In this rare and exclusive interview David Gill lifts the lid on life behind the scenes of football:

From graduating from university, to life as a finance director and later chief executive of one of the world’s biggest football clubs, the 58-year-old Bowdon resident has an interesting story to tell.

During an appearance at an event to celebrate 500 years of Manchester Grammar School, Gill, the current UK vice president of FIFA, shared his views on a wide range of topics.

They included the story behind his decision to eventually join FIFA, his thoughts on whether it was a mistake for Sir Alex Ferguson and himself to leave Manchester United at the same time, as well his opinion on the media and much more.

David Gill on dealing with media scrutiny as Manchester United chief executive...

Football in particular has changed even in the past five years, to 24 hour news channels.

When I became chief executive the communications director Paddy Harveson went to work for The Royal Family so I had to hire someone straight away.

I got criticised for not speaking to the press but I had a very good communications director.

I didn’t not speak to them, but I did it in a controlled manner and on an irregular basis. I filtered everything through a chap called Phil Townsend, the communications director, who was first class.

That was how I dealt with that. It was a case of telling people things, ‘when we need to tell you them’, but, ‘we won’t feed the animals so to speak’.

In this job you do get praise so it’s important to treat praise and criticism the same.

David Gill on transfer deadline day, and why some clubs leave it so late to do business...

I don’t know (why they do it so late). It is very difficult.

To an extent when Alex and I were at United we always liked to do things as early as we could, but it wasn’t always possible.

By and large you try and do it early, particularly if you have a player coming in from overseas. Because you have got to integrate them into the club, get them a house and allow them to settle down.

If you got it done early you’d know what your costs were going to be for the next financial year.

But there are certain clubs who don't do that. With Tottenham, I’m not speaking out of turn, and Daniel Levy, he would like to do that.

In 2008, when we won the Champions League, we decided that we couldn’t rely on Tevez, Rooney and Ronaldo to score all the goals so went for another forward and that was Berbatov. I spoke to Daniel Levy in June that year, made an offer, and it went on for the whole summer.

It was a nightmare. There was a great picture my wife took of me, on holiday in Florida, on the phone to Daniel Levy, with my foot on a fire hydrant.

In the end I felt it affected Spurs because we did the deal in the end, at midnight on deadline day, so Tottenham couldn’t get a replacement in.

The way the deal got done was that Daniel needed a striker and asked about Fraizer Campbell. So Alex had to phone up Fraser and say ‘by the way Fraizer, do me a favour, you’re going to Tottenham now’. And that’s how it happened.

What I’m saying is that Daniel probably squeezed an extra million pounds out of us, but he probably could have got £29m or so two weeks earlier and allowed time to get a different striker and spend that money wisely.

There are lots of factors to it though. There are agents, clubs, but in an ideal world you would do it early.

I do believe there is an issue with the transfer window being open after the season starts.

I raised this with UEFA the other week. And I know certain managers like Roberto Martinez feel that way.

It’s not healthy for anyone. It’s not always easy to do it in World Cup and Euros years, but it should be feasible to close the window before the season starts. I would like to see it happen.

David Gill on how deals are done...

We would assess things every day of the year. Players around the world that we might be interested and also players who might be coming through our academy.

Assessing the players we currently had in the team, their age, form, fitness, length of contract, too. The whole machine was feeding it.

The actual business was done in January or in the summer window, though. And the ultimate decision was quite rightly Alex’s. Once he made that decision, I would go out and try and do the deals.

I would speak to Alex very regularly, once a day, twice a day some days, and would meet him every Friday morning very early.

We had discussions about players. He would give certain priorities, like the character being harmonious, to an extent.

But the very fact that Manchester United were winning trophies on a regular basis under Alex, people wanted to come and play for him.

The actual disposals of players, apart from Ronaldo, weren’t massive amounts. Players aren’t stupid. It’s obvious if they are not playing regularly that it’s time to move on.

The issue of trying to value a player is about judgement. You rarely get the right price.

David Gill on his relationship with Sir Alex...

At the end of the day he is (was) the most important employee in the club.

At the same time, Alex was very good because he understood that he couldn’t achieve what he wanted to achieve unless the other parts of the club were working well.

The commercial side, the stadium side, investing in the training ground. He was astute in that sense but he also had the success that enabled him to take the long term view.

We got on, and over time, you’d have to ask him this, but I think he respected my opinion on certain football aspects.

We had some run-ins though. If we hadn’t I don’t think we would have been effective. At the end of the day, we both wanted Manchester United to be as successful as it could be.

If the team does well, you get prize money and a lot of extra income in. It’s all high margins so you can reinvest that back in the team, which is the most important part.

I think I walked out of his office once. The language was atrocious. But he called me a couple of hours later talking about something else as if nothing had happened. I thought, ‘fair enough’.

He had a great ability – and it was certainly something I learned from him, even though I’m not very good at it – to move on very quickly.

