When Manchester United were embarrassed 5-1 in the Maine Road derby 37 years ago this month, Sir Alex Ferguson retreated to his home in Cheshire, went straight to bed and hid under a pillow.‘We chose the worst possible day to reach rock bottom,’ Ferguson wrote later. ‘A sense of guilt had engulfed me.’The new signings he brought to Old Trafford in the summer of 1989 who were staying at the Ramada Hotel in the city centre had no choice but to seek refuge in their rooms that night. Paul Ince, Neil Webb, Gary Pallister and Danny Wallace had planned to go out for dinner with their partners until security suggested it might be wiser to order room service instead.‘There were fans outside the hotel shouting abuse, saying we were c**p and all this stuff,’ recalls Ince. ‘We never went out that night. We stayed in our rooms and didn’t move.‘My debut was at home to Millwall a week earlier and we won 5-1. I said to my wife, “Claire, I like it here. This is easy”. But that was a wake-up call for us: what it meant for United fans and the people of Manchester.‘That’s the rivalry they have. They expected us to beat Manchester City. I don’t think we lost one after that, and I scored a couple of goals, so I’m quite pleased about that.’ Paul Ince lost his first derby as a Manchester United player 5-1, back in 1989. It was another 13 years before Manchester City would win another one Ince (pictured dribbling past Peter Reid and Colin Hendry in 1990) has largely happy memories of the fixtureIn fact, it was another 13 years and 17 games before Ferguson’s side lost to City as the gap between the two clubs widened in the 90s – including a 5-0 win at Old Trafford in Ince’s final season at the club that gave United fans a belated sense of revenge.When they meet there again in the 199th derby on Sunday, the dramatic reversal of fortunes can perhaps be best demonstrated by the money spent on midfield reinforcements this summer.The £326.6million City have paid for Enzo Fernandez, Elliot Anderson and Ayyoub Bouaddi is more than double United’s £155m outlay on Carlos Baleba, Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans. Nearly half a billion pounds’ worth of midfielders coming to Manchester. There were fans outside the hotel shouting abuse, saying we were c**p and all this stuff. We never went out that night Ince, part of a formidable unit alongside Bryan Robson and Roy Keane, shakes his head. ‘I remember when I joined United, Sir Alex said to me: “I watched you for two years before I decided to buy you.” Two years! These players are one-season wonders and go for £100m.‘No disrespect to Elliot Anderson but he was in a team at Nottingham Forest that nearly went down. Enzo Fernandez cost £125m. What? I don’t get it, I really don’t. The money’s going really crazy.‘United have spent £50m on Santos, who didn’t kick a ball at Chelsea more or less, and £70m on Baleba who was out for most of last season and can’t play until October. Tielemans was £35m.‘When you think about Roy Keane, Stevie Gerrard and Frank Lampard compared to what these players actually do, it’s madness the amount of money they’re paying. Keane and Gerrard would cost £200m these days.‘The United midfield in our time was probably one of the best in Europe. Bryan Robson was my idol and Keane was a phenomenal player. You don’t get those types now. If we sit down here in 30 years’ time and you ask me who were the greatest midfield players at United, we’ll still be saying Keane, Robson and Paul Scholes.’ ‘When I joined United, Sir Alex Ferguson said to me: “I watched you for two years before I decided to buy you.” Two years! These players are one-season wonders and go for £100m’ ‘United have spent £50m on Andrey Santos (right), who didn’t kick a ball at Chelsea more or less,’ says InceIt’s not the only unfavourable comparison Ince draws with the present after seeing the empire Ferguson built crumble over the last 13 years.‘Since Fergie left in 2013, we’ve gone through about seven or eight managers. The recruitment has been poor. The people upstairs have been poor. The way they’ve run the club has been poor, so what do you expect? INCE’S DEFIB MESSAGE AFTER HODDLE SCARE Glenn Hoddle’s collapse in the BT Sport studios eight years ago gave Paul Ince harrowing proof of the importance of defibrillators.Ince witnessed Hoddle, his former England and Wolves boss, suffer a heart attack after going off air on his 61st birthday in 2018, and the efforts of sound engineer Simon Daniels to save him. Now he has joined Neil Ruddock, Julian Dicks, Iain Dowie and Roy Keane to support Sky Bet and the British Heart Foundation’s mission to ease people’s fears over using a defibrillator.It marks the start of the third year of the Sky Bet Every Minute Matters campaign, which has inspired 500,000 fans to learn life-saving CPR.