IT'S ME NEXT

Alex Ferguson had been manager of Manchester United for less than two months when a local newsagent and part-time ground steward named Harold Wood seized his chance.

Wood had been telling the club for weeks - though no one was listening - about an outstanding schoolboy who was training with Manchester City but was passionate about United. He reckoned United's bright new boss might listen and he was right. As soon as Ferguson set eyes on Ryan Wilson, or Ryan Giggs as he was about to become on dropping his father's surname and adopting his mother's, a train was set in motion that is still running smoothly to this day.

Two destinies were secured on a muddy field in Salford around Christmas 1986. Giggs would go on to sign schoolboy forms for United on his fourteenth birthday the following November, while Ferguson would go on to describe him as his most valuable signing. Peter Schmeichel or Denis Irwin might have been the canniest, Eric Cantona the most influential and Roy Keane the most important, but for a manager who prides himself on youth development Giggs was a once-in-a-lifetime find. 'We protected him like the treasure he was,' Ferguson has said. 'Looking back I can honestly say that all the money United paid me in my years at Old Trafford was justified at a stroke by securing Ryan.'

The point of this lesson in ancient history is to show that Giggs has been around for almost all of Ferguson's 20 years at United. Indeed, in November next year he will be able to celebrate his own twentieth anniversary at the club. The way he is currently playing he deserves to and one would not wager too much money against Ferguson still being at his side. The pair go together and pleasingly, when asked for his recollections of the past two decades, Giggs came up with touchingly personal ones. His two proudest moments in football, for instance, came long before the Doubles, the Treble or that fondly remembered goal in the FA Cup semi against Arsenal.

'That is all becoming a bit of a blur now,' he admits. 'What I remember most vividly is making my full debut at 17. I can still hear the manager saying, "And Ryan you'll be playing on the left", as clear as if it was yesterday. That's my proudest moment, that and seeing the manager's big gold Mercedes parked outside our house.'

'He's done a lot for me outside football over the years,' Giggs says. 'He made that promise on the day I signed. I was in his office posing for the official photograph when I signed my schoolboy forms, and he said there were lots of coaches at the club who could help me with my football but if I had any personal problems I could come to him.

'He said his door was always open and that was important, because my mum and dad were splitting up and it was a tricky time for me personally. He knew that, he knew both my parents' names and he was someone I could talk to. I found it hard to believe, at that age, that someone like him could care so much, but that was one of the things that made him stand out. He didn't just know my mum and dad's names, he knew all the other lads' parents' names, too, and little things like that made you want to play for him.

'From the outside people just see a fierce and sometimes angry competitor, but from an early age I saw his other side. Over the years he's always supported me, he's always known what I'm capable of doing and he's always made that clear. There was some doubt about my future here when I came to negotiate my last contract, but once he had reassured me I was in his plans I didn't have much hesitation in signing.'

This is the mature Giggs speaking, of course. The teenage Giggs, he freely admits now, was not always so appreciative of Ferguson's suffocating supervision. 'You could say he took an interest in my off-field activities,' he explains with heavy irony. 'Especially in the early days. I suppose I can see the point of it now, being professional you have to look after yourself, but at the time it was a pain.

'You'd go out on a Saturday night with your mates and on the Monday morning he'd tell you where you were, what you'd had and who you had been with. He just knows everyone, there was no getting away from him. I wasn't actually that bad most of the time, but he always thought the worst. If I ever came in clean-shaven he'd assume I'd been out the night before. "Oh aye", he'd say. "Where were you last night?" I'd say nowhere and he'd say, "Well why have you had a shave, then?"'

Famously, one of Fergie's better-founded suspicions eventually led him to Lee Sharpe's door, so Giggs now has a bad memory of his manager coming calling to go with the earlier pleasant one. This time, just five years later, he did not notice the car. 'That was definitely my worst moment,' he recalls. 'Not only was I there, I had a bottle of Becks in my hand, there was no escape. The gaffer threw everyone out, even our non-footballing mates and girls who were nothing to do with him. Then he monstered us both, phoned my mum and fined me a month's wages, but he never held anything against me despite his strength of feeling. He was fine with me afterwards, though he ran out of patience with Lee in the end.'

'It wasn't the same sort of shock when Becks left, but it still took a while to get used to the idea. Probably, in terms of the relationship they had at the end, what happened was best for both of them. The surprise was that Becks was only 28 when he left. After being together for so long, so successfully, I think we all thought we'd still be together in our thirties. But that's one of the manager's strengths. He doesn't stand still, he's always looking to move on and get better. Sometimes you might not see immediate success, sometimes you might have to take a step backwards, but in the long run the team will improve.'

There have been arguments and bust-ups along the way, of course, partly because Giggs knows he invites them.

'I'm not one of those players that need an arm round me. I respond to people having a go and the manager has probably worked that out. He's certainly done it on a few occasions and I seem to respond.

'Probably the biggest row was at Juventus, the first time we played them in 1996. I didn't think our formation was working and we had a little bit of an argument at half time. He said he wasn't happy with the way I was playing and brought me off. So that was the end of the argument and I had lost. On a big stage that was a disappointment for me, but he was probably right. I did go on to have better games against Juventus.'

Indeed he did. While Giggs missed the famous night in Turin when Keane took all the credit for a towering performance that powered United towards their 1999 Treble, it is much less frequently recalled that without Giggs' last-minute equaliser in the first leg of that semi-final the Italian job might have been beyond even the Irishman's powers of recovery. Coupled with his spectacular strike at Villa Park in the FA Cup semi-final replay, Giggs made a significant contribution to United's best season, though like his manager he is not one for dwelling in the past.

'Football is about the present and the future,' he says. 'The time for looking back is when you retire. I'm sure history will judge Sir Alex to have been this club's greatest manager, but that's not on our minds now. Everyone is disappointed that after winning the Champions League we didn't go on to win it again, and obviously we would love to put that right. But for me at the moment winning the Premiership is what I'd like to do most. The gaffer is just the same. First things first.'