The billboard stands squarely where the road from Salford meets
Deansgate, the commercial centre of the city. It shows Carlos
Tevez, his arms outstretched above the slogan: "Welcome to
Manchester". Like all good advertising, it has a number of subtle
meanings. First of all, it points out that Manchester
United are not technically based in Manchester, but the
neighbouring borough of Trafford and there is the suggestion that
the Argentinian is welcome at Eastlands in a way he was not under
Sir Alex
Ferguson.
All good advertising hits its target and Ferguson, many
thousands of miles away in a hotel room in Malaysia, is certainly
stung. "It's City isn't it? They are a small club with a small
mentality," Ferguson retorts. "All they can talk about is
Manchester United; they can't get away from it. That arrogance will
be rewarded. It is a go at us, that's the one thing it is. They
think taking Carlos Tevez away from Manchester United is a triumph.
It is poor stuff."
Manchester City may have provided Ferguson with one of his
bleakest experiences, the September day 20 years ago when, after a
5-1 defeat at Maine Road, he drove home and with barely a word to
his wife went to bed and put his head under the pillow, "feeling
like a criminal".
But until now they had been little more than a minor irritant.
When, under Sven-Goran Eriksson, they did the double over United,
it only slowed rather than blocked the Reds' path to another title.
Now, funded by the oil of Abu Dhabi, and with a squad of 10
strikers, they see themselves as equals in a way they have not for
a generation.
In Ferguson's eyes, there is only one reason why someone would
swap the Premier
League title holders and world club champions for a team
who have gone 33 years without a trophy and finished ninth last
season. Manchester City can now offer £7m salaries.
"Do you know what City's biggest triumph is? It's getting those
players there. I don't know if they will do anything with them," he
says. "It is not easy to get into that top four, so the biggest
success of all is to just get the players there. They might not get
beyond that.
"When someone offers you that kind of money, it is a big
attraction to people nowadays. That is the reason they have gone
there. At the last minute, from what I can gather, either Emmanuel
Adebayor or his agent phoned us after they had agreed a deal with
City and then did the same with Chelsea. He was desperate to get to
either Chelsea or us."
Ultimately, Ferguson says, Manchester United "are protected by
our titles". But he concedes that David Moyes and Martin O'Neill,
who at Everton and Aston Villa dragged small squads tantalisingly
close to the Champions League on resources they would consider
laughable in the Gulf of Arabia, might find it a dispiriting
summer. Moyes cannot afford £20m to make Jo's loan from Eastlands a
permanent transfer, let alone the £200m Mark Hughes has spent in 13
revolutionary months.
"Manchester City's spending is demoralising only if you panic
about the buying," Ferguson says. "At the end of the day, Everton
did well against us, did brilliantly against Liverpool and well
against Chelsea. It will not be easy for City and, to me, they
don't even come into the equation.
"I don't look upon City as my biggest challenge. For all the
buying they have done, they still have to pick a team with balance.
That won't be easy for Mark. What's he got, 10 strikers? So if he
picks a squad to go to Chelsea he has to leave seven behind, or
five at least. And you don't expect Liverpool or Chelsea to
die."
Ferguson is, however, concerned for Arsenal, which given the
bitter history between himself and Arsène Wenger might seem
surprising. But it happens. You can read Tony Benn's diaries and
see his attitude to Enoch Powell change over three decades; by the
end he calls him "Enoch" and goes to Powell's funeral describing
him as "a friend who made a mistake".
So it seems to be with Wenger and Ferguson. Whereas once he
would spit out the surname, Ferguson now calls his rival "Arsène".
They are survivors with shared values of how football should be
played, even if the cynic might say it is a sign that Arsenal are
no longer a threat to United.
"The one who has the challenge this season is Arsène," says
Ferguson. "He doesn't have the money and how he uses the £25m from
Adebayor will be very, very interesting." He admits there has been
a warming between the two and the old battles are now looked at
with a veteran's nostalgia.
"Arsène is a winner," he says. "When Manchester United and
Arsenal were going for those titles at the same time it was a
competitive situation, not just between Arsène and myself, but on
the pitch. It was volatile with Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira in the
tunnel at Highbury and the incident at the end of the game at Old
Trafford when they attacked Ruud van Nistelrooy. It was quite
volatile, but they are different teams now.
"But Arsène will stay," says Ferguson, because Arsenal are "his
club, built in his image" and it is hard to leave. "He is 59 now
and he will not have the time to rebuild another club if he went
off. Is Real Madrid his kind of club? I don't think so."
Real Madrid are assuredly not Ferguson's kind of club.
