Ferg-et it
Sir Alex Ferguson was at first not thinking about finalizing Robin van Persie due to the fact that he was “too old”, Fergie’s previous assistant Rene Meulensteen has actually declared.
He informed talkSPORT: “I believe it remained in January, I got a call from Robin’s representative.
“He said ‘Robin’s not going to extend his agreement [at Arsenal], he wishes to remain in England … and he wishes to bet Manchester United and likewise for Sir Alex Ferguson.
“I believed, that’s a little bit of a declaration, and the only thing I can do is ask.
“So I strolled into his workplace and I said ‘Robin van Persie is interested in joining us, what do you think?’ and he said, ‘Nah, he’s too old’, he was 27 at the time [he was actually 28], had a little bit of an injury record. And I said, ‘Ah, we’ll check out that, I wouldn’t dismiss it quickly’.
“We had more discussions and we said ‘this team needs something, they need a spark’, so what I did is I asked some of the senior players during training, if we could get [Luka] Modric, Van Persie, or this guy, who would you pick? And most of them said, ‘Well Robin would be brilliant’.”
The rest – as they state – is history, with Van Persie ending up being the driver for Ferguson’s last Premier League title in 2013.
