It was two days before the end of 2001 when Peter Kenyon and Maurice Watkins walked into a flat belonging to super-agent Pini Zahavi in Marleybone, the exclusive district of
London, and sat in a living room with Sven-Goran Eriksson. The reason for the meeting was clear to all parties.
Manchester United wanted Eriksson to replace the retiring Sir Alex Ferguson and Eriksson wanted the job. Ferguson had already announced his decision to call it a day at the end of the 2001/02 season and this was when Eriksson-mania was at its height. It was only a few months after England's 5-1 win in
Germany in
World Cup qualifying, but the Swede suspected the honeymoon wouldn't last forever and replacing Ferguson was the club
Job every manager wanted. By this stage, Ferguson had won seven of his 13
Premier League titles. There would be another
Champions League to come as well as two more finals. But as 2001 turned into 2002 he looked like he was off. ALSO READ: I was praised by Alex Ferguson on Saturday and released by him on Tuesday ALSO READ: I had three touches against
Liverpool but my goal was better than winning 5-0 Ferguson famously credits his late wife Cathy for convincing him he was retiring too early, but the further 11 years he spent in charge at Old Trafford weren't guaranteed when he reversed his decision to call it a day. For a start, he initially told the board he would do just two more years. Then there was the fact that consideration was given to telling Ferguson he had left it too late to perform his U-turn. This remarkable turn of events is detailed in Legally Red, the autobiography of former United director of 28 years Maurice Watkins, which was published posthumously on Thursday, nearly three years after his death at the age of 79, in August 2021. It is a fascinating and detailed account of his United years, going as far back as Tommy Doherty's time at the club, to recruiting Ferguson and the success the Scot delivered. Watkins was at the heart of so many of these stories. From nearly losing Ferguson to
Barcelona before he had ever managed United, to representing Eric Cantona in front of a
Football Association hearing after his kung-fu kick at Crystal Palace in January 1995, via any number of vital and sometimes strange transfers, not to mention attempted takeovers by Robert Maxwell, Michael Knighton and BSkyB. Watkins had seen it all. He was a particularly close confidante of Ferguson, who wrote the foreword to the book after Watkins' partner Elaine and his stepdaughter Emma pitched up at his house and knocked on his door nine months after Maurice had died. But that relationship could have ended earlier than anyone ever realised. “Maurice, it’s Alex. I need to speak to you, it’s urgent," Ferguson said down the line after calling Watkins on his mobile. "I have changed my mind. I do not want to retire as manager of Manchester United." Watkins asked Ferguson how much longer he intended to carry on. "Two more years. Why Eriksson?," he said. Eriksson had emerged as United's first choice to replace Ferguson. Kenyon and Watkins had been turned down by Arsene Wenger, who had riled Ferguson since his arrival as
Arsenal manager and had considered David O'Leary, Martin O'Neill and Fabio Capello before settling on the current
England manager. The deal was almost done, so when Ferguson changed his mind it wasn't a fait accompli. "That Ferguson wanted to stay as United manager did not mean his wish would be granted," writes Watkins, who phoned Kenyon, Roland Smith [chairman of the plc board] and David Gill after speaking to Ferguson. "Initially there was a feeling Alex had left it too late and we should tell him that. However, by the evening our views had softened as we recognised it would be difficult to tell Alex he could not change his mind." It is a phone call and a moment that changed the course of history at United. The directors kept Eriksson on ice just in case, while Ferguson's representatives said he would be willing to continue his managerial career away from Old Trafford. It didn't come to that. It is one of many remarkably eye-opening tales included in the book, published by Hodder & Stoughton after a recommendation from Ferguson after that visit from Elaine and Emma. "We went round to his knocked on his door and we were like, 'we need a good publisher'," said Emma. "We were looking at books on the shelves at home and for the big sports publishers and Hodder is the biggest sports publisher. "They're the right people to take this book forward. You know, it wasn't going to just go to anyone. It needed to be a good publisher and Roddy Bloomfield, who is Alex’s publisher, has been brilliant and just really enjoyed the book and was like ‘yeah we want to take it on’." Watkins had always had an ambition to write a book but the project only accelerated during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when he would take himself into his office and start writing his story in longhand with a pen and paper. "He said he'd wanted to write a book forever, he always knew that he wanted to write it, which is why he kept so much stuff," said Emma. "He'd often give interviews about certain events and things, he's given a number of interviews about the Cantona kung-fu kick, but he purposely withheld information and never gave a full detailed account of it, because he always wanted to save that for his book one day. "It took a long time for him to get everything down and a lot of fact-checking and going through boxes and finding information. He finished writing it in I'd say May or June 2021. "He took a downturn at the end of July, so it was completely finished and I started reading through it. The photos in the book, in April 2021, we went through all the boxes of photos and he picked out the photos to go in the book." Before the end of Watkins' 17-year battle with
cancer, Emma told him she would make sure the book saw the light of day. "He just put his heart and soul into it. He'd worked so hard on it and I made a promise to him that I'd get it published and here we are today," she said. " I couldn't bear the thought of him having worked on it and no one read it, so to see how much interest there is in it is brilliant. "I describe the book as a factual relic of stories that no one else could have told because that's what I feel like it is. It's just such an informative book and it's quite nice for people to read things where they probably don't know the ins and outs of it and to be able to get that look back in history now, 30 years later from some of the events, to have that insight now. "There's no one else that can really do that anymore. Everyone's written about events and this is all quite different and in much more detail and a lot of stuff that was going on at the time, quoting from documents, things that were sent at the time." The family will donate the royalties received from the book to fund free bursaries at Manchester Grammar School, which Watkins attended for free and felt set him up for life. Legally Red, published by Hodder & Stoughton, is out now