"I'm like my father," says Darren Ferguson. It is the last thing you would expect to hear from someone attempting to carve their own career path, and yet nearly two years into the job at Peterborough United, with one promotion in the bag and gunning for another in May, Ferguson Jr is comfortable enough in his skin to admit the similarities.
"I'm single-minded like him," he says, "to me everything's quite irrelevant apart from the football side of it — apart from your family, obviously — but everything else kind of gets in the way. Including Christmas." Bah humbug. The 36-year-old Ferguson concedes a smile.
The Peterborough manager looks like his father and he talks like his father — you are never quite sure what will come next, a grin or a snarl. You can imagine he keeps his players on their toes that way. But there is something occasionally softer about him too. On the pitch at London Road today was a scene you could never imagine at Old Trafford, the sight of two small figures tearing about with a football: Charlie, his nine-year-old son, and their black labrador, Max. "The groundsman will kill me," said Ferguson, "but that dog's got a better touch than Craig Mackail-Smith or Aaron McLean."
Since Ferguson joined Peterborough, in January 2007, the club's progress has been stellar. The supporters are on a high — undefeated in the league since August and currently fourth in the table — and Ferguson is even talking about finishing the season unbeaten if they can win away to top-of-the-table Leicester on Saturday.
For a man whose appointment was greeted with a mixture of shock and scepticism, that is some turnaround. He arrived, following the sacking of Keith Alexander, with no experience to recommend him. As far as the locals were concerned here was a man simply trading on his family name. But Ferguson brought everyone round to his way of thinking, introducing stability to the club, and suddenly there were no more quirky sound-bites from the director, Barry Fry, no more loopy behind-the-scenes reality television action, just the calm professional face of a club that appeared to be going places.
Where would that be? The Premier League, of course, according to the chairman, Darragh MacAnthony, a 32-year-old businessman who deals in overseas property and has ambitious plans to reach the top flight by 2013 — although, Ferguson admits, promotion from the Championship "could take two years". It sounds quite a slog. Wouldn't he rather just skip up the table and accept one of the rumoured job offers at a bigger club?
"I'll be honest," he says, "and this might sound strange, but it would be good for me to have a bad period in my managing career before I move on. At the moment it's all quite rosy. But in terms of my own personal career I don't think it would do me any harm to have a bad run.
"If you jump straight into another job — I suppose the best analogy might be Incey. He's gone from Macclesfield and saved them, got Milton Keynes promoted and then gone straight to Blackburn, had a bad run and he's got sacked, which is ridiculous really. I don't know if it was too big a gap to bridge [from League One to the Premier League] — I'm not saying it would be for me — I just think a lot of people think that you accept the first [big] job that comes along and that just doesn't sit that well with me."
Why did Ferguson ever want to be a manager in the first place? "I think my father was one of the reasons I wanted to be a manager, after watching the success he had. Listen, it is stressful, but it is a lot more stressful for the people around you. I don't feel stressed. Maybe I learned that from him. I can just switch off from it."
The obvious assumption to make is that Ferguson Jr would like to do things differently from Ferguson Sr, that any comparisons will grate. But asked if he would like to be known differently from his dad, Ferguson shakes his head. "I wouldn't," he says, "I'd be quite happy just to be exactly the same as him, manager-wise.
"Every individual has their own ideas on how they want to do things, but I ask him for advice — nothing tactical, just stuff that goes on inside a club that I've never experienced. He understands I'm a strong-willed person and he doesn't interfere."
As he trots back to the office Ferguson notes the result emblazoned across the club television — Gamba Osaka 3, Manchester United 5. "Have you seen the score?" goes the shout round the narrow corridors, "they went from 5–1 up to 5–3!"
"Yes, I've seen it," says Ferguson with a nod, and just the tiniest of wry smiles.
'I've seen his nasty side - and I don't want to see it again'
Peterborough's striker Aaron McLean talks about his manager
"The first day he arrived he came into the dressing room and said: 'I'm here to be successful, you're either with me or not'. He laid his marker down and he's kept those standards. He's very much his own man. He tries to separate himself from his family background and all credit to him for that. He could easily just be like, 'Yeah, Sir Alex Ferguson's my dad' and whatever, but he doesn't. He does everything his own way.
"Since he's come, the club as a whole — from top to bottom — is a lot more professional. He goes deep into everything, his preparation before a game is spot on. He finds out everything he needs to know about the opposition, how he wants us to play, he's very thorough in everything he does. We eat breakfast and lunch together every day to get the team spirit and it's worked for us.
"He's definitely had a positive effect on me. He does a lot of one-to-one work, on my composure, my finishing, my hold-up play. Little drills, really detailed stuff. Before I always knew what I needed to do, but having someone to show me what to do and encourage me has made a big difference.
"I get on really well with him. I've had problems where I've had to go and talk to him confidentially and he's been brilliant. He's very approachable, but at the end of the day if you're not performing you will see the other side of him. I don't think I should disclose what he does, but let's just say I've seen the nasty side of him before and it's not a side I want to see again. He's a perfectionist and he's got certain standards, but as long as we keep those standards then he's a nice guy.
"The club has been successful since he's arrived so I'm not surprised he's been linked with other clubs,. He's done a brilliant job, and no doubt he will continue to be linked to other clubs in the future."
