No time like the present for Fergie

Was it even legitimate for Alex Ferguson to write yet another new book?

Yes, some critics have dared ask that, pointing out with a snigger that this is his eighth. A snigger I was momentarily tempted to share, until I realised that this total is still two fewer than I’ve managed, and I’m a nobody. It’s true that another autobiographical tome does smack a little of those modern post-Becks celebrities Alex so loathes, the type who are on the third life story by the time they’re 30, but who have nothing to show for their lives beyond some TV reality shows and a novelty record. But if any football life deserved multiple literary visits, it was Fergie’s.

Moreover, one can hardly argue that post-retirement is an inapt timeframe in which to do another one — although the precise timing is another matter.

Couldn’t he at least have waited 12 months? For the book to come out when the pressure on his struggling successor was always going to be at its zenith seems extraordinarily selfish.

The argument is that this month is the “sales POMO (Position Of Maximum Opportunity)”, as they say in the trade; he will never be ‘hotter’. Perhaps so.

But he hardly needs the extra money that is gained from publishing in 2013 rather than 2014, whereas Moyes needs the extra breathing space now.

Instead, here’s Fergie, with his giant advance cheque tucked into his back pocket, sucking all the oxygen out of the room as ever. Moyes’ bug-eyes add to the image of him desperately spluttering for breath in the corner, muttering in his latest press conference that he’ll look forward to reading it when he gets the time. As he points out, time is in short supply at the moment.

Is it any good, then? I think I’ve probably written more words about Fergie than almost anyone in the media over these past 20 years and I know I’m going to enjoy parsing the whole thing at lengthy leisure no matter what the quality. But a critic must be brutally honest. The two fellow top United authors I consulted, who have both written acclaimed Fergie books, were adamant: the tome is a grave disappointment, both as a piece of writing and as historical record. One listed eight major topics that demanded coverage in any autobiography worth its name, and reckoned Fergie had devoted about four paragraphs to them — in total. It’s also stuffed with silly factual errors that reflect poorly on him, on his ghostwriter Paul Hayward and on his allegedly topnotch publishers, who are charging nearly €30 for this supposedly definitive account.

Instead, we have had: some flashy whizzbangery, in the inflammatory judgements about famous subordinates which he knows will attract headlines and sales; some Panglossian revisionism, most notably about the Glazers and his bosses; and some gratuitous mud-slinging that would shame a monkey. The result is an often rather unedifying spectacle, and one which makes you hanker for the relative sophistication and classy restraint of his 1999 Hugh McIlvanney-ghosted effort. Disappointingly, we have also heard, or learned, most of it before. Even less forgivably, he allowed United to vet it.

Personally, I found his remarks about Roy Keane particularly distasteful and unnecessary, whereas his refusal to engage on the issues of the Coolmore boys and the 2005 takeover were simply cowardly.

As the great Martin Samuel noted in the Daily Mail: “the words within kick down, not up.” But will it damage him in other Reds’ eyes? No. It won’t make a blind bit of difference. The battle lines on Fergie were entrenched long ago. The queues of starry-eyed Fergie-zealot punters at his Stretford book signing, resembling Vatican supplicants at a Pope’s last Easter, will doubtless be thrilled by the great old bully’s score-settling; the Fergie-sceptics, fan activists and Busbyites will remain unmoved from their usual cold-eyed indifference. The book seems to portray a great manager but not, perhaps, the greatest of men: in that sense, you may feel, it has produced the literary goods required of autobiography, despite all its faults — it has told you the truth about its author.