But Mary Hannigan wonders if the monstrously successful manager should pack it away

Alex Ferguson has done many things in his 20 years at Old Trafford, but mellowing isn't one of them. At his press conference yesterday he demonstrated he has as little tolerance now for criticism, or questioning of his position, as at any stage of his reign at Manchester United, enough to suggest that if fury is partly what fuels the man, and a ferocious desire to prove his doubters wrong, there is plenty left in the tank just yet.

"It is scandalous some people think I should retire," he said, "it is none of their business. Some people in this country don't want to work, so I don't think you should decry anyone who does. It disgusts me that people think that way. It should not be allowed."

It is, though, doubtful that Ferguson's clout extends to disallowing people from having particular thoughts, but his comments suggest disbelief on his part that, after all he has achieved at United, anyone should query the wisdom of him carrying on.

That Ferguson is celebrating his 20th anniversary with United on top of the Premiership table, on goal difference from Chelsea, might make this incredulity understandable. If they were to finish the season in the same position, bearing in mind the shallowness of the United squad and the depth of Chelsea's, that ninth Premiership title would rank up there with the finest and most improbable of his achievements since he arrived from Aberdeen in November 1986.

That he remains in charge at United 20 years after he succeeded Ron Atkinson is simply remarkable. In that same period Liverpool, a club not inclined to freely discard managers, have had Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Roy Evans, Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez at the helm. Newcastle have had 13 managers, including caretakers, in the same spell.

When he took over at United the club were in the depths. Literally. A 2-0 defeat to Oxford left them second from bottom of the table. The team Ferguson fielded that day was: Chris Turner, Mike Duxbury, Arthur Albiston, Paul McGrath, Kevin Moran, Graeme Hogg, Clayton Blackmore, Frank Stapleton, Remi Moses, Peter Davenport and Peter Barnes. McGrath and Moran apart, that's how much rebuilding had to be done.

Within a handful of seasons most of those players had departed, replaced by the likes of Brian McClair, Steve Bruce, Lee Sharpe, Mark Hughes (who returned from Barcelona), Gary Pallister, Paul Ince and Denis Irwin, the core of the team that kicked off more than a decade of success. And, of course, the youth system Ferguson rebuilt after the neglect of the Atkinson era, produced gold in the form of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, David Beckham and Co.

So, for most United supporters of an older vintage, who remember the team that featured Hogg, Blackmore and Davenport - not forgetting Terry Gibson, who, during his brief spell at Old Trafford, made Diego Forlan look like Denis Law - it would border on treachery and ingratitude of spectacular proportions to question whether Ferguson is still up to the job. But, despite the start to the season United have had, there is that nagging suspicion that the stubbornness that might once have been his greatest strength is now his greatest flaw.

Selling Ruud van Nistelrooy might have confirmed that Ferguson, after all these years, is still not a man to be crossed, but did his departure strengthen United going in to the new season, with just two forwards of genuine class, Wayne Rooney and the injury-prone Louis Saha, in the squad?

The more Darren Fletcher, Kieron Richardson and John O'Shea's respective merits are questioned the more Ferguson talks them up - and the more appearances they muster. None of them is a bad player, but none of them, patently, is a midfielder of sufficient quality to merit the loyalty they receive from their manager.

Ferguson talks often of his "young" United team, one that will mature in to yet another of his great sides. Apart from Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo who falls in to the "quality kids" category? No one. Not a single player in or on the fringes of the first team.

His transfer market activity? Can Michael Carrick, all £18 million of him, truly be Roy Keane's successor? A collective fortune was spent on Massimo Taibi, Juan Veron, Eric Djemba-Djemba, Kleberson, David Bellion and Diego Forlan, to name but a few.

How sound is Ferguson's judgment in the transfer market? And why did it take so many attempts to find a worthy replacement for Peter Schmeichel? What's happened the youth system? The best of the current crop made up half the team that struggled to beat Crewe in the League Cup - not one stood out as a player of obvious potential.

Since the Scholes/Beckham/Giggs crop very few youth team players have broken through to the first team.

How does the ongoing feud with the BBC, and chunks of the English media, benefit Manchester United? The BBC quarrel is personal to Ferguson, dating back to a documentary about his son Jason's activities as an agent.

When a reporter asks an entirely reasonable question about the failure of a major signing to prove his worth is a response from the manager of "youse are fucking idiots" anything but an embarrassment to the club?

As Michael Crick, author of an absorbingly revealing biography of Ferguson, put it this week, he mixes "absolute charm with (being) an appalling monster at times".

