Sir Alex Ferguson has spoken about the awkwardness of the situation when he had to convey to some of the veterans of his Premiership Champion side in 1994 that he was going to offload them.
The Scot says that his emotional connect with those veterans was very strong, but, at the end of the day, he had to tell himself that he was in a job and wasn’t somebody’s guardian and rather than thinking about the future of those particular players, he should think about the future of the team because it’s the team owners who are paying him his salary and they are paying him that only to take care of the team.
As per Ferguson, it was a tricky time because the team had just landed the second successive top division trophy and offloading the players was apparently not needed. But, he realized that there were quite a few individuals who just had that much to give to the team and they couldn’t go any further at that level.
Ferguson opines that if it’s left up to the players, they would keep going on and on and would not stop even in their fifties because of their obsession with the club, but, keeping those individuals on just because of the recent success of the team or just because he personally had a great relationship with them would have weakened United.
The 75-year old admits that because of the fact that he sold players as soon as they were starting to lack fuel in the tank regardless of whatever past they had, he developed the reputation of being an unsympathetic personality, but, for him, ensuring that the Red Devils were stronger than any other side in England was most important and for that he didn’t shy away from taking even an unpleasant decision.
