Despite winning the Treble and a hat-trick of Premier League
titles, Yorke admits he spent the final three months of his
glorious Old Trafford career getting drunk every Sunday in a bar
while watching his fellow pros on TV.
Fergie had been looking to flog the golden boy striker to
Middlesbrough following a series of bust-ups over his playboy
lifestyle.
Yorke's only hope was that Fergie had insisted he would retire
at the end of the season.
Then came a very blunt warning from skipper Roy Keane that sent
Yorke spiralling into despair.
"'Yorkie - you're f***ed, mate,' he said as I arrived for
training," recalls Yorke in his new autobiography.
"He was right. Fergie had announced he had postponed all notion
of retirement. I smiled at Keano's brutal assessment of where I now
stood at the club but it cut deep.
"The news was crushing. Those were the lowest days of my career
and now the most determined bachelor at Old Trafford was paying for
his single life.
"There was no one around to find comfort with. Just a big empty
house, packed with possessions and material wealth - but still just
big and empty.
"I started to drink again. I wasn't an alcoholic. But it helped
to ease the loneliness.
"I was like a zombie. I'd call my mates and go out in an effort
to try to forget what was happening but it could not fill the
emptiness inside me.
"No matter how I tried, I couldn't get Fergie to change his mind
about me and that only added to the frustration.
"In my first year at United I had scored 29 goals in 48 games.
My second, 24 in 41. Even in my third I was still on that
goal-every-other- game ratio of 13 from 25, despite starting fewer
games.
"Regardless of the mistakes of judgement off it, I did not feel
I had ever let United down on the pitch. And now I was with the
reserves.
"As my career fizzled out at United I became a Sunday afternoon
fixture at Brasingamens, a well-known bar in Alderley Edge.
"For the last two or three months of my United career, I would
sit watching the live game on Sky TV and slowly get hammered. It
became a depressing fixture in my life. I had no appetite to go
anywhere else.
"I still had a smile on my face, trying to disguise the hurt I
was feeling but, inside, I was in despair."
Yorke's first 'hairdryer' rollicking from Fergie came at
half-time during a 3-1 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday in November
1998 and he admits it left him "shocked."
He got another shock after Fergie accused him of "failing" in
the season after United's historic Treble.
"Only at United," adds Yorke, "could you follow up the amazing
triumph of the Treble by winning the Premier League again, this
time by a record distance, and still have Sir Alex chill you to the
bone with his damning verdict as that second season closed: 'Yorkie
- you're failing.'"
Yorke fell foul of Fergie's temper again in September, 2000,
after returning to United a day late from Trinidad following a 4-0
World Cup qualifying victory over Canada.
Yorke admits he deliberately missed his scheduled flight for an
"aboslutely wild night" of partying.
"Fergie lost his cool with me for the first time in the
confrontation that followed," says Yorke. "He was angry and
frustrated.
"Fergie's words of warning echoed around my head: If you are not
100 per cent committed here, you will suffer the consequences.
"I was in Fergie's bad books again later that same September
when we prepared for a home match with Chelsea.
"Fergie told me I had not made the 16-man squad and I didn't
like it. I felt there was nothing I could do to please him. And
instead of hanging around all glum-faced, I left the stadium before
kick-off.
"The next day I got the call to go to Fergie's office again.
"'What the hell were you playing at?'" he raged at me. "'You
stay and support your team-mates at all times.
"'Do you think you are bigger than the team?' He was right, of
course, I know that now. But I had never been in this position
before and I was struggling to know how to handle it. An awful lot
of what subsequently happened to me at United stemmed from that
weekend. Things were getting beyond my control. After one trip to
Dublin I had a confrontation with the boss that shook me to my
core."
Yorke was due to catch a 6.45am flight back to Manchester in
time to get to the training ground for 10am.
But this time the flight WAS delayed. Yorke was late and with
Fergie already at training, the striker tried to sneak in without
being spotted.
"No chance. 'Yorkie, come here!' screamed that voice. And in
front of the entire squad I was subjected to a tirade that left me
shaking.
"'Until you show more commitment to this club, then this club
doesn't want you here!' he screamed at me. 'And the rate you're
going, you won't be here much longer anyway.' It was crushing and
humiliating. The tension between myself and Fergie had been growing
and there would be one more conflict with Fergie before the
season's end."
It came after a night out with a pal in an Edinburgh bistro.
They were stopped by police on the drive back to his pal's flat and
his friend failed a breath test.
"I had been caught breaking Fergie's rule of no drinking 48
hours before a game," says Yorke.
"I got another rollicking to ensure the season ended on a sour,
sour note.
"Of course, I can look back now and see things clearly.
"I had f***ed up off the pitch and had been caught out too many
times.
"The word was out that I was a prime candidate to be eased out
of the club, the manager having finally grown weary of my 'playboy
lifestyle'. My life was falling apart." It had all been so
different when Fergie splashed out £12.6million to sign the
Trinidad and Tobago frontman from Aston Villa 11 years ago.
Yorke won the incredible Treble in his first season and went on
to help United clinch a hat-trick of Premier League titles and was
also an FA Cup winner.
Despite the bust- ups, Yorke admits the most successful manager
in United's history is a "genius."
"My respect for Fergie remains, to this day, enormous," says
Yorke.
"For all the rows, for all the full-throttle old-fashioned
b******ings that came my way in our four years together, he remains
the greatest in my eyes - a man to whom I owe so much."