Sir Alex Ferguson hosts Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool at Old Trafford this weekend in a match between two of English footballs most intense rivals. Opposing managers on the field with a mutual respect off it and a common consensus on squad rotation…it’s a necessity in modern day football. Manchester United were ravaged by injuries last season but with a squad now on the verge of full fitness, Ferguson could just deliver his 9th Premiership title in this his 20th season in charge. Sir Alex Ferguson has been speaking to Sue McCann.

You bought Michael Carrick in the summer and I heard the press ask you if you’d be bringing anyone else in before the August transfer window closed. You replied basically that if you weren’t able to, you didn’t feel Manchester United fans would be too disappointed with what you’d have to work with, once players were back from injury. You’ve been fast out of the blocks this season and you’ve been proved right….

“I think that the great thing is that you forget that Scholes was missing for 6 months last year. So you’ve got a player who comes back with a freshness for you and keen to get back, because he had a worrying injury that nobody knew the cause of and nobody knew the recovery or remedy for it. But he’s back and I think the boy’s relishing being back.

Then Solksjaer, out for over two years at 31 years of age and you’re saying to yourself ‘well this is going to be very difficult for the boy’ but he’s been fantastic. So when you get that sort of boost or bonus, added to the younger ones that have been emerging over the last couple of years, there was every reason to be confident. Don’t forget we bought two players in the January window that allowed us to have plenty of cover at the back.

The midfield was the area that there’s been the most speculation about and the most criticism about simply because Roy Keane left. People weren’t analysing Roy Keane as a player of 34 or 35 years of age, they were analysing as if he was 22, as if he was still young. He wasn’t young, he was showing the signs like every player that’s had bad injuries and Roy had a few of them. He was getting to 35 and and at some point we were going to have to replace Roy anyway. So that was always a big issue at our club for the last 2 or 3 years and you just can’t find Roy Keanes, it’s impossible.

We focused on Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves right away (during the close season); got one and didn’t get the other. If we’d got Owen Hargreaves it would have given us a complete variation of the type of midfield players that you need in the modern day game. We’re disappointed that we didn’t get Owen Hargreaves but we’ve got people like Fletcher developing, fantastic. O’Shea is developing terrific; you can play him anywhere O’Shea. The return of Scholes, Ryan Giggs and the fantastic age he’s at Ryan, he’s showing his maturity and experience and it’s helping everyone and you’ve got a younger player like Kieran Richardson. The big blow to us really was Ji- Sung Park’s injury. Ji-Sung Park is probably one of the most under rated players I’ve ever had at this club and the players love him, even all the staff say ‘you can’t leave Ji-Sung Park out your team’. Ji-Sung has become a very, very important player in this club. We’ve lost him for 3 months but you lose players in the Premiership, that’s why you need a squad. So I think the squad we had, when the season started, I was happy with.”

Winning teams require character. You’ve touched on Ole Gunnar Solksjaer’s return; I take it players like him and Alan Smith, in the way he’s got his head down and got on with recovering from injury, are the type of players that you love?

“It’s not just manager’s that love them, people like that who give everything endear themselves to fans and they are right to think that way. I always remember being a player myself and I think that my reputation was to do that, that was the kind of player I was, I gave everything I could, I was always a trier, that’s why the Rangers fans liked me.

Alan Smith has got the sort of infectious attitude towards football that you just admire. He’s still in recovery a bit, the level he’s at now is from his first Reserve game he’s probably about 100% better. He came out himself and said he was ready for the first team but after he’d came into the first team training session a few times more he realised he was a mile short of it. But he is improving and he is going to be a great asset to us because I am just going to make him a centre forward, the Alan Smith of Alan Smith which there is nobody better at. That gives us terrific options and that’s why I allowed Rossi to go (on loan to Newcastle) because I was confident that Solksjaer was coming back, Smith was coming back and with Rooney and Saha that gives me the four strikers and I can play Ryan Giggs there if I need too.

