The summons came a month after Blackburn sacked him, Sir Alex Ferguson calling to say “come and see me”. Michael Appleton turned up at Carrington and asked Kath, the receptionist, what the meeting was about. “I don’t know, Michael,” she said. Then came a shout from upstairs. “He’s ready for you.”

Ferguson was working in his office. Does he want me to scout for him, Appleton wondered? A spot of coaching? Close the door, Michael. “He asked me to go round the other side of the room. Next thing you know, he went ‘right. YOU!’ And for 10 minutes he was shouting at me. ‘What have I told you?!’ On the way home,” Appleton recalls, “I must have phoned about six people. ‘I’ve just had