11 English titles that have brought the club level with Liverpool on 18 overall. Ferguson's retirement, always a hot topic, has gone back off the agenda at Old Trafford.

"Winning this 19th league title is very much in my soul," he says, as the scale of United's mission between now and May floods our conversation. The targets: an unprecedented fourth consecutive Premier League crown, a third Champions League final in a row – never before achieved by a British club – and the top-place finish that would deprive Liverpool of their great domestic bragging rights.

All this, while Ronaldo is lighting up a distant sky at Real Madrid, supporters are protesting against the Glazers in the old Newton Heath colours of green and gold, and those "noisy neighbours" at Manchester City are spending like a lottery winner on Coronation Street. Ferguson insists he welcomes provocations: "Don't ever think you're above a challenge. It's not right. Arrogance is not a quality, it's a hindrance to success."

The secret of his durability in the face of Liverpool, Arsène Wenger's Arsenal, Roman Abramovich's Chelsea and now oil-rich City is strategic wisdom, a talent for controlling change. There has been no greater setback since Cantona abruptly retired than Ronaldo's move for £80m to Real Madrid, which has at least allowed Rooney to shine in that void. Ferguson maintains that United fans should not confuse Ronaldo's sale with the £67m paid by the club in interest last year or the Glazers' frantic search for £500m in new bond loans to soften crushing interest fees, though the supporters themselves say the big issue is where most of the £80m went subsequently: to a transfer fund or to the banks.

"Ronaldo was sold simply because the boy wanted to leave. I did well to keep him another year. When we sat down, you could see it in his eyes. He said: 'Boss, I just want to play for Real Madrid, it's nothing against Manchester United. I'm going to go because it will be an experience for me.' The only reason he was sold was because the boy fervently wanted to leave. He played that extra season, did fantastically for us, and after the Cup final [the Champions League loss to Barcelona] came to me and said: 'Boss, I want to leave.' I said: 'Right, you've done another year, let me consider it.' The next day an offer came in for £80m."

Relations between the world's No1 footballer and the manager who enticed him from Sporting Lisbon at 18 years of age remain unusually cordial. Ferguson says: "I got a text from him last week saying: 'I miss you so much.' I'd texted him to say happy birthday. He was 24. And he said he missed me, and 'thanks for all the kind things you're saying about me'. You appreciate things like that.

"He had six years with me. We have to be grateful because he was a fantastic lad. Great lad. Popular in the dressing room, popular with the staff, and he made a great contribution to Manchester United. If he was going to leave, we made sure we got the best deal we could. We thought the structure of the club was good, with young players about the place, and players likely to improve. It's like everything else: when a great player comes along, and then a great player leaves, there has to be a loss to a degree that you don't realise until that loss is on your toes. And it was a loss, a major loss, but we have compensated in some ways. We've actually scored more goals this season than we did last year."

Behind the fierce exterior, the game face, the professional warrior mask, Ferguson is always looking for the funny line, the comedic anecdote. Away from the front line he assumes a wry detachment that is not apparent when he is, say, laying into Jonny Evans during a match (as he did in Milan) or excoriating referees.

He smiles, for example, all the way through this observation about Manchester City: "We've got a noisy neighbour. Although you don't like it, they never stop. You know when you've got a noisy neighbour and they keep the radio on all the time? What can you do? You can complain to the council, you can bang on their wall, you can go to their door, but they still keep their music on. So what do you do? You get used to it."

But to be manager of Manchester United requires the political acumen of a statesman who can balance the corporate agenda of the club against the needs of the team and the demands of a worldwide congregation. It is here, in the growing supporter anger about the debt problem, that Ferguson faces a new and daunting test of his capacity to hold the institution together. He narrows that job down, finally, to the need to keep his side winning and on target to make more history. He says: "I cannot let it interfere with my direct route to winning the title or the European Cup. That's the only thing that concerns me."

This is his critique of the anti-Glazer demonstrations: "I'm never against protest. I've been brought up in protest all my life. I was involved in the [Govan shipyards] apprentices' strike of 1961. I don't think there's anything wrong with people protesting if they think their position in life has been changed, if they're not getting the proper respect or valuation of their worth.

"It's everyone's right, there's no doubt about that. But my problem with it, being manager of Manchester United, is that I've got owners who have never caused me any bother. Any time I've asked for money they've given it to us.

"I can only speak as the manager, because so far it hasn't in any way affected me financially at all. It's wise always to concentrate on doing your job. I said this to the fans in my programme piece. I've been in the boardroom many times over the years and tried to support the fans' views about certain things in the club, and I've argued for them, without being too contentious. I've made my point. Time and time again I've done that with David Gill and Martin Edwards through the years.

