The boy Donny good! Fergu-son aims to be the great entertainer
DONCASTER MANAGER DARREN FERGUSON
SOME things never change in football, like Fergie being top of the league.
That phrase doesn’t just have a familiar ring – it’s been a standing order for almost 40 years.
But if Darren Ferguson was once man-marked by his father’s shadow, he is writing his own scripts as a manager now.
Unless Doncaster Rovers, 11 points clear of the dotted line in League Two, collapse like an ice cream under a blow-torch, Ferguson will soon be celebrating his fourth promotion in 10 years.
And if Donny take the chequered flag, the rising son will cast his mind back to the final day of last season, when relegated Rovers watched Burton celebrating promotion on their turf – and Ferguson resolved that his team would be the next one having a party at the Keepmoat.
“It was mentioned in the dressing room afterwards,” he said. “I just told the players, ‘See that lot having a good time out there? That needs to be us next year.’
“I was pleased to see Nigel Clough, who is one of the good guys, going up – and it will be an unbelievable achievement if he keeps them in the Championship this season on their budget, by the way.
“But it’s only three years since we were playing in the Championship ourselves, and certainly the aim is for this club to be operating higher than in League Two.”
It only seems like the blink of an eye since Donny clinched promotion to the second tier in an incredible finish to their shoot-out with Brentford at Griffin Park, with the winners going up automatically and the losers condemned to whoblinks-first in the play-offs.
The Bees missed their cue, on-loan Marcello Trotta crashing a stoppage-time penalty, inexplicably awarded by referee Michael Oliver, against the bar and Rovers breaking away to spring the loft hatch as James Coppinger walked in the winner 15 seconds later.
By the time Ferguson, 45, took charge 18 months ago, they were slipping towards the quicksand in League One and he only found the handbrake after a 16-match winless run admitting: “It may take longer than I thought to turn it round.”
Now, like Rovers’ most famous fan, boy band fop Louis Tomlinson, they are heading in only one direction – up.
And they are doing so in the progressive style which served Ferguson’s father so well for 27 years at Old Trafford.
“I’ve always believed in playing the game like that. If you don’t score goals, you can’t win matches, and you can’t entertain the public if you don’t score goals,” he said.
“It’s the way I was brought up, I don’t really know of any other way. “What pleases me most is when I look at the table and see we are the leading scorers in the division, because the hardest part of the game is scoring goals, and it’s impossible to be successful without it. We have good players in the final third of the pitch, and four of the team are into double figures, goals-wise, this season.
“Every manager who sends his team out on the park expects them to represent his beliefs – and Doncaster Rovers have been a fair reflection of what I stand for.
“When I came into the club, a lot of things needed changing – I didn’t expect us to go down, but when that happens the important thing is that you recover quickly and come back stronger.
“The recruitment has been very good, there is a decent balance about the squad and we are in a good position to make it count.”
Full marks to Donny chairman David Blunt for standing by Ferguson when the conventional knee-jerk reaction of a relegated club is to change the manager.
It has served all parties well, although Fergie junior insisted: “I would have been genuinely surprised if they had let me go in the summer because I would not have had time to implement what I wanted to do.
“Fortunately I work for owners who understand that time is the most valuable currency in football. But I appreciate other people in my position may not have been dealt the same hand.”
‘What pleases me most is looking at the table and seeing we are top scorers’