Ferg-et it

Sir Alex Ferguson was initially not interested in signing Robin van Persie because he was “too old”, Fergie’s former assistant Rene Meulensteen has claimed.

He told talkSPORT: “I think it was in January, I got a call from Robin’s agent.

“He said ‘Robin’s not going to extend his contract [at Arsenal], he wants to stay in England … and he wants to play for Manchester United and also for Sir Alex Ferguson.

“I thought, that’s a bit of a statement, and the only thing I can do is ask.

“So I walked into his office 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 bit of an injury record. And I said, ‘Ah, we’ll look into that, I wouldn’t dismiss it straight away’.

“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 say – is history, with Van Persie becoming the catalyst for Ferguson’s final Premier League title in 2013.