“I only look back now; [United chairman] Martin Edwards was always asking me about Mr. Alex,” Strachan added in the latest episode. “That’s what moved me about your man. And it was still ringing me at the time, Sir Alex. Again, I didn’t know he was shaking me. “What do boys like?” It’s a little different from the race. “Do the guys like a drink?” Oh yeah, wonderful.
“I did not know at the time that he was taking all this information. Forgive the children! I did not know at the time. And he came and in it [the culture] not only to change, no. It will change a little, believe me. It took him time to get the players he really needed in the team, which he wanted to accomplish exactly.
“It’s not that the guys were disrespectful to her. The other guys were just their own people. It was hard for them to change and not change their lives, that’s for sure. Again, it’s not negative. What they would say against them is far away: they are open-minded, they enter and they try new ideas, but they have not changed their social life.
“Four or five years to be done. I need to, Paul McGrath, take all these guys off. I need to go and there is no problem.”