Quotes from Alex Ferguson

Losing is a powerful management tool so long as it does not become a habit.

If you can assemble a team of 11 talented players who concentrate intently during training sessions, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and show up on time, then you are almost halfway to winning a trophy. It is always astonishing how many clubs are incapable of doing this.

very often our victories were squeaked out in the last few minutes, after we had drained the life from our opponents. Games – like life – are all about waiting for chances and then pouncing on them.

I never had a problem reaching a decision based on imperfect information. That's just the way the world works.

With young people you have to try to impart a sense of responsibility. If they can add greater awareness to their energy and their talents they can be rewarded with great careers.

If they lose faith in your knowledge, they lose faith in you. That grasp of the facts must be kept at a high level, for all time. You have to be accurate in what you say to the players.

Sometimes defeats are the best outcomes. To react to adversity is a quality.

You don't get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance.

You have to make everyone feel at home. That doesn't mean you're going to be soft on them – but you want them to feel that they belong.

Onde you bid farewell to discipline you day goodbye to success

There was no way I could contemplate taking the England job. Can you imagine me doing that? A Scotsman? I always joked that I would take the position and relegate them: make them the 150th rated country in the world, with Scotland 149.

As long as you don't criticise individual players in public, admonishing the team is fine, not a problem. We can all share in the blame: the manager, his staff, the players. Expressed properly, criticism can be an acceptance of collective responsibility. Under

Young people will always manage to achieve the impossible–whether that is on the football field or inside a company or other big organisation. If I were running a company, I would always want to listen to the thoughts of its most talented youngsters, because they are the people most in touch with the realities of today and the prospects for tomorrow.

The human element tells you a referee can be wrong. But the good ones will make the correct decisions more often than not. The ones who make the wrong ones are not necessarily bad referees. They just lack that talent for making the right calls in a tight time frame.

The most important aspect of our system was training.

The supporters were entitled to know when I was unhappy with a performance. But not an individual.

There are plenty of attributes that separate the great leader from the good manager. Both may put their work before family and friends, survive on little sleep, endure a lifetime of red-eye flights. Look more closely and you will find that the great leader possesses an unusual, and essential, characteristic – he will think and operate like an owner, or a person who owns a substantial stake of the business, even if, in a financial or legal sense, he is neither.

Leaders are usually unaware, or at least underestimate, the motivating power of their presence. Nobody sees themselves as others see them.

The medical scans of the players who hailed from climates warmer than Britain tended to reveal much healthier joints.

Part of the pursuit of excellence involves eliminating as many surprises as possible because life is full of the unexpected.

There's a lot of satisfaction that comes from knowing you're doing your best, and there's even more that comes when it begins to pay off. I

drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat.

Games–like life–are all about waiting for chances and then pouncing on them.

When you run any organisation, you have to look as far down the road as you can.