It was the most feared half-time weapon in football – and Sir Alex Ferguson's players all dreaded being on the receiving end of it.
Fergie's 'hairdryer' became a legendary force of discipline at Manchester United, and few were spared his wrath. Especially Mark Hughes, the man who coined the term.
Now, in expert journalist John Richardson's new book Fergie: Under The Hairdryer - a unique collection of stories and anecdotes about Ferguson's famously volcanic temper - players and coaching staff relive their personal experience of football's ultimate blowtorch.
Fergie Under The Hairdryer by John Richardson, published by Reach Sport, is available for 25% off from reachsportshop.com.
I know it has been said that I came up with the term ‘the hairdryer’ over the blasts he would give the players. I honestly don’t know. I think it first came up in something the former United correspondent for the Manchester Evening News, David Meek, wrote in an interview with me.
I must have mentioned it. Whether it was later embellished, I don’t know. I had said at first it was like standing next to a blow torch. That then became a hairdryer. He would stand so close to you while he was giving you a bollocking and I would imagine the cartoon where the character’s hair is standing on end from a blast of hot air. So yes, maybe I’m guilty of calling it ‘the hairdryer’. It’s certainly stuck.
He wasn’t averse to giving me the hairdryer – I had a few blasts. I used to frustrate him because, on occasions, I was a bit loose with possession of the ball. I could hold onto it a bit too long and get dispossessed.
We were playing Leeds United in a FA Cup game at Elland Road in 1992 and I miscontrolled a throw-in about 10 minutes into the game. I’ve since seen a clip of it on the TV and he rushed to the side of the pitch and shouted at his assistant Brian Kidd to get me off. At the time I had been oblivious to all this.
Kiddo evidently placated him saying, ‘there’s only 10 minutes gone for goodness sake, calm down’. I actually scored the winning goal, but he still wasn’t happy and I had to apologise for losing the ball. He could be hot or cold at times.
I think sometimes it was premeditated. He would think in his head, ‘I’m going to nail you,’ hoping for a reaction from his victim. You quickly learned not to be the person to lose possession just before half-time. If we were drawing or losing and you were the last one who had just lost the ball before the referee blew for the half-time whistle you were getting it because that would have been the last thing he would have remembered before coming into the dressing room. It got to the stage where nobody wanted the ball if you knew half-time was approaching.
Sometimes it didn’t really matter. Even if we felt we had done well he would still nail us. If we were bad then we really got it. And if he had forgotten who had lost possession just before the break then it would be Gary Pallister who would be blasted because he was usually the first one into the dressing room.
I think Pally [Gary Pallister] must have got 10 times more bollockings than anybody because he was first through the door. But it didn’t bother him. He just went out with the attitude, ‘I’ll show you’.
And that’s the difference between then and now. Nowadays if a player gets a bit of stick from the manager they go straight to their agent saying, ‘I can’t play for this man. He doesn’t like me. I need to move’. We just used to say, ‘sod that, we’ll show you we can play’. It was a different attitude.
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