Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United, Football
Nasir Jabbar
Sir Alex Ferguson once offered a Manchester United star £100,000 to 'retire immediately' when the player was just 29.
Ferguson enjoyed a legendary managerial spell at Man United, winning an impressive 13 league titles.
He managed some of the club's best ever players including Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.
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The Scot was viewed as a father figure to many and protected his players.
He even offered Paul McGrath £100,000 to stop playing football because of his drinking.
McGrath struggled with an alcohol addition, with Ferguson willing to pay the Irishman off to leave the club and retire on the spot in an effort to stamp out the drinking culture at Man United in the late 1980s.
Aged 29 at the time, McGrath turned down Ferguson's offer as he felt he had more to give as a player.
However, he left Man United for Aston Villa, where he earned the nickname 'God'.
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"Sir Alex got me into the room and just said 'we’d like you to stop playing football'," he told The Telegraph.
"Simple as that. And he said they were willing to give me £100,000 to quit playing football altogether and just go back to Ireland.
"I was thinking about it because £100,000 back then was quite a lot of money. But I spoke to [teammates] Kevin Moran and Bryan Robson, and I just said I wanted to play on because I thought I could still do something in football.
"So Gordon Taylor, who was at the PFA, went into Sir Alex and said 'Paul’s playing on, you can fine him, you can do what you want but he’s going to play football - here or somewhere else'."
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McGrath added: "It wasn’t a shock really because we were acting up a bit back then.
"We had a bit of fun but we overdid it, so then he just wanted me out of the club. Then Bryan Robson was having a barbeque at his house and suddenly Graham Taylor was on the phone saying ‘can you come up to Aston Villa’ and I jumped at the chance. I thought 'Jesus, I can play there every week'.
"Villa pushed United close for the Premier League title in 1992/93 - and McGrath regrets not putting in more effort in an effort to nick it off his former boss Fergie.
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"If I had taken it a little more seriously on certain occasions then we might have actually won a title. So I’ve always got that thing in the back of my mind that I should have behaved a little better sometimes."