Any one who has watched him deal with the media, in particular, will vouch for that.

But Ferguson himself, and his supporters, would be entitled to respond thus to the criticism: count the trophies. They might even argue that, in today's game, you'll achieve nothing without being an "appalling monster" at times, although the example set by Arsene Wenger would suggest otherwise.

Ferguson is a very different animal to Jose Mourinho, but they have plenty in common too, and, like United, Chelsea seem content to put up with their manager's increasingly objectionable behaviour, so long as he's still bringing in the trophies.

And Ferguson's haul of silverware has been dazzling, although that he has won just a single Champions League, with all those resources, is a blot on his CV.

"For all his horses, knighthoods and championships, he hasn't got two of what I've got - and I don't mean balls," is how the late Brian Clough put it, as only Brian Clough could.

"I have been in this job two months and I think I have aged 10 years, so for him to keep going is remarkable," said Roy Keane of Ferguson yesterday.

"It is good to see United back on top. They have had one or two difficult years but he seems to be building another new team there and all credit to him."

And for what he has achieved in his 20 years at Old Trafford Ferguson deserves all the credit he receives. Whether he should continue beyond this season, well, it's debatable.

If he fails to add to his trophy collection come May the Glazer clan may choose to retire him. If he wins the Premiership, with the Champions League thrown in, he'll be more than entitled to address his doubters thus: "youse are fucking idiots".

Alex Ferguson at the helm

1986/87 - First Division (11th).

1987/88 - First Division (2nd).

1988/89 - First Division (11th).

1989/90 - First Division (13th); FA Cup winners.

1990/91 - First Division (6th); Charity Shield (shared); Cup Winners Cup.

1991/92 - First Division (2nd); League Cup; Uefa Supercup.

1992/93 - FA Premiership (1st).

1993/94 - FA Premiership (1st); FA Cup; Charity Shield.

1994/95 - FA Premiership (2nd); Charity Shield.

1995/96 - FA Premiership (1st); FA Cup.

1996/97 - FA Premiership (1st); Charity Shield.

1997/98 - FA Premiership (2nd); Charity Shield.

1998/99 - FA Premiership (1st); FA Cup; Uefa Champions League.

1999/2000 - FA Premiership (1st); Intercontinental Cup.

2000/01 - FA Premiership (1st).

2001/02 - FA Premiership (3rd).

2002/03 - FA Premiership (1st).

2003/04 - FA Premiership (3rd); FA Cup; Community Shield.

2004/05 - FA Premiership (3rd).

2005/06 - FA Premiership (2nd); League Cup.

Ferguson versus

The BBC

Ferguson has probably had as many bust-ups with the BBC as he has won Premiership titles, his last falling-out (over a documentary on the activities of his agent son, Jason) resulting in him refusing to give post-match interviews since May 2004 - which is why you see his assistant Carlos Queiroz on Match of the Day so often.

Before then, in 1995, there was a furious row with John Motson after he asked a tame enough question about Roy Keane's third red card in 14 games ("You've no right to ask that question, you're out of order, you know full well my ruling on that").

Relations worsened in 2000 when Ferguson successfully sued the BBC for libel when its Match of the Day magazine wrote of him often being branded as a "bully, cheat and back-stabber". The magazine had no link to the programme of the same name, but Ferguson boycotted it for several weeks, as he did every wing of the corporation.

The Press

"On you go. I'm no fucking talking to you. He's a fucking great player. Youse are fucking idiots," was how one Ferguson press conference ended when a journalist had the temerity to suggest that Juan Sebastian Veron wasn't proving to be a roaring success at United.

And that's been the general tenor of Ferguson's relations with the media over the last decade or so. "Journalists who don't play the game Ferguson's way are frozen out. He would prefer questions from the media to be about as demanding as an interview in Hello magazine," BBC radio reporter Pat Murphy told Michael Crick, author of the Ferguson biography The Boss.

There have been many casualties, with the Daily Mail top of Ferguson's hit list after they ran stories linking him with Norwegian agent Rune Hauge. As a result, the entire newspaper was banned from Old Trafford. As was PA reporter David Anderson because "you ask too many questions", as Ferguson told him.

Several other reporters have been banned from the club through the years, to the point where most of the questions asked at press conferences these days are, well, as demanding as an interview in Hello magazine.

Arsene Wenger

"He's a novice and he should keep his opinions to Japanese football," said Ferguson in 1997, a year after Wenger had arrived at Arsenal, marking the start of a feud that was almost as fiery as the contests between their teams.

