Sir Alex Ferguson: Great Scot! He actually calls time!

I know all the range of emotions we feel as football fans for our respective clubs. There was one I was yet to experience – losing a manager. We haven’t lost him in the sense that he was booted out of the back door as is the case with ever single Chelsea manager since 2004. Yet, this feeling of lost helplessness told me that for the first time I felt a bit worried about the future at Man Utd. We have lost so many players over the years, like Beckham, Nistelrooy, Stam, Ronaldo, Cantona, Keano, etc. Yet, I was not worried. Why should I be? We had the great elder, the watchful eye who held us together as we went through the greatest era the club has ever seen!

Sir Alex Ferguson. A man who defined the club in may ways that we modern fans see it today. For many, including me, we have never seen anyone else at the helm. My connection to his reign is a little bizzare when you see the day my parents got married. It was 6th November 1986. I am not making that up. And just like their amazing marriage, it looks like Fergie’s knot to Man Utd was a match made in heaven!

Everyone is going to be talking stats and everyone knows what he has achieved every Red Devil worth his salt knows exactly every fact about him. So there is nothing I can say about him that will surprise you all. I want to look at him as the man, a simple boy from Gavon who changed the face of club football and the English football league as he took everyone by storm to become the most successful club manager in the nation.

When he walks down the tunnel at the Hawthorns on the 19th of May, he will complete 1500 games in charge of this great club. Can you just take a moment to think about that number? That 1500 times, he has had to sit there, be it sunny, cloudy, rainy and snowy! He took the team from where Reading are sitting on the table right now to heights reserved for the gods. He took a team with frustrated and angry young men, men who hadn’t tasted success in a long, long time and gave them the riches of the kings.

The mark of the man was not walking into a room and saying, “I have come here to knock Liverpool off their f****** perch.” It was standing there on that Blackburn pitch in 2011 and watch his group of superstars dance to celebrate title number 19 and then showing the world he had made the perch his own. It was not about the guy who lost his cool when he was told he can’t win anything with kids. It was in 1999 when those same kids had all grown up to win everything there is to offer in English club football.

All this brings me to what I loved most about him. He did not care. He was never bothered what people said, what media said, what the pundits said and sometimes even what his own wife said. He kept on going, kept on dreaming and helped us fans realise all the dreams we ever dreamed. He was wily and stubborn but those traits made him what he is today – the greatest.

No matter what will be said from here on till eternity, there will be only one Sir Alex Ferguson. Today, it was made clear when every single football fan, United or otherwise, tipped their hats to this great man in recognition of the feat he achieved in his time at the helm of the greatest club on the face of the earth. The future is a little uncertain but I am still excited as long as he is part of us!

He took us over as a manager, he leaves us a legend.

Thank you for the memories, you wily fox!