Sir Alex Ferguson has cemented himself as the greatest manager in the history of the Premier League but even he had trouble controlling certain players during his tenure as manager of Manchester United.
READ MORE: Roy Keane refused to speak to teammate for 6 months because he played for Rangers
When you work at a club like United and you have natural born winners like Roy Keane at the club, it’s inevitable that things could get feisty during training sessions.
Ryan Giggs revealed to the Metro that Sir Alex didn’t actually take training sessions and left it up to his huge numbers of coaches that were employed by the club and he had good reasons too.
Ferguson revealed in his autobiography which was quoted by PunditArena that Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney were at the centre of a lot of controversy in training and that training matches would regularly boil over if their teams didn’t win.
Sir Alex said: “On our training ground he(Rooney) gave everybody hell,”
“Everybody. The referee, the other players. The poor refs – Tony Strudwick, or Mick (Phelan) or René (Meulensteen) – would all say to me, ‘You’re the only one with the authority – you should ref these games.’
“My reply was: ‘There’s no way I’m refereeing these matches.’”
Things got so bad at Carrington that Ferguson had to consider hiring professional referees to officiate the games.
“I remember Jim blowing his whistle mildly for a foul on a day when Roy Keane was in one of his dark moods, giving everyone stick. His team, our team, the ref, any living creature he could find.
“Jim turned to me with his whistle and said: ‘I hope Roy’s team wins.’
“‘That’s ridiculous, that,’ I said, trying not to laugh.
“‘Yeah, but the grief I’ll get in that dressing room,’ Jim said. At one point we even discussed hiring referees.”
Roy is absolutely terrifying, I wouldn’t want to referee any of the training games that he’s involved in and the Cork man even clashed with goalkeeper Andy Gorham on training ground after he wouldn’t pass to him.