Unlike Kevin Keegan in 1996, though, Wenger failed to crumble when Ferguson went on the attack, giving as good as he got, not least in 1998, 2002 and 2004 when Arsenal won the title. The arrival of Jose Mourinho on the scene and the emergence of Chelsea as the dominant Premiership power has taken some of the sting out of the feud - Ferguson has called Wenger many things, but never a voyeur.

Alan Green

The BBC Radio 5 commentator's habit of speaking his mind hasn't endeared him to too many managers over the years, not least Sam Allardyce in more recent times, but when he said that Roy Keane shouldn't be considered for the Footballer of the Year award because he was a "lout", well, there began Ferguson's boycott of the station.

The chances of the pair reconciling were somewhat diminished in 2000 when Green described Ferguson as a "foul-mouthed, arrogant, aggressive control freak" and a "shocking bully" in his autobiography.

Gordon Strachan

It was with some relief that Gordon Strachan left Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen for Manchester United in 1984, his relationship with the manager, by then, past breaking point. Two years later Ron Atkinson was sacked and the Old Trafford powers-that-be informed the gathered players that their new manager was . . . Alex Ferguson. Strachan got up, shook hands with his team-mates, saying "I'll be off."

He was off two years after that, Ferguson selling the midfielder to Leeds (where he won the league). "I decided this man could not be trusted an inch - I would not want to expose my back to him in a hurry," said Ferguson of Strachan, referring to the player's attempts to get away from Aberdeen.

Liverpool

It might be 16 years since Liverpool won the league but when Ferguson arrived at United they were still the dominant force in English football, winning the title in 1986, '88 and '90. His "greatest challenge", therefore, as he put it himself, "was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch - and you can print that".

"I can understand why clubs come away from Anfield choking on their own vomit and biting their tongues knowing they have been done by the referee," he said after a draw at Anfield in his second season, ironically enough the same observation often made about Old Trafford in Ferguson's reign.

Brian Kidd

Kidd had worked with Ferguson for over 10 years at the club, first, as youth team coach, helping bring through players such as David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, then becoming Ferguson's assistant. He left to become Blackburn manager in December 1998 and the following year was the subject of a bitter personal attack by Ferguson in his autobiography, Kidd's "temperament" leading Ferguson to conclude "I would have serious reservations about Brian ever taking charge of United."

Four years before Ferguson had said: "If my opinion counts for anything, I recommend Brian as my successor."

Alan Hansen

Hansen has often insisted he bears no grudge towards Ferguson, despite the fact he left him out of his 1986 Scottish World Cup squad at a time when he was regarded as one of the finest defenders in the world. The decision, said Hansen, was "the biggest blow in my entire career". When he moved into punditry his presence on the BBC alongside former team-mate Mark Lawrenson led Ferguson to describe the channel as the "Liverpool Supporters' Club". It was, one assumes, with some glee the manager celebrated the 1996 title win, months after Hansen's remark that "you don't win anything with kids".

His own players

If "player power" is all the rage these days it's still struggling to find its way through the doors at Old Trafford where the players have long since learnt if they upset the manager that's that, they're on their way. Jaap Stam, David Beckham and Ruud van Nistelrooy were the biggest names to suffer from "Fergie Power", and Roy Keane discovered even he could go too far.

John Magnier & JP McManus

Never, surely, can a four-legged creature have been at the centre of so much strife. Although Rock of Gibraltar could hardly be blamed for the two-legged men in his life falling out. Of all the feuds he has been involved in through his career this was potentially the most damaging for Ferguson, his dispute with Magnier over the ownership of the horse impinging on club business, at a time when Magnier and JP McManus were the major shareholders at United.

Letters were sent to the club raising concerns about how it was being run, and suggesting that Ferguson be offered only a rolling one-year deal, rather than a new four-year contract. In the end the Rock of Gibraltar dispute was settled, but Magnier and McManus sold their shares, resulting in the Malcolm Glazer take-over.

Manchester United

Managers

AH Albut1892-1900

James West1900-03

J Ernest Mangnall1903-12

John Bentley1912-14

Jack Robson1914-22

John Chapman1921-27

Lal Hilditch1926-27

Herbert Bamlett1927-31

Walter Crickmer1931-32

Scott Duncan1932-37

Walter Crickmer1937-45

Matt Busby1945-69

Wilf McGuinness1969-70

Matt Busby1970-71

Frank O'Farrell1971-72

Tommy Docherty1972-77

Dave Sexton1977-81

Ron Atkinson1981-86

Alex Ferguson1986-