‘Get rid of the c***s’ – What Man Utd icon Sir Alex Ferguson told Sir Dave Brailsford in one of first meetings
SIR ALEX FERGUSON once told Sir Dave Brailsford that the secret to a good team was to “get rid of the c***s”.
The pair met several years ago, likely before Brailsford ever considered crossing over from cycling to football.
These days he is Director of Sport at Ineos and he has been tasked with identifying the problems at Manchester United by his boss Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Prior to that he was a successful team principal at Ineos Grenadiers, Team Sky and British Cycling, where he first met United legend Ferguson.
The pair discussed management and how to deal with big personalities, and former Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas recalled a piece of advise Fergie passed onto Brailsford.
He said on the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast: “I remember Dave Brailsford told me a story about it once because Sir Alex came into the velodrome to see Dave when he was still with British Cycling.
“And Dave was picking his brains about all sorts of different stuff and he was asking him about riders and personalities and how he deals with different egos and Alex was like, ‘you’ve got to get rid of the c***s’.
“And Dave wrote this up and a couple of weeks later he is doing this talk in front of I don’t know how many, maybe 100-odd people, going through slide after slide talking about his chat with Sir Alex and on the big projector [it read] ‘you’ve got to get rid of the c***s.”
Ferguson, 82, never hesitated to get rid of players throughout his tenure at Old Trafford.
The likes of Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, and Paul Ince were all kicked out of the club following clashes with Fergie, with David Beckham also experiencing animosity with the former manager before his move to Real Madrid.
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Brailsford, 60, has also had experience dealing with big egos and made the difficult decision to oust Bradley Wiggins as leader of Team Sky a year after he won the Tour de France.
Chris Froome was picked as the number one rider instead and the decision paid off as he went on to win the Tour de France four times, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana.