As Sir Alex Ferguson announces his resignation, we look at his career in numbers: wins, losses, trophies, transfers – and Fergie time

After almost 27 years at Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson has announced he's finally ready to call it a day – and as a possible bonus favour to the Labour party (of whom he is a long-term supporter), he's done it on the day of the coalition's third Queen's speech.

We've gathered together a swathe of the key statistics of his career below:

Ferguson's win record across his whole Manchester United tenure is (unsurprisingly) a pretty impressive one, with the Opta data giving him an overall percentage of 60.2%. He's got better as he's gone along, though: at his previous managerial gig for Aberdeen, his win rate was 56.8%.

Here's those games, wins, and losses broken down by league:

Fergie's best win record was in the Premier League, at 65% (he's higher in the FA Cup, but you do go out when you lost there), and his worst was Man U's brief stint in the UEFA Cup, where he won just one game of eight.

Pretty consistently across the different leagues, Manchester United under Alex Ferguson have scored just over two goals for every one they've let in.

Alex Ferguson's picked up 38 trophies during his time at Manchester United. About a third of them – the biggest chunk – come from the Premier League:

Alex Ferguson's team has taken the trophy in 13 of the 21 seasons of the Premier League – leaving rival managers with a daunting record to surpass. Arsène Wenger is the second-most successful Premiership manager, but lags 10 trophies behind Fergie.

Roberto Mancini, the only other current Premier League manager in the table, will have to pick up another 12 trophies to match Ferguson. Still, he's got time...

Seeing red

In the Premier League, Man U have picked up 49 red cards across Alex Ferguson's 27 seasons

Fergie in gum

Ferguson's gum-chewing during matches is the stuff of legend, met sporadically with tutting disapproval by certain right-wing columnists, and wide speculation as to exactly how many sticks he gets through each match.

We've seen estimates as low as 5-6 sticks, and as high as an implausible(?) 85.

Assuming a conservative 10 sticks per match, in his Man U tenure Fergie has gone through around 14,980 gum sticks. If he's been keeping the used gum, he's got about enough to make two regulation-sized footballs, with some left over (though they'd probably be pretty manky by now).

Manchester United isn't known as a pauper's club, but nor is Fergie known for spending particularly lavishly. This shows up to an extent in a head-to-head between Man U and local rival Man City.

Since 1992, according to data from transferleague.co.uk, Man U has spent around £531m on transfers (but recouped £317.7m selling players).

By contrast, in the five seasons under its current ownership, City has spend £537.5m (and only recouped around £147m in sales)

But perhaps the biggest Fergie mystery – and controversy – of all is the phenomenon occasionally given much of the credit for his success: "Fergie time", the widespread belief among rival fans that referees give Man U huge amounts of extra time when they're losing, to give them chance to score one of their notorious late equalisers, or even winners.

The BBC's "More or Less" looked into the phenomenon last year and found it was indeed real, though only when playing at home: on average, Man U got an extra 79 seconds of extra time when they were losing than when they were winning.

Man U weren't the only team to benefit from this effect (though they do best) – Liverpool get an extra 56 seconds, Man City 50. But Chelsea are particularly unlucky: even at home they get less extra time when losing than when they're ahead.

What else?

We're digging around for more Ferguson facts and figures as the day goes on, and we'll update this post with more. But what else would you like to know? Any more Ferguson myths you'd like us to test? Or do you have some Fergie-related data of your own? Let us know in the comments below...