Punctuation is the first oddity on this record. The title reads Alex Ferguson, then a colon, then nothing at all. Whatever subtitle belonged after that colon never reached the audiobook listing, and two reviewers end up supplying it on the publisher's behalf.
Hodder & Stoughton issued this in October 2013, and the sales copy runs to three sentences. Meet the man who helmed Manchester United for 27 years and led them to 49 trophies. A tour de force in the world of football, addressing personal feuds, triumphs and highlights of his life on the pitch. Then one further line, which turns out to be the most consequential sentence anywhere on the page.
Reviewers name the book properly where the listing declines to. One calls it Ferguson's My Autobiography. Another spells the difficulty out in full: two autobiographies exist under this name, Managing My Life and My Autobiography, and this is the second of them, working as a sequel to the first. That reader warns you may find yourself a tad disoriented without the earlier one, and adds a specific caution, that you should not expect to find the story of the famous European Treble here, because it belongs to the other volume.
None of that appears on the listing itself. A buyer who knows the name and wants the memoir has no way, from this page alone, to work out which of the two memoirs is on sale. The missing subtitle is not a cosmetic blemish. It is the identity of the product.
What Makes Alex Ferguson: Worth Hearing
Now that final line of the description, the one that matters most. Includes a prelude read by Sir Alex Ferguson. That is the publisher's own claim, and it is a good deal narrower than it first appears. The narrator field on this record carries the name Alex Ferguson with no qualification attached. The copy commits him to a prelude and stops. Nine hours and fifty-six minutes sit on the far side of that prelude, and nobody at all is credited for them.
A memoir read throughout by the person who lived it is a fundamentally different experience from a memoir with an author's introduction bolted onto a professional reading. Both are perfectly legitimate products. They are not the same product, and this listing sells you the first while promising only the second. Anybody buying specifically to hear that voice should sample the file before committing to it.
Reviews describe a voice on the page rather than one in the ear. A reader says you feel as though you are sitting in a comfy chair inside Ferguson's warm living room beside a fireplace, and that if you pay attention you can see why he is the coach he is and why he makes the decisions he makes. That is praise for the writing and the persona. Not one of the five entries says a word about who is speaking.
Things to Know Before Starting Alex Ferguson:
Figures disagree between the copy and the column underneath it. The publisher says twenty-seven years at Manchester United. The most detailed reviewer, writing in 2014, refers instead to a twenty-six year period while managing scores, if not hundreds, of players. Both numbers sit on one page, neither is explained, and the difference is exactly the sort of thing a careful listener notices and then cannot settle. The dates compound that impression: the earliest response arrives five months after the October 2013 release, and the most recent lands a decade later, which is a thin trickle for a subject of this stature.
Nor is the badge reachable. It reads 4.4 against six votes, and six whole-star grades cannot average 4.4 under any rounding rule available. The five grades you can actually see are three fives and two fours, which would put the visible average above 4.4 rather than below it. Whatever generates that badge, it is not the six votes the counter claims to be counting.
One of those five contributes a grade without contributing a judgment. Filed from the United Arab Emirates in December 2023, its body is a single word written in Arabic script, and its headline repeats that same word. It carries four stars. On an English-language listing, that entry is a vote with no readable content attached to it, and it is one of only five.
Four of the five run out mid sentence. The longest, which opens with the words Book Review as though it were being filed to a newspaper, stops just as it begins explaining what Ferguson does discuss. Another halts while comparing the team before and after his departure. Whatever caused the truncation, the outcome is that the weightiest assessments on this page finish without ever reaching their conclusions.
Coaching is the tag on the record, and it oversells things a little. The most analytical reader here states outright that the book does not directly lay out strategy or tactics, and that Ferguson seems to focus far more on individuals, their skills and their behavior. The same reader offers a useful reassurance: no expertise in the sport is required to follow it. A listener arriving for a management manual will find a portrait gallery instead.
Framing it as scripture, that same reader calls this volume the New Testament of the Fergie Bible and the earlier autobiography the Old Testament, then confesses to a serious mistake in having read them in the wrong order. It is a joke, and it is simultaneously the clearest buying guidance anywhere on the page. Anyone who wants the whole arc needs both books. Anyone who wants the years after the Treble needs this one, and only this one.
Who Alex Ferguson Is Writing For
Football supporters are the obvious audience and the copy says so without hedging. Beyond them, it suits anyone curious about how one person held a single job for decades and kept winning at it, and anyone who enjoys a settled score, since personal feuds are advertised right there on the label. Ten hours is a fair length for a career of that size, and the writing carries a reader who knows nothing about the sport.
Avoid it if the Treble years are what you came for, since a reviewer places those firmly in the earlier book, and avoid it again if you have not yet established which of the two books this one actually is. Anyone buying in order to hear Ferguson himself should read that last line of the description twice before deciding. Football fans wanting the complete account may conclude they need both volumes rather than this one on its own.
Before You Press Play
- Narrator: The credit names Alex Ferguson, while the publisher's closing line promises only a prelude read by him, leaving nearly ten hours unaccounted for.
- Subjects: Management as a long game, feuds settled in print, loyalty and squad building, a career counted in trophies.
- Tone: Assured and score-settling, entirely comfortable in its own authority.
- Bottom line: A rich career account behind a listing that will not tell you which book it is or who reads most of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Alex Ferguson read the whole audiobook himself?
The narrator field says so, but the publisher's own copy is narrower, promising a prelude read by him and nothing beyond that. Almost ten hours follow that prelude with no reader credited. Anyone buying to hear the voice specifically should sample the file before committing to the purchase.
Which of Alex Ferguson's autobiographies is this audiobook?
The title stops at a colon, so the listing never says. Two reviewers fill the gap, identifying two books under this name and placing this one as the later of them, a sequel to the earlier volume. One warns that starting here leaves a reader slightly disoriented.