I always say to young people when they come to this club ‘it’s not all about rising towards the stars, it’s about overcoming an injury or bad form, or missing a penalty kick, or a sitter or you give an own goal.’ It’s about all the things that happen in your progress to be successful and you get disappointments and you get bad injuries. Now Alan is a great example to any player who’s got a bad injury, his attitude to training is fantastic and what helped Alan really was he was so philosophical about it; he was like ‘it’s an injury, it’s ok’. When he got his injury at Liverpool that day, it wasn’t him that was upset it was Neville, Van Der Saar and Steven Gerrard who walked away thinking ‘oof’. It was horrendous, it was horrible but Alan just sat there calm and when they replaced the dislocation the Liverpool doctor said he was so calm and placid about it, it wowed him so the dislocation went back in easily. That’s why he’s lucky because if the dislocation hadn’t gone back in easily then you have a problem with the circulation and things like that. So his attitude towards life and football is a great example to any young one.”

Another player that you lost last season and now have back is Gabriel Heinze. He settled into the Premiership immediately when you signed him, natural Manchester United player, gets the ethos of it if you like. Foreign players don’t always settle as well as that, so given that criteria is he maybe one of your best signings?

“He’s a fantastic signing; he’s a warrior you see. Gabby is a player who sets out in a football match to have a personal battle with anyone who comes into his area. That’s his competition, he creates the competition with whoever his opponent is and he’s fantastic at that, that’s what motivates him. He takes on personal battles very well plus he’s a natural defender and he likes defending actually. There’s a lot of defenders who want to be centre forwards; you play little games at the end of a session on a Friday, Barthez used to love playing centre forward, Schmeichel used to love playing centre forward and centre halves love to play centre forward. Gabby plays at the back all of the time, he loves being a defender. You never see him up there trying to score goals, he’s always at the back, he loves defending.”

I know there’s a huge dose of respect between you and Rafa Bentiez who you play this weekend. I spoke to him about the recent public fascination with his method of squad rotation and his view is that he brought Valencia their first title in 31 years by rotating every game; what’s your take on squad rotation?

“Well I’ve been doing it for a long time but maybe not as detailed as Rafa has done. In terms of it being successful I always try to look at the game ahead and if the game ahead is more important then I have to try and make the changes in the immediate game. What Rafa is maybe doing is going into the detail of it, he’s struck on a formula which he used at Valencia of changing every game and mentally the (Liverpool) players are starting to adjust to that, so there’s a system there. Whereas I don’t have a particular system to do it, I look at more like who we’ve got the following game? Is it more important than this one? If this one is more important than the next one I’ll make the changes in the next one, but you have to make the changes, there’s no question about that.”

Rafa is trying to get his team right to win Liverpool the title for the first time in 16 years. During your time at United you’ve probably had to assemble four or five different teams and continue winning titles at the same time; how difficult is it to get that first winning team, is that the most challenging?

“Because I didn’t know the club and the players (when I joined Manchester United) it took me about a year and a half to realise that the team couldn’t win the league. Also to acclimatise to what the old first division was at that time and what you needed, who were the winning teams. At that point it was Liverpool and Arsenal came up behind them and both of them were very strong, physical, athletic teams and the Manchester United that I inherited just weren’t like that, they were a completely different type of team. So when I made up my mind we improved quite dramatically; I sold a lot of players to create the foundation and balance money for the players I wanted in and bought 5 players that pre season. Maybe 5 players was a lot at the time but it had to be done and what I felt was, that I might not win it the first year but I’ll win it the next year or the year after, because the team was young enough to accept a few challenges not just one with an old team then die away. So that was the philosophy of that.”

When you were trying to build your first team to win the title and people were maybe running out of patience, there wasn’t an easy fix then and today there isn’t a completely easy fix either. I suspect people don’t realise just how sophisticated management is….

“You don’t know the personalities that you are bringing in to play with either. We do our homework the best we can with the personalities we bring in. For instance with Paul Ince I got a lot of help off John Lyall who is a good friend of mine. He gave me a lot of help with Paul because I think Paul looked upon John as sort of his second father. With Gary Pallister, Archie Knox and I must have watched him more than we watched television! The decision to go for Pallister was based on potential, we could see the potential in Pallister, he was a big stringy bean pole of a lad, he had magnificent pace, he could pass a ball, had good balance. Before we signed him I must have watched him about 40 times. But you don’t know what you are getting totally until they get here, until they face the pressure of going out in front of what was at that time 48,000 people. So there is an element of risk and there’s also judgement and you have to rely on your judgement.”