Skip to main content

Hodder splash the cash as Sir Alex Ferguson puts final touches to new autobiography they hope will take no prisoners

Sir Alex Ferguson was not known for shying away from confrontation during his reign as Manchester United's manager and anyone who offended him by deed or word tended sooner or later to feel the hot blast of his wrath.

Yet even he would acknowledge the need to bow to diplomacy at certain times, while the threat of fines or sanctions from the Football Association persuaded him to bite his tongue on others.

Now that he is no longer an active manager, however, Fergie is free to let rip against anyone who has incurred his displeasure without fear of the consequences.  Publishers Hodder and Stoughton clearly hope he take his retirement as the cue to release the shackles - they have paid him an advance of £2 million, according to reports, to reveal all in a new autobiography to be published in the autumn.

Sir Alex verbally agreed to write the book three years ago and Daily Telegraph journalist Paul Hayward is the man entrusted with faithfully reproducing Fergie's views on a range of subjects.  The former Manchester United boss penned his first authorised life story Managing My Life: The Autobiography, ghosted by Hugh McIlvanney, in the treble year of 1999.

But much more has happened in the 14 years since then, including his seven-year stand-off with the BBC after they ran a documentary about his football agent son Jason, the split with David Beckham, the explosive dispute with racing tycoons John Magnier and JP McManus over Rock of Gibraltar’s breeding rights, the arrival at Old Trafford of the Glazers and his relationship with Wayne Rooney.  Buyers will be disappointed if those episodes are not covered in detail.

Sir Alex's treatment of Rooney since leaving him out of the Champions League tie against Real Madrid has been one of the mysteries of the season.

The Fergie Collection - five recommended books about the man acknowledged as football's greatest manager:

Sir Alex Ferguson: The Official Manchester United Celebration of 25 Years at Old Trafford, by David Meek and Tom Tyrell

Managing My Life: The Autobiography

Football - Bloody Hell!: The Biography of Alex Ferguson, by Patrick Barclay

This Is the One: Sir Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius, by Daniel Taylor

The Boss: The Many Sides of Alex Ferguson, by Michael Crick

Home

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment or submit your own sports book review

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Cross Sports Book of the Year Awards: all the winners are named

Brave Paralympian Martine Wright scoops Autobiography prize Add caption The inspiring story of the GB Paralympic athlete Martine Wright has been named Sports Autobiography of the Year at the 16th Sports Book Awards and will be a strong contender for overall Sports Book of the Year for 2018, which will be decided by a public vote. Written in collaboration with journalist Sue Mott, Unbroken , published by Simon & Schuster, tells the remarkable story of Martine’s incredible fight back from the horrors of the July 7 atrocities in London in 2005, when she was sharing a carriage on a tube train on the Circle Line with a suicide bomber, who detonated his device just outside Aldgate station. Seven passengers around her were killed among 52 who lost their lives that day but she survived, albeit at the cost of both her legs. Martine, who took up wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball as part of her rehabilitation, represented Great Britain in the latter at the 2012 Paralympics...
19 comments
Read more

Secrets of Mickelson the Master

No instruction manual could teach a golfer to play the extraordinary trees-to-green shot that Phil Mickelson produced at the 13th on the way to winning his third US Masters in Augusta. There is much a player can learn, nonetheless, from the winner of the 2010 green jacket and his phenomenal skills with wedge and putter in Mickelson's Secrets of the Short Game , which can now expect a spike in sales. Mickelson believes that even a golfer of only average ability can become a highly effective short-game player by paying proper attention to mechanics and set-up and combining that scientific approach with a willingness to be imaginative. Published last autumn, the 224-page manual passes on some of the wisdom Mickelson has acquired over 35 years, since his first steps in the game as a small boy. By holding off Britain's Lee Westwood, Mickelson joined the company of Nick Faldo, Sam Snead and Gary Player in having won three Masters titles.  But for the presence of four-times win...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Nonsense: Joey Barton's autobiography on the William Hill Sports Book of the Year longlist after just one day in the shops

Joey Barton Controversial footballer Joey Barton's autobiography No Nonsense has been included on the longlist for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year even though it was published only yesterday. Written in collaboration with Michael Calvin, the award-winning author and sports journalist, Barton's book promises to deliver a candid account of a life never far from the headlines on and off the field. Calvin is the third writer to work with the player, who began the project in 2014 with Times journalist Matthew Syed and made one attempt to write it himself, which he did not sustain beyond nine chapters. There is much detail, some of it quite harrowing, about his upbringing in hard-edged working class Liverpool, where many of his associates and even family members were involved in crime at one level or another.  His brother, Michael, and his cousin, Paul Taylor, are serving jail sentences for the murder of an innocent black teenager. The book has no short...
18 comments
Read more