Having won the treble with Liverpool and lifted five trophies with the Reds during 2001, Gary McAllister is inevitably a club icon.
Eyebrows might have been raised when Gerard Houllier signed the then 35-year-old on a free transfer from Coventry City, but in his two years at Anfield the Scot made any doubters eat their words.
Scoring in the penalty shootout against Birmingham City to help win the League Cup, it was his free-kick in the FA Cup final that helped create Michael Owen’s equaliser as the Reds clinched a 2-1 comeback win over Arsenal.
But having come on as a substitute in both domestic finals, McAllister saved his best for the UEFA Cup final, playing the full 117 minutes of Liverpool’s 5-4 golden goal victory as he scored one and set up three, including the winner, in a man of the match performance against Alaves.
He also scored the opener in the Charity Shield win over Manchester United the following season, and played the full 90 minutes in the European Super Cup victory over Bayern Munich as he added a flurry of winner’s medals to his collection during the twilight of his career.
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Yet despite winning so many trophies, McAllister’s career highlight arguably came a decade before his move to Anfield - and would play its part in a long-running spat with legendary Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
Spending six seasons with Leeds United in the nineties, he won the first division with the club in 1991/92 as they became the final champions of England before the inaugural Premier League season.
The Scot did have future club Liverpool to thank in part for the success with the Reds beating runners-up Manchester United 2-0 in the penultimate game of the season to clinch Leeds’ title win.
With McAllister helping Leeds beat Sheffield United 3-2 earlier in the day, the midfielder watched United’s clash with Liverpool at the home of striker Lee Chapman, accompanied by fellow team-mates Eric Cantona, David Batty and a television crew.
And as the quartet started to celebrate after the final whistle, while wired up to the television studio, McAllister’s comments when watching Ferguson’s post-match interview, unaware the Scot could hear him, would cause a feud that would see his compatriot blank him for over a decade and the rest of his playing days.
"It wouldn't happen today, everyone kicks off simultaneously, but because we were playing Sheffield United, the game was at 12.30pm. Leeds beat Sheffield United which meant Man Utd had to go to Anfield and win by two, which was never going to happen!” the Scot recalled in 2017 when speaking to fans in association with Sport & Fitness Middle East.
“We all went back to Chappy’s house after the game in Sheffield to watch Man U play Liverpool at Anfield. Because I’d done some TV work, I was tuned in to the director at Anfield so I could hear the director and all his comments, talking to the presenter, talking to the cameramen. I could hear everything which was going on in the studio.
“Liverpool win 2-0 and Leeds United win the league, we’re p****d. After the game, we’re watching the pictures coming across and the interviews after the game and I can hear in my ear the director saying, “Get to the tunnel, we’ve got Fergie.”
“Milliseconds later he’s up on the TV and Fergie comes on. His face is bright red. His first comments, as you can expect, were, “I want to make it clear, Leeds haven’t won the league. Manchester United have lost the league! I’m making it clear!” Nose very red, he says, “Make no mistake, Leeds have not won the league! Manchester United have lost the league! We’ve thrown the league away.”
“So flippantly in Lee Chapman’s living room, I say, “Big red-face as gracious as ever in defeat.”
“Then Dennis Law came back in my ear and said, “Gary, Fergie can hear you.”
“Alex Ferguson has walked past me in Lithuanian airports and Albanian hotels for 20 years and never looked in my direction!”
“He never really spoke to me for the next 15 years,” he’d later joke on Sky Sports when sharing the story. “He’s just now looking in the same direction as me! That’s what it means to him.”
However, McAllister and Ferguson have since buried the hatchet after the United manager reached out to the former Liverpool man when his wife Denise was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away in 2006.
“This is the measure of the man. When you’re competing against him, you’re the enemy, but when I went through this tragic experience with cancer, who was the first person to call me? Alex Ferguson,” McAllister revealed.
“He was the first person to make a phone call. He invited me to the training ground at Carrington. He said, “You can come to training any day. You can come to Old Trafford to any game.”
“The first mass card I got through the post was from his wife. You see this figure, when you’re competing against him, he’ll do anything to beat you. But there’s a gentle side to Alex Ferguson and that’s something I learned down the line. For 20 years, I did not exist!”