"But when I walk through that door I'm back as manager of Manchester United. And my job is to make Manchester United the best. That doesn't change. So the stance at the moment with the fans is: I completely understand it. When they were waving these green and gold flags, and scarves, it caught your attention. But it still doesn't change the fact that I have to be manager of my club, and manager of my team, and I've got too many priorities."

We speak in London as Ferguson is en route to a dinner at Wembley staged by his beloved League Managers Association. He recalls Nani's sending-off in the first half of the recent 1-1 draw at Aston Villa and uses the incident to convey his determination not to submit to distractions. "At half-time at Villa Park I only spoke of winning the match. I didn't care whether we had 10 players or eight or nine. I only spoke of how we could win the game. So when the dust has settled, along with the carry-on about the Glazer family and the financial situation, I cannot get myself involved with it.

"They're difficult circumstances when I keep reading all these things about the debt. And the debt has concerned a lot of people. David Gill has had a lot of chats with the staff to settle them down, to assure them everything's fine. As far as I'm concerned, I bought [Chris] Smalling for big money [£10m for the Fulham centre-back]. So for me, life goes on. And as I say, the Glazers have been fine with me, I've never had any problem."

The field, not the financial sector, is where Ferguson defines himself, and as the conversation returns to Rooney it points to the old truism that teams reflect the character of their manager. Centre-forward, working-class hero, short fuse, strong sense of self, indefatigable, despises losing, never satisfied for long with any triumph.

This season, through talks and training‑ground adjustments, Ferguson says he has returned Rooney to the barnstorming central role of his youth. "I related it to height. When I was a kid I used to go hunting for pigeons, under bridges, in church steeples and so on. And heights never bothered me. As you get older, maybe on the 25th storey of a big hotel, you look out and you get dizzy. Age changes you.

"When Rooney first came to us he was the best I've ever seen at turning round a defender and running at him. There was a period – whether it was transition, or whether he was trying to mentally change what type of player he was – when he stopped doing that. So we spoke to him, took him in a couple of sessions after training, and said: get back to turning on the defender. It's as if he's walked in another door.

"His temperament's improved. He's not rushing about doing the silly things. He's maturing well in that way. It's great to see that. He's a fantastic boy. He'd give you anything. He'd give you his last penny. He's that type. He's generous in everything. I say to him – there's someone here who wants to meet you, and he says 'Aye, no problem.' He's so free with his time. So he has these wonderful qualities that you don't get a lot in people today. I have to say he's blessed with these things. And I don't think he will change. His wife [Coleen] seems exactly the same. She's clued in, wise, clever, she listens."

Reaching for a parallel for Rooney's restoration as a central striker, Ferguson remembers selling Steve Archibald when he was in charge of Aberdeen: "I sold Archibald to Tottenham and he was on the phone to me a lot, saying 'You ought to come down and see me.' I went down to see him play Everton, who were a right good team at the time, and Steve was playing in midfield. I said: 'What are you doing playing in midfield?' He said: 'Garth Crooks [his fellow Tottenham striker] and I have an understanding.' I said: 'Have you, aye, it's a good one. He's scoring the goals and you're messing around in the middle of the park.' I said: 'Steve, you're not being clever.' He said: 'Sometimes Garth drops.' I said: 'Steve, you're a centre-forward, you've two great feet, you're brilliant in the air, you have elasticity, you're brave. What do you want to play midfield for?' He went to Barcelona and he didn't play midfield for Barcelona."

The praise for Rooney drops short of unconditional, as it usually does when Ferguson is protecting a young player from the inflations of spectators and the media. "Where I hope he improves more is with his predatory instinct in the penalty box. He's done great this year. But he's still got to get to the levels of [Ole Gunnar] Solskjaer and Andy Cole and [Ruud] Van Nistelrooy. If he got to that level he'd be the best in the world.

"I think a lot about energy and how that should be channelled in the right way, and Wayne should be through the middle. Yes, sometimes he drops in there, it's a natural thing at times, I don't have a problem with that, but his great energies – desire, purpose, courage – all the great strikers, Denis Law, John Charles, had that courage to be in there, get the battering, take the hits, score the goals, be in the right place at the right time. I know there's more there, more to be developed, and I know he can do that."

