A new book shares unheard interviews from Sir Alex Ferguson as it reflects on his time in charge at Man Utd.
Sir Alex Ferguson
Fergie: The Lost Tapes looks back on Sir Alex Ferguson's time in charge of Manchester United
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Wayne Barton was already working on a book about the Sir Alex Ferguson era at Manchester United when he received a message on social media that would transform the project and offer unseen and unheard insight into what the Scot achieved at Old Trafford.
Barton is one of the most renowned and respected authors on United and his book on the Ferguson era was the final part of a trilogy, after Too Good To Go Down and Que Sera, Sera. After initially planning to look at Ferguson's work from 1986 to 1992, before the good times truly rolled, he began work on a book covering the entire spell, including voices from opponents.
Then came a message on Facebook from a name he didn't recognise, offering something he might be interested in. It was a slice of history, with more than 400 hours of unheard interviews with Ferguson incorporated into Barton's new book, Fergie: The Lost Tapes.
The message came from the grandson of the late Tom Tyrell, a former journalist at Piccadilly Radio and himself an author of books on United with the former Manchester Evening News correspondent David Meek. He wanted to know if Barton would be interested in some of the items Tyrell had left behind from his time covering the club.
"Tom's daughter lived in a holiday home in Haworth, up in Bronte country. So I went up there wondering what it was, and the collection turned out to be like manuscripts, photos, negatives," explained Barton.
"For example, on the negatives, there's some original photos that the club had never seen of the 1968 European Cup winners' parade, including one that was the only known picture from all of the celebrations that had Jimmy Murphy on it.
"But the jewel in the collection was obviously the audio, and I didn't really know what it was at first, it was just like cassette tapes and minidisks. And they just said, 'Oh yeah, it's just his interviews from when he was a reporter.'
"I started listening to it, and it was like basically everything from like '86 to 2009 from his day-to-day stuff, mostly with Ferguson down at The Cliff."
Barton spent 18 months listening to the tapes and preserving them digitally, while organising material for his book, which now featured Ferguson's voice as it hadn't been heard before.
It's clear the Scot trusted the local radio reporter in a way he often didn't trust the written press. There could be little misconstruing of his spoken word.
"I'm listening to history, and obviously listening through the tapes, but not knowing what historic moment's going to come next," said Barton.
"So that's how it came about and that's how I started working on it, and for that sort of like year and a half when I wasn't really telling anyone about it."
The book is full of fascinating detail on Ferguson's time in charge at United, and especially in those early years when he had to convince an often sceptical public that he was on the right track.
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Barton listened to his first address to the Old Trafford crowd on the pitch before his first home game in charge against Queens Park Rangers, and knew immediately it was both significant and historic, with no one aware that a recording had been made.
"There are a few bits and bobs throughout, but the most interesting things for me were everything before we were successful in '93, because you are looking into the mind of someone who is trying to turn around the oil tanker, basically like what United have been stuck in for the last 10 years or so," he said.
"I was listening to it through that lens, kind of like, "Is there anything here that you could sort of apply to the modern age? Is it all to do with mentality and everything like that?" So there are loads of little things like that."
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Barton also referenced a Ferguson interview immediately after United had been beaten 4-1 at Middlesbrough at the end of October 2005. It was the day Roy Keane delivered his cutting, still-unseen critique of his teammates on MUTV, which eventually led to his exit a few weeks later.
"He gave a press conference, it was just after the game where we played against Middlesbrough and we lost 4-1. Roy Keane ends up getting sacked, but this press conference was delivered a couple of weeks before," he said.
"And he's talking so fiercely about criticism remaining within the club, and he's so pointed. He's not even in reference to anything that's happened apart from United have had a bad run of results, but you can tell, obviously with the benefit of hindsight, and I knew listening to it, what he was alluding to. He was kind of breadcrumbing the fact of what he was about to do with Roy Keane.
"When it happened with Keane, it was all a bombshell, it came out of the blue, nobody knew it was going to happen."
Fergie: The Lost Tapes - Manchester United's Greatest Era Retold by Wayne Barton is out now