On The Road
THIS WEEK: HOW THE SON OF FERGIE IS COPING WITH LIFE IN LEAGUE ONE
It’s not just the faint scottish burr which provides a clue to Darren Ferguson’s parentage, but the intensity.
He speaks precisely and with machine- gun rapidity after arriving to discuss the point his side have collected against the league’s big spenders. or, as he would have it, two points dropped.
in later years, his father could bring an element of levity to these post-match occasions but it is the younger alex Ferguson incarnate in the room after the goalless draw with Peterborough: dissatisfied, restless, eyeing you with just a slight look of suspicion which tells you to get your question straight.
and ready to call a player out, too. His striker, alfie May, missed a chance. ‘He’s taken too many touches.’ Wing-back tommy rowe lost possession during a four-on-three counter. He’s not spared, either.
it’s 10 years since Ferguson set out, as a 34-year-old, in pursuit of the managerial success his father found.
the evidence of this afternoon made you wonder why — in a game so infatuated with foreign managers that a Bundesliga reserve-team boss has been hired by norwich and Hull recruit the man whose work with the russia national team was dismal — he isn’t managing in a bigger environment.
He has won promotion three times in that decade, twice with the afternoon’s opponents, but there has been a pattern of struggle to adapt to life at the higher level. six months after taking Peterborough to the Championship, in 2009, they parted company.
He returned two years later, took them up again and walked out of the door again. By mutual consent, as clubs always like to say.
With an unhappy 12 months at Preston sandwiched in between, he badly needs to build on his third promotion — secured from league two with Doncaster rovers last May — though even here, in the third tier, he finds himself on the wrong side of a financial divide.
table-topping Peterborough arrived parading their £450,000 record signing — Jack Marriott, from luton — and Marcus Maddison, plucked from nonleague Gateshead by Ferguson in 2014 and recently awarded a three-year deal to fend off interest from clubs in the Championship.
‘the one thing i’ve noticed more than ever this season in this league is the budgets have gone way up,’ says Ferguson. ‘our budget has been consistent to what we believe is right.’
evidence of his eye for a player is all around. rowe, the captain he brought from Peterborough, is his team’s most influential player at wing-back, flanking the three-man defence Ferguson has experimented with to blunt Peterborough’s attacking threat.
striker May, signed from the amateur leagues, is lively. Chelsea loanee Jordan Houghton — back after a severe knee injury ended his loan last February — dominated with time to spare, though Ferguson gruffly shut down talk of how far he’ll go.
there won’t be a fortune of spending money heading here any time soon. this club are run with south yorkshire thrift and have had controversial owners in the past. one of them, Ken richardson, hired three men to torch the old Belle Vue stadium when refused planning permission for a new one, allowing him to sell the site to developers. He was jailed for four years.
entering the 10th year of his own managerial career, alex Ferguson had just won the european Cup-Winners’ Cup and was about to receive the oBe. His son must take a longer road though he won’t lack for hunger. ‘ listen, we try to improve in every game,’ he says, the impatience undisguisable.
‘they need to look around and recognise there’s some very, very good players in the squad.’