Football - Bloody Hell!

The Biography of Alex Ferguson

Patrick Barclay

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Britain’s most respected sportswriter takes on the greatest football manager of all time

The true biography of Sir Alex Ferguson has yet to be written. Until now.

Alex Ferguson is the most fascinating and controversial figure in football today. He is also the most successful. His twenty-five-year tenure of the Manchester United dugout has seen him win everything there is to be won in football, many times over. His reign as manager has led to the rise of Manchester United to become the biggest football club in the world.

This book, written by the award-winning and critically acclaimed Patrick Barclay, will fill in the gaps left by the Ferguson's own book, Managing My Life (1999). Everyone who bought that book will want Barclay’s comprehensive, objective analysis of Ferguson, the good and the bad, and the occasionally ugly and it will also appeal hugely to those outside the Manchester United extended family for whom Ferguson has often acted as a red rag.

Having known Ferguson for a quarter of a century, Barclay believes him to be generous-spirited as well as ruthless and relentlessly competitive; in such an almost larger-than-life character, there is room for countless facets. And it is these facets that Barclay seeks to explore and explain.

Leaving no stone unturned, Barclay has spoken with everyone who knows Ferguson best; former players, fellow managers, friends and foes. The result is Football Bloody Hell!, the definitive, objective account of this fascinating man

Published: 1 December 2010
ISBN: 9781407084718
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 544

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Biography

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About the author

Patrick Barclay

Patrick Barclay began his career in football writing with the Guardian in Manchester in the mid-1970s, a few years after Sir Matt Busby had relinquished management and joined the Manchester United board. Barclay became one of Sir Matt's many acquaintances in the newspaper world and in 1994, having moved to the Observer by way of the Independent, attended the unforgettable match against Everton at Old Trafford that swiftly followed the great man's death. In that year Barclay was voted Britain's leading sports writer.

He later worked for the Sunday Telegraph, The Times and the Evening Standard in London before retiring from regular journalism at the end of his tenth European Championship in 2016. He covered nine World Cups. Barclay has written acclaimed biographies of Sir Matt's successors Sir Alex Ferguson (Football - Bloody Hell!) and Jose Mourinho (Further Anatomy of a Winner) and is also the author of The Life and Times of Herbert Chapman.

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Praise for Football - Bloody Hell!

Patrick Barclay traces the arc of the Scot's Govan youth to his Old Trafford supremacy with insight, sensitivity and poise
Sports Book of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

Thorough of research, rich of detail
Book of the Week, Richard Williams, Guardian

Stylishly written, admirably well-researched
Scotsman

Wonderful. Captures the contradictions of this complex personality as eloquently as it elucidates his genius
Irish Independent

Barclay tells his story and in doing so describes the way the game has changed over the years. We see the famous temper in action, but also a more reflective, generous side.
Colin Waters, Glasgow Herald