Sir Alex Ferguson told to 'f*ck off' by ex-Premier League referee - but Rio Ferdinand refused to relay message in battle of 'mind games'

Clattenburg refereed in England’s top flight between 2004 and 2017, and was widely regarded as one of the top officials of his generation. However, he has claimed that during his early days in the Premier League, Ferguson’s United would try to get into his head.

Speaking on the Beast Mode On podcast with Adebayo Akinfenwa, Clattenburg said: "Sir Alex would send one of his players in, not to influence that decision because he knew referees weren't going to change their mind, but it was the next one, and it was the next one. So you would make a decision and then you would have Rio Ferdinand, Roy Keane, then they would send somebody else and it would be one after the other after every decision. Chipping away, chipping away, it was mind games.

"It never shaped [decisions] because I always wanted to get the next one right, I used to pride myself on getting everything right, but unfortunately you can’t and that’s human fact. There’s nobody perfect in football... but what it did was I would go away and analyse myself and I would go: ‘How can I manage that better? How can I manage them without becoming arrogant or pissing them off?’

"So the way I started to handle it in the future, when they would come in one by one, I would just say: ‘Go and tell your gaffer to f*ck off', and tell them what's happening… Man Utd were the ones because there weren’t many doing it at that point.

"I remember Rio Ferdinand once, I said to Rio, ‘tell him to f*cking behave himself’, and he says, ‘I'm not telling him. I'm not telling him’!"

When asked if Ferguson was ever intimidating, Clattenburg replied: "Sir Alex never really did much, it was just his presence. He would never be there, he would never come in with the team sheets. He never tried to do anything in the team exchange, which some coaches tried to do, they would intimidate you, and he was never there afterwards.

"But I remember before my first big fight with him, and I lost, I was refereeing Bolton, and he believed Kevin Davies was kicking Patrice Evra up in the air too much in the first half. When you’re at Bolton, it’s a battle, as referees you know it’s a battle, and refereeing Bolton vs Man Utd is not an easy game. You know it’s going to be physical and Man United players didn’t want it physical. He didn’t believe I was protecting Patrice Evra, and at half-time he volleyed me. And I mean really volleyed me. And I went, ‘I’m not f*cking having that’. I said to the policewoman in the tunnel, ‘you can tell him he’s not coming back out’, and she said ‘I’m not f*cking telling him, you can tell him!’. Everybody was frightened of him."

Clattenburg's account provides insight into the tactics used by Ferguson's United away from the actual football, highlighting the intense pressure referees faced when officiating the Red Devils in that time. In the case of Clattenburg, who went on to referee Champions League and European Championship finals, he has insisted he didn't let these ploys distract him from the task on hand on any given matchday.

Though United under Ferguson were a force to be reckoned with, sweeping up 13 Premier League titles, nine domestic trophies and two Champions Leagues, they are a far cry from contending nowadays. Now managed by Ruben Amorim, the Red Devils are currently 11th in the table, out of the Carabao Cup and aren’t competing in Europe this season.