Throughout last season he maintained a verbal guerrilla war against
them – whether at United's training ground at Carrington, where he
highlighted their links to Franco's grisly regime, or at a press
conference in Yokohama during the Club World Championship, where he
said he would "not sell that mob a virus". It is perhaps part of
Ferguson's gloriously contradictory nature that he eventually sold
them the most expensive player in world football.
"It has been a crazy summer," he sighs. "I would have been
interested in some buying, but not when they talked of £50m for
David Villa or £55m for Sergio Agüero. That does not seem sensible.
But maybe the Ronaldo transfer and Kaká's move to Madrid for £56m
sparked something off. Then you had Karim Benzema for £42m.
"But that is Madrid, that is their culture. No other club in the
world has their flexibility to do that. Manchester City might have
the money and, when they offer it, most of it will be cash.
"But Real Madrid don't deal in their own money. They are
protected, obviously, by the banks and the Spanish government. It
is a different, unusual system. When you look back a few years to
when they were £250m in debt, yes, they sold their training ground,
but they had a new state-of-the-art training ground built for them.
And on their old training ground, they built four apartment blocks
and gave one of them to Real Madrid. That is some deal."
However, every sale has its price. When David Beckham left for a
£23m fee that officials at the Bernabéu described as "peanuts",
Manchester United were expected to cope, but it took three years
for them to win another championship, partly because the day
Beckham was presented at Madrid was the day an unknown governor of
a remote Siberian province decided to buy Stamford Bridge. The loss
of Ronaldo has ripped a hole in United's squad bigger than that
left by Beckham's departure – and for Roman Abramovich read Sheikh
Mansour and Manchester City.
"The area that does concern us is where do we get 26 goals [that
Ronaldo scored last season]?" Ferguson says. "That is a concern
because I don't have a midfielder like a young Paul Scholes or a
young Ryan Giggs who can give me 15-plus goals from midfield areas.
We will have to redirect our play a bit more.
"Nani will improve, although he is not as mature as Ronaldo was
at his age. I expect Anderson to improve and Darren Fletcher to
establish himself as a big player in our squad. [Michael] Owen will
get me goals, [Dimitar] Berbatov will be much better. And I don't
have to deal with a certain person who is miserable because he is
not playing."
Manchester United will change. Wayne Rooney will have to become
more of a central striker. On last year's tour to South Africa,
Ferguson said this would have to happen and yet, sometimes through
necessity, Rooney often appeared on the left wing. It was where he
found himself during the European Cup final, forced deeper by
Barcelona's sweeping midfield moves, increasingly isolated and
irrelevant. The disappointment must sting still because throughout
the tour of Asia it is one subject Ferguson will not discuss.
"There will be three teams to beat," he says of the domestic
season ahead. "Ourselves, Liverpool and Chelsea will be very close
together. They will be encouraged because we have sold Ronaldo. The
direction of our game will change because of that, but we will
still be very difficult to beat. Rooney will go through the middle.
Last season was a lot to do with Berbatov coming to the club and
trying to understand what he was best at. You have to utilise what
you have available. Some games Rooney did play wide left and in
some matches it worked, but in others it was not a good position
for him to be in. We will change that. He always wants to play – he
sometimes thinks he is a centre-half. Have I toyed with the idea of
making him skipper? Toyed is a good word. I don't think he is
ready."
Ferguson adds: "Ben Foster, if he stays free of injury, is going
to be top-drawer. He will be England's goalkeeper in South Africa
next summer. He has to be, he is streets ahead of everybody
else."
Foster, to his manager's mind, is potentially England's best
goalkeeper since Peter Shilton retired in 1990, the year Ferguson's
regime at Old Trafford began to flourish, the year Liverpool won
the last of their 18 titles, a figure United have now equalled.
Ferguson did not make much of that, but now, perhaps because of
his conflict with Rafael Benítez – whom he very rarely calls "Rafa"
– he does sound enticed by the prospect of overtaking them. "There
is a record there to be achieved, just as we have won the FA Cup
more times than anyone else. But Liverpool winning the European Cup
five times doesn't concern me. We have won it three times and had a
chance of a fourth, but we will have another, you can be sure of
that."
Ferguson claims Benítez, whom many Premier League managers
consider aloof, is obsessed with him rather than the other way
round. "I have never said a word about him. The only time I
responded was when he made that gesture with Sam Allardyce [the
crossing of the hands to suggest that Liverpool's game with
Blackburn was won the moment they went two goals up].
"There was no doubt he was doing that. Liverpool were too quick
to come out and respond that he was signalling they should take a
free-kick a different way. That was bollocks. Absolute bollocks