He could make his point, but once it was said and you either reacted or not, you got on with it and that was water under the bridge, which was important.

When we had a bad defeat on a Saturday, when Carlos Queiroz was the assistant manager, he would come in a bit down, but Alex would come in and would be thinking about the next game and lifting the spirits.

You think that’s obvious, that’s easy, but to actually do it is not easy. He was very good at that.

David Gill on the Glazer family...

It was an interesting time when they took over. You got a lot of people who didn’t like the owners coming in because of how they structured it through leverage, through debt.

I was criticised for staying on. But both Alex and I thought we could work with them and take it on.

In our experience with them, they never ever didn’t allow us to spend money. To buy a player was just one call. People don’t necessarily believe that because of the way they (United) are spending money now.

But I always felt they were very easy to deal with. The private company situation was easy to operate within and they were long term in their view.

An example is when Manchester United set up MUTV, we wanted to de-risk our investment.

The club owned a third, Sky owned a third and Granada/ITV owned a third, so they were funding it. What the Glazers wanted to do was retain 100 per cent ownership of it. So they bought out firstly Granada for probably above what it was worth and then subsequently Sky.

They were quite long term in terms of their outlook.

The people who oppose them will oppose them for ever and we have to accept that, but what you have to do when running the club is to do it in a way that you think is going to make sure it is a continued success.

David Gill on his favourite player he signed at United...

I’m not going to name one, but in terms of favourites I like, it’s people like Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic.

Patrice, in particular, really embodied what Manchester United was about.

I always feel that the ones who did embrace coming into Manchester and England, and learning the language, were the ones who did better.

It used to annoy me intensely when a player we signed was still doing an interview in his mother tongue two or three years later to the British media,” he added.

It was always a real buzz when you got a player in, though. There was something about it, especially when a player transformed the team or scored a winning goal.

David Gill on leaving Manchester United...

In 2013 I took the decision to step down as chief executive of Manchester United after 10 years at the club. For me it was the right time.

It’s very easy to stay beyond your shelf life. I always returned agents’ calls, even if I despised them, on the basis that they might have one player that we might want in two or three years time.

But I was finding I was getting a bit more irritated by their calls.

You wouldn’t have seen it from the outside but I felt that in two or three years time that might have been noticed.

It was time to move on. You also need someone with new ideas and so on.

I thought, ‘I’ve had a fantastic time in football, learnt a lot, met a lot of people’, and that it was an honour and a privilege to work for Manchester United, the club I supported as a boy.

David Gill on joining FIFA as Britain’s Vice President...

I still felt I could do something in football and was on the board of the FA.

UEFA – which comprises of the 54 nations – was the next step so I effectively became a member of the executive committee.

Playing a key role in that led to FIFA. I needed a lot of persuading to do it because of how the organisation was structured under Blatter’s leadership. I wasn’t at all comfortable.

But I got a distinct impression that new people going into FIFA were ones who wanted to effect change. So I decided it was good to have British representation.

I was in the gym at the hotel in Switzerland, not the hotel where all the arrests took place, and sitting on a bike when a guy told me about all these arrests.

I went back to my room and saw it all unfolding. It was quite difficult because the next day I was due to be formerly appointed.

I told them I couldn’t take my position. When I was about to sit down and write my formal resignation letter someone told me Blatter might be resigning so I didn’t bother writing my letter and have now taken up my position. And of course, Mr Blatter will be replaced in February next year.

FIFA is quite a simple product. It has one thing to sell – The World Cup. It’s a huge product don’t get me wrong.

It has responsibilities as to how it sells it and what it uses the money for. So when you boil it down it can be organised in a much better, but there are lots of things wrong with it.

David Gill on whether it was a mistake for Sir Alex Ferguson and himself to leave Manchester United at the same time...

A lot of people have said that. It was always going to be difficult when Sir Alex Ferguson left, I agree with that.

When you’ve had that much success for so many years, we always felt that sort of transition was going to be very difficult.

He was like a stick of rock through every bit of Manchester United. I was available to my successor Ed Woodward.

Hindsight is easy. If you look at it we won the league by 13 points (in 2013), and we had a good squad, but like any good squad it needed to be developed.

The stability was there. But the decision was made. I told Alex I was going in January of that year and he told me two weeks later.

We discussed it with the owners. I was clear on my reasons and he was clear on his.

We were both available but it was always going to be a lot more difficult for the successor of Alex Ferguson than the successor of me.

David Gill on David Moyes...

Certain people could have possibly been kept on in terms of football roles. But it was always going to be difficult.

Having said that, to win the league by 13 points, it was very disappointing to go down to 7th.

He (Moyes) was hard working and very diligent and a very nice man. It was just unfortunate.

That’s not a very Gary Neville sort of answer. He would have been a bit more to the point. But I feel I have got to be a bit more careful.

* For the full exclusive feature on David Gill, following his talk at the Manchester Grammar School, see this week’s Greater Manchester Business Week magazine

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