‘It brought me back to when Glenn had his cardiac arrest. It was the worst experience of my life,’ says Ince. ‘Trying to keep him awake, talking about England and Wolves. Now when I see him on the golf course, I think, “He couldn’t have been here”.‘Sixty nine per cent of football fans are scared of using a defib. It’s simple. You don’t have to be a doctor. It’s just a machine that tells you what to do and you press the buttons. There’s nothing to be scared of. Just take 15 minutes, go on the BHF website. It shows you how to do a CPR and use a defib machine. You can be the one saving someone’s life.’Fans can learn lifesaving CPR and defibrillation skills in just 15 minutes: Search BHF RevivR and/or visit https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/ To check whether you are eligible for a free defibrillator go to bhf.org.uk/defibfunding <!- – ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/us/sport/football/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 – ->
‘United have brought in different types of managers, and it just hasn’t worked. They gave Ole Gunnar Solskjaer a two-year contract and we saw what happened after that. I just hope it’s not the same situation with Michael Carrick. Is he ready for that yet? I don’t know.‘It’s funny how you can lose your job at Middlesbrough and get the biggest job in the world. It’s mad how football works, but we can’t keep changing managers. We’ve got to stick with one, and I think Carrick deserves that chance.’A month short of his 59th birthday, Ince doesn’t shirk a challenge any more than he did after arriving at Old Trafford from West Ham as a brash 21-year-old in 1989. He has turned up at a studio on the outskirts of Manchester with some other big characters from the dawn of the Premier League – Neil Ruddock, Iain Dowie and Julian Dicks – as part of a campaign by the British Heart Foundation and Sky Bet to change misconceptions among football fans who are afraid of using a defibrillator.‘The characters are going out of the game,’ says Ince, who went on to play for Inter Milan and Liverpool and finish his career with 53 England caps. ‘Players are more concerned about themselves and what people think. Everyone feels so precious about what they’ve got to do and what they can’t do.‘If I were a player today, I’d never be on social media if I couldn’t take what people say about me. If you don’t like it, get off it.‘We always had an opinion. If Fergie said something to me and I disagreed with it, I’d tell him. Same with Roy Keane. We disagreed with each other but let’s just get on with it. We’re good mates, go and play for each other. All that kind of stuff’s gone now.’Ince remembers having to be ‘separated’ from Ferguson after a 3-1 win over Norwich at Carrow Road in 1993 on the way to United ending their long wait for the title. He won the Premier League twice at Old Trafford as well as the FA Cup, League Cup, European Cup Winners’ Cup and UEFA Super Cup. Ferguson’s concerns over the player’s self-styled ‘Guvnor’ image, and desire to clear a pathway for a young Nicky Butt, led to him sanctioning Ince’s £7.5m move to Inter Milan against the wishes of the board in the summer of 1995 after United’s Double winners lost the title to Blackburn and FA Cup to Everton.The manager drove the short distance to Mottram Hall, where Ince was on the golf course with Ryan Giggs, to tell him face to face. ‘I was one up on the 17th so I was devastated,’ smiles Ince, who still plays with Giggs on the Icons Series. ‘We can’t keep changing managers,’ Ince says of United. ‘We’ve got to stick with one, and I think Carrick deserves that chance’ Ince won the Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup at United but Ferguson’s concerns over his self-styled ‘Guvnor’ image partly led to him sanctioning his 1995 move to Inter MilanInce was at home in Bramhall with his agent and a delegation from Inter led by chairman Massimo Moratti putting the final touches to the deal when Ferguson phoned from a summer holiday in Colorado asking him to call the move off.‘The horse had bolted, to be fair,’ says Ince. ‘We were sat down in the kitchen. Moratti was there with his vice-president and a couple of henchmen, as they do. ‘Sir Alex said: “Listen, Paul, I want you to stay. You know, Nicky Butt’s coming through so you might have to fight for your place.”‘No disrespect, Nicky Butt is a very good player and good friend of mine, but he wasn’t a better player than me at that time. When he said that, I thought “no thanks” and off I went.’