With next Sunday's Carling Cup final against Aston Villa presenting the first trophy-winning opportunity of a potentially historic campaign, Ferguson says: "We feel the team's coming to the boil at the right time, they're starting to produce their best football." The victims, in the League Cup semi-final, of course, were City, who Ferguson now challenges to match the United spirit, the Old Trafford way.

"It has increased that competitive element between the fans and the media, no doubt about it. The decibel level went up in the last two games. We have to get used to it, have to do something about it, and accept the challenge. There's nothing wrong with having a challenge. We have to do what we're good at and hope it's good enough.

"This is a club with so much wealth they could buy every player in the world, but can they buy a team, can they buy a Manchester United spirit? I don't expect City to be bigger than us, I really don't, even with all that money. The problem with having all that money is that you buy indiscriminately. Sunderland, in the 1950s, the Bank of England team: relegated. I wouldn't wish relegation on City."

And he meant it. Or I think he did.

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Sir Alex Ferguson carries the Carling Cup after Manchester United's 2-1 win over Aston Villa. Photograph: Tom Jenkins

Sir Alex Ferguson tonight celebrated his 34th trophy since taking over at Old Trafford after defeating Aston Villa 2-1 in the Carling Cup final and immediately set his sights on his next piece of silverware after Wayne Rooney continued his remarkable season by coming off the substitutes' bench to head the winning goal.

The Manchester United manager, who cast doubt over Rooney's involvement in England's friendly against Egypt on Wednesday after revealing the striker was struggling with a knee injury, praised his players' determination after they recovered from going behind to James Milner's fifth-minute penalty to retain the trophy.

Michael Owen brought United level before pulling his hamstring, his misfortune providing Rooney with an opportunity to once again steal the show. The striker nodded past Brad Friedel to register his 28th goal of the season and give Ferguson that familiar winning feeling.

The United manager, however, quickly turned his attention to his next opportunity for success when told of the trophy tally of his illustrious reign. "Hopefully there will be another one this season," said Ferguson, who added that he never tires of collecting medals. "It still feels as good to win trophies. I appreciate all the things we have achieved as a club and I appreciate the luck we have carried. I've lost finals and that's not easy. The only way you can enjoy Wembley is by winning."

Rooney said he had been keen to start against Villa but also admitted he had been suffering with "a bit of a niggle" in his knee. Ferguson later confirmed he had considered withdrawing his match-winner. "He has been complaining a little bit for a few weeks. The doctors are assessing [his knee] at the moment. I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know what England are going to do."

The United manager acknowledged that Nemanja Vidic was fortunate not to be booked at the very least for the challenge on Gabriel Agbonlahor which provided Villa's penalty. Martin O'Neill, the losing manager, claimed the defender should have been sent off for what appeared to be a professional foul.

Ferguson said: "I think in the main we were probably the better team but credit for Aston Villa's performance. Towards the last 10 minutes, where they started to shove up that big brigade of theirs, it was like the bloody Alamo."

On Vidic he added: "There have been three or four in the last week that have been similar. We saw in Milan with [Chelsea's Salomon] Kalou brought down, which to me looked a penalty. You had one [on Saturday] that was a claim for the Arsenal player in a similar situation and then [Juliano] Belletti bringing down [Craig] Bellamy and he gets a red card in probably the exact same position as our player found himself in. I haven't seen the replay but he was lucky not to be booked."

O'Neill, not surprisingly, had a forthright interpretation of the referee Phil Dowd's decision. "I think it was plain for all to see," he said. "It's an inexplicable decision and I really don't understand it. It was a goalscoring opportunity and the player is fouled in the area. It's straightforward from an otherwise fine referee. In a couple of days' time it's all forgotten about but it's major point in the game. I've spoken to Phil but what Phil and I have said will stay with me."

Richard Dunne, whose mistake led to Owen equalising, questioned whether the game would have changed had Vidic been dismissed because Villa struggled to break down a 10-man United side in the Premier League last month but O'Neill disagreed. "Richard's a great lad but I absolutely disagree with him. It's a different game, just because someone plays well with 10 men in one particular match ... this is Wembley and you are talking about all the things that go with Wembley. I wouldn't have liked to have played Manchester United with 10 men for 83 minutes."

Ferguson, meanwhile, backed United to show the same resilience they displayed against Villa for the remainder of the campaign. "We don't give in and it's a good quality to have. I think you'll see that in the remainder of the season," said the manager, who will have Rio Ferdinand available for Saturday's game at Wolverhampton. "There are a lot of hard games [to come]. It was a good result for us with Chelsea losing. Arsenal are bang in the frame now. They have the easiest programme on paper and it will be an interesting run-in."