Alex Ferguson Quotes

“Origins should never be a barrier to success. A modest start in life can be a help more than a hindrance.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“Sweeter after difficulties’.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“With young people you have to try to impart a sense of responsibility. If they can add greater awareness to their energy and their talents they can be rewarded with great careers.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“If they lose faith in your knowledge, they lose faith in you. That grasp of the facts must be kept at a high level, for all time. You have to be accurate in what you say to the players.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“Sometimes defeats are the best outcomes. To react to adversity is a quality.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“As long as you don’t criticise individual players in public, admonishing the team is fine, not a problem. We can all share in the blame: the manager, his staff, the players. Expressed properly, criticism can be an acceptance of collective responsibility. Under”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“There was no way I could contemplate taking the England job. Can you imagine me doing that? A Scotsman? I always joked that I would take the position and relegate them: make them the 150th rated country in the world, with Scotland 149.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“The human element tells you a referee can be wrong. But the good ones will make the correct decisions more often than not. The ones who make the wrong ones are not necessarily bad referees. They just lack that talent for making the right calls in a tight time frame.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“The supporters were entitled to know when I was unhappy with a performance. But not an individual.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“Endless praise sounds false. They see through it. A central component of the manager-player relationship is that you have to make them take responsibility for their own actions, their own mistakes, their performance level, and finally the result. We were all in the results industry. Sometimes a scabby win would mean more to us than a 6-0 victory with a goal featuring 25 passes. The bottom line was always that Manchester United had to be victorious. That winning culture could be maintained only if I told a player what I thought about his performance in a climate of honesty. And yes, sometimes I would be forceful and aggressive. I would tell a player what the club demanded of them.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“What we did at all times, in success and adversity, was make sure the training ground was sacrosanct. The work there, the concentration, and the standards we maintained never dropped. Eventually that consistency of effort will show itself on a Saturday. That way, when a United player has a couple of bad results, he will hate it. It becomes intolerable to him. Even the best players sometimes lose confidence. Even Cantona had bouts of self-doubt. But if the culture around the training ground was right, the players knew they could fall back on the group and the expertise of our staff.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“With young people you have to try to impart a sense of responsibility. If they can add greater awareness to their energy and their talents they can be rewarded with great careers. One”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“The minute a Manchester United player thought he was bigger than the manager, he had to go. I used to say, ‘The moment the manager loses his authority, you don’t have a club. The players will be running it, and then you’re in trouble.’ David thought he was bigger than Alex Ferguson. There is no doubt about that in my mind. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Alex Ferguson or Pete the Plumber. The name of the manager is irrelevant. The authority is what counts. You cannot have a player taking over the dressing room. Many tried. The focus of authority at Manchester United is the manager’s office. That was the death knell for him.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“If you want my summary of what it was to be Manchester United manager I would direct you to the last 15 minutes.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“To win the FA Cup at Wembley made the good times roll. But on the morning after our victory, one newspaper declared: ‘OK, you’ve proved you can win the FA Cup, now go back to Scotland.’ I never forgot that.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“When I won the League for the first time in 1993, I didn't want my team to slacken off. The thought appalled me. I was determined to keep advancing, to strengthen our hold on power. I told that 1993 side: 'Some people, when the have a holiday, just want to go to Saltcoats, twenty-five miles along the coast from Glasgow. Some people don't even want to do that. They're happy to stay at home or watch the birds and the ducks float by in the park. And some want to go to the moon.'

'It's about people's ambitions.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“One obvious aspect of management is identifying people who can help you get where you are trying to go. Talent-identification sounds like a straightforward business. If it were, every team would be successful.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“I don't like admitting, we were beaten by a great team, because we never wanted to say those words. The biggest concession we ever wanted to make was: two great teams contested this final, but we just missed out. Our aim was to attain that level where people said we were always on a par with Europe's best.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“Success is often cyclical, with doldrums.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“There is a psychological dimension also to handling indiavidual players. With errant behaviour it helps to look for a moment through their eyes. You were young once, so put yourself in their position. You do something wrong, you're waiting to be punished. What's he going to say?' you think. Or, What's my dad going to say?' The aim is to make the biggest possible impact. What would have made the deepest imprint on me at that stage of life?”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“Faced with the need to confront a player who had performed below our expectation, I might have said: That was rubbish, that.' But then I would follow it up with, 'For a player of your ability. That was for picking them back up from the initial blow. Criticise but balance it out with encouragement. 'Why are you doing that? You're better than that.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“The thing every good leader should have is an instinct.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“In those moments of defeat and acceptance, there would be a dawning, for me, of where we needed to go. My feeling was always: 'I don't like this, but we'll have to meet the challenge. We'll have to step up a mark.' It wouldn't have been me, or the club, to submit to apocalyptic thoughts about that being the end, the finish of all our work. We could never allow that.

Every time those moments poked us in the eye, we accepted the invitation to regroup and advance again. Those were motivating passages. They forced me on. I'll go further: I can't be sure that without those provocations I would have Enjoy the job so much.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“I couldn't take sides against mu players. I had to find solutions other than castigating them in public. Sometimes I had to fine or punish them, of course, but I could never let it out of the dressing room. I would have felt I had betrayed the one constant principle of my time as a manager: to defend. No, not to defend, but to protect them from outside judgments.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“when you're managing change, you have to accept the quieter spells and acknowledge that transformations take longer than a year.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“The one thing I could never allow was loss of control, because control was my only saviour.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“Origins should never be a barrier to success. A modest start in life can be a help more than a hindrance. If you're examining successful people, look at their mother and father, study what they did, for clues about energy and motivation.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“If you're examining successful people, look at their mother and father, study what they did, for clues about energy and motivation.”
― Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

“I want to apologise for my behaviour in my last year at United.”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller

“in my new office;”
― Alex Ferguson, ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller