Veteran football manager Neil Warnock has described the hilarious encounter he had with Sir Alex Ferguson prior to a semi-final against Arsenal at Old Trafford.
Neil Warnock said: “I remember playing them [Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal] before we played them in the semi-final of the FA Cup at Old Trafford. Fergie [Sir Alex Ferguson] got me in [his] office [the] week before and said ‘do you want to use the facility? You can go on the pitch.’ Anyhow the FA banned us from going on the pitch, couldn’t do it, though Arsenal did it a few weeks earlier, didn’t let us do it as always. We trained at Carrington, Alex went ‘how do you want the pitch, Neil?’ I said, what do you mean Alex? He said ‘we have it wet because we skim it around.’ I went can we have it dry and long? He did it, yeah. He said we’ll turn the sprinkler on as they come off the bus for two minutes, is that enough? I said that’ll do fine.”
Freddie Ljungberg scored the only goal of the game as Arsenal scraped a 1-0 win.