F365 Features

"It is Ferguson's way of doing business but it is not my way," said PSV chairman Harry van Raay when Arjen Robben went on an unathorised day-trip to Manchester. "It just seems that, with Ferguson, a leopard never loses its spots." As Spurs report Sir Fergie to the FA, we look at other times the Scot's transfers have annoyed people...

Ruud van Nistelrooy
"His suggestion that after his injury, Ruud could recuperate at United was scandalous," fumed PSV's Harry van Raay after Ferguson invited the striker along to train with United.

"He asserted it would be better if Ruud trained with him. Yet if he really thought that, he should have taken the financial risk and bought Ruud last year."

Van Nistelrooy had been due to complete a move to United, but a serious knee injury saw United pull the plug. Ferguson went back in for him a year later, and was widely praised for treating Van Nistelrooy so well.

"The only thing he did was to call on the phone a few time," Van Raay sulked. "And then he gets praised because he has been so beneficial to Ruud.

"But we were the ones who did that. We even improved his contract. Van Nistelrooy cost us £1.4m in salary and physical rehabilitation this year.

We could put in a lot of other choice quotes here - "crossed the line of decency....thinking he was the King of Football..." being among our favourites - but we'd be here all day.

Jaap Stam
Of course, before the Van Nistelrooy affair, PSV were already a little peeved with the King of Football over his pursuit of Jaap Stam. "We had to keep everything under wraps, so the club didn't find out about the unofficial approach," said Stam, clearly failing to recognise the difference between, 'keeping things under wraps' and, 'talking about them in an autobiography being serialised in a national newspaper.'

Tom van Dalen, Stam's agent, set the meeting up in a hotel near Amsterdam airport. "We didn't want to go to a hotel in case there was even the remotest chance somebody might see us," he said later.

"We spent most of our 30 minutes just talking about what my plans were and how he'd like me to come to Old Trafford," revealed Stam in his book.

"There was no discussion about positional play, contracts or money. I guess he just wanted to meet me and see what kind of guy I was.

"He strode into the room, full of confidence and smiling broadly.

"'Jaap, I want you to play for Manchester United,' said Ferguson. 'I want you to command our back line and help us to win the Champions' League'."

Which, to be fair, he did.

David Bellion
From the great players to the, erm, not great. Sunderland chairman Bob Murray was in a philosophical mood about David Bellion's desire to leave Sunderland for a bigger club, calling United's approach for the player, "shabby, despicable, disrespectful, arrogant and unprofessional."

United had bid for Bellion in the January transfer window, but Sunderland rejected the offer, despite Bellion's contract expiring at the end of the season. "David is contracted to the club until the end of the season and it would not be in the club's best interests to allow him to leave," they said at the time. It makes funny reading looking back, eh?

As the end of the season, Bellion went AWOL, claiming his grandmother was ill and he was "mentally unfit" to play in a relegation battle. His agent denied widespread reports that he had been in contact with United, but David Dein claimed that Bellion had also been offered to Arsenal on the quiet.

A few weeks later, when his Sunderland contract expired, Bellion signed for United on a Bosman. Sunderland promptly went to a tribunal to determine a fee, but before a ruling could be made United offered £3million to settle in private. Very much in private, too - the deal reportedly included a confidentiality agreement, under which, basically, Murray would keep his mouth shut about the while affair.

Let's just take a moment to remember that all this fuss was over David Bellion.

Dwight Yorke
"Anyone else would have been reprimanded by now," ranted John Gregory of Sir Fergie's public appreciation of Dwight Yorke.

"He keeps saying he's interested in signing Dwight. But I find it very strange he should be allowed to discuss the future of a contracted player at another club on a daily basis in the papers."

In echoes of today's negotiations with Liverpool over Gareth Barry, Villa had been outraged when United only offered £8m for a player they had been told would cost them £16m. Yorke had two years left on his contract, and Gregory, whose side were competing for a place in the Champions League, was absolutely insistent his star striker would not be allowed to leave Villa Park.

"People keep saying that we would get far less for him this time next season," said Gregory. "And that we would get nothing in two years' time.

"But we're not looking to sell. The money's irrevelant as we don't need it. There's not many in the world that would replace Dwight Yorke."

Yorke then asked for a transfer. "If I'd had a gun, I would have shot him," a furious Gregory told the press, still insistent Yorke would not leave for less than his asking price. Then came Goodison Park; Yorke made no effort whatsoever in Villa's Premiership clash with Everton, refusing to chase the ball. In the eyes of Villa, the striker was effectively on strike, and when United came back in with a £12.6m offer, the Midlands club were left with little option but to sell.

Paul Ince
'Hurray!' said confrontation lovers everywhere when Paul Ince's Blackburn were handed an August trip to West Ham. It's nearly twenty years since Ince left Upton Park for Old Trafford, but some memories stick in the head. Like your best player posing in a Man United shirt before he's completed any sort of move. No question of any wrongdoing from Ferguson here, but the moment Ince pulled on that shirt his position at West Ham became untenable.

Ince maintains that it was all above board and in no way his fault. "I spoke to Alex Ferguson and the deal was close to being done," he said in a recent interview with FourFourTwo. "I then went on holiday, and my agent at the time, Ambrose Mendy, said it wasn't worth me coming back to do a picture in a United shirt when the deal was completed, so I should do one before I left, and it would be released when the deal was announced.

"Lawrence Luster of the Daily Star took the picture and put in the library. Soon after, their sister paper, the Daily Express, were looking for a picture of me playing for West Ham, and found the one of me in the United shirt in the pile. They published it and all hell broke loose.

"I came back from holiday to discover West Ham fans were going mad. It wasn't really my fault. I was only a kid, I did what my agent told me to do, then took all the crap for it."

Ince quickly sorted the rest of the details to complete his move...and then failed his initial medical. Luckily for Ince, he then managed to pass another, and the only people left in rather a bad mood were the West Ham fans. And they still are.

Various St Mirren Folk
We're going back a long way on this one - Harry van Raay would be making all sorts of comments about leopards changing their spots. "Four days before he eventually left I knew perfectly well that he had told all the staff that he was moving to Aberdeen," said Willie Todd, the former St Mirren chairman, in an interview with The Guardian earlier this year. "A famous reporter of the time, Jim Rodger of the Daily Mirror, told us that Alex had asked at least one member of the squad to go to Aberdeen with him."

"It was a clear breach of contract on his part; he was still under contract to St Mirren and Aberdeen had not contacted us to discuss compensatation.

"I had no option but to sack him."

Ferguson, ever one to fight his corner, took the case to an industrial tribunal. "St Mirren won hands down, on every count relating to his breach of contract," said Todd. "The minutes of that meeting show you that."