FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED

'The finest Fergie book of them all' – Tom English, BBC Sport

When Sir Alex Ferguson retired at the end of the 2013 season he was the most successful football manager Britain had ever seen, having won twice as many trophies as his nearest rival. But that success had not come easily. Thirty-five years previously he had arrived at the rain-swept training ground at Aberdeen F.C. as the recently sacked manager of St Mirren. Already a divisive figure, this Alex Ferguson came with a reputation for trouble and a lot still to prove. Not for nothing, many thought he was a risky choice.

Fergie Rises returns to a time when Ferguson was lucky to get Aberdeen, not the other way around. It's the story of an eight-year revolution that saw the Dons and their ambitious young manager knock the Old Firm off their perch, taste victory in Europe for the first time, and electrify Scottish football. When Ferguson finally left the club for Manchester United, in 1986, fans and rivals were unanimous in believing he had engineered one of the most astonishing upheavals in the game’s history.

The author also examines the personal tragedies Ferguson overcame – the deaths of his father and his mentor Jock Stein – and the rivalries, setbacks and triumphs that shaped a sporting genius.

'A masterful retelling of how Ferguson was "made" at Aberdeen' – Alan Pattullo, The Scotsman

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Dedication
• Preface
• One: ‘Cup finals are too big for some players’
• Two: A discreet call to the Jolly Rodger
• Three: Rescuing Alex Ferguson
• Four: ‘Be arrogant, get at their bloody throats’
• Five: The cull of the ‘Westhill willie-biters’
• Six: ‘Doug Rougvie Is Innocent’
• Seven: 1980: The Champions
• Eight: Liverpool
• Nine: Crime and punishment under the Beach End
• Ten: Ipswich fall to the Jock bastards
• Eleven: Declaring war on the Glasgow press
• Twelve: The Old Firm: ‘We didn’t like Aberdeen, they didn’t like us’
• Thirteen: The march to Gothenburg
• Fourteen: Real Madrid
• Fifteen: The hairdryer and the baseball bat
• Sixteen: European Team of the Year
• Seventeen: Summer 1984: the rebuild
• Eighteen: ‘This season’s target is two trophies . . . minimum’
• Nineteen: Nasty, toxic, and violent: welcome to Aberdeen-Rangers
• Twenty: Fergie goes to Mexico
• Twenty-One: Souness
• Twenty-Two: A death in the family
• Twenty-Three: The days of our lives
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Index
• Illustrations