The term "Fergie Time" was first mentioned in the Guardian in a Sheffield Wednesday v Manchester United match report in March 1998. The joke was on Manchester United, who were beaten 2-0 at Hillsborough that day on their way to surrendering the Premier League title to Arsenal.
Jeremy Alexander reported that "Paolo Di Canio scored the second with an overhead scissors-kick in the 88th minute after a free-kick by the quick-thinking Benito Carbone. Shortly after, the Wednesday bench held up No11 and No19, suggesting 11 minutes of injury-time and 19 of Fergie-time, that special allowance when United are behind."
Fergie Time may have entered the parlance of sports writers in 1998, but the concept was born five years before, during another match between the clubs. On 10 April 1993, Sheffield Wednesday visited Old Trafford and took a second-half lead through a John Sheridan penalty. With time running out, United looked to be on their way to another defeat but, as memories of their collapse in the race for the previous season's league title began to surface, Steve Bruce popped up to score two vital headers.
Wednesday should have been prepared for United's late rally. When the clubs met a few months earlier on Boxing Day 1992, they let a 3-0 lead slip as goals from Brian McClair and Eric Cantona secured a draw for United. Alex Ferguson thought his team had grown in stature that day, but not even Ferguson knew the impact late goals would have on United's season – and the rest of his reign at the club.
Speaking on New Year's Day 1993, Ferguson said: "More than at any time since I was playing, the club is alive. The 3-3 draw at Sheffield Wednesday was magnificent. It's as if the good old days were back and the major factor, as far as I'm concerned, is the Frenchman. Eric Cantona is so clever it's untrue and the lovely thing about special players is they're infectious. The things he tries, the others try, and it's the way the team are playing that's got middle-aged fans jumping about like two-year-olds."
Cantona was the catalyst for United's run to the championship, but Bruce's goals against Sheffield Wednesday gave the team the belief to go on and finish the job. The win against Sheffield Wednesday took United two points clear of Aston Villa with five games to play. They were not to be caught: United won their remaining games and finished ten points ahead of Villa.
Things could have been very different for United that Saturday afternoon. There was tension within the club after so long without a title, and Bruce had been critical of his team's lack of goals on local TV the night before the game. He was as much to blame as anyone. The big defender knocked in 19 goals in the 1990–91 season, but he hadn't scored in six months by the time he headed Denis Irwin's corner past Chris Woods in the 85th minute to equalise.
Within the next next 10 minutes, his goals had changed the complexion of the season. United were in the ascendancy, Ferguson and Brian Kidd were on the pitch hugging each other and the run that would bring the championship to Old Trafford for the first time in a generation had started.
The match report: Manchester United 2-1 Sheffield Wednesday
Time is overripe for United By Stephen Bierley
What one day brings, another can take away. But if ever there was an afternoon when the championship seemed destined finally to return to Old Trafford, then this was it.
Joy mingled with relief swelled United hearts and voices, flooding back memories of that wet night in Rotterdam two years ago when a brace of goals by Hughes defeated Barcelona in the European Cup Winners' Cup final, and "Always look on the bright side of life" danced across the terraces with absolute exultation.
On this occasion Manchester was bathed in the most glorious sunshine. Yet as time slipped away and Wednesday clung to a 1-0 lead, the shadows of the West Stand's cantilever roof, nearing completion, were strung out like the bars of a prison across the area of pitch United were attacking.
United having served 26 years since their last league title, there were unbearable intimations of another 12 months banged up with fading pin-ups of Best, Law and Charlton. Then along came Steve Bruce, a latter-day Billy Foulkes.
If it is true that a hero is no more exceptional than an ordinary man but is exceptional for five or six minutes longer, then the United defender fitted the bill to perfection. Having equalised in the 85th minute from Irwin's corner, he headed the winner in what was generally agreed to be the 96th or 97th minute.
John Hilditch, who had swapped his yellow flag for the injured Michael Peck's whistle on the hour, had demonstrated his own brand of bravery a few minutes later when he unhesitatingly penalised Ince's late tackle on Waddle, leaving Sheridan to beat Schmeichel from the penalty spot.
Thereafter it appeared that Hilditch's watch, like the grandfather clock in the children's song, stopped short, never to go again... until United had scored the winner. Brian Kidd, United's assistant manager, apparently always adjusts his own watch to take account of stoppages, and with three minutes of official time remaining he told Alex Ferguson there were "still six minutes to go". This, somewhat mysteriously, almost doubled.
Red shirts were flung forward against an understandably leg-weary Wednesday playing, as Trevor Francis wryly remarked, their second "extra-time" in a week. Giggs, for whom little went right all afternoon, lifted a corner beyond everybody and it was Pallister, improbably wide on the right, who crossed, via Worthington's deflection, for Bruce to guide in the second of his first goals since October.
"Next time we come we will have our first team," said Francis, but Aston Villa fans who feared Wednesday would roll over need harbour no grudges. If Hirst or Warhurst had been fit, Wednesday might have won at a canter, for there were long periods when they maintained possession, capitalising on United's careless, perhaps overanxious passing.
Bright, who had passed a late fitness test, came on early in the second half, which seemed a clear indication that Francis believed his side could win. But fatigue, Bruce and Hilditch's stopwatch did them in the end.
Wednesday will look to preserve wind and limb against Southampton this afternoon, prior to next weekend's Coca-Cola final. United head for Coventry, where they hope to glister in front of Gould. And stay top.
Scorers
Manchester United: Bruce (85 and 90min); Sheffield Wednesday: Sheridan (pen 64)
Manchester United
Schmeichel, Parker (Robson, 68), Irwin, Bruce, Sharpe, Pallister, Cantona, Ince, McClair, Hughes, Giggs.
Sheffield Wednesday
Woods, Nilsson, Worthington, Palmer, Sheridan, Anderson, Wilson (Bart-Williams, 60), Waddle, King, Jemson (Bright, 53), Watson.
Referee
M Peck (Kendal J Hilditch, Stoke, 60).
The captain's log
The aftermath
Manchester United went on to the win the league and face Arsenal in the 1993 Charity Shield. United won the season curtain-raiser on penalties, with Bruce scoring in the shoot-out and David Seaman missing the last kick of the afternoon.
More importantly, Bruce captained the club to its first league and Cup double the following year. Patrick Barclay, the Guardian's football correspondent at the time, met Bruce before the 1994 Charity Shield to discuss his future. In the end, Bruce left Old Trafford in the summer of 1996 – his total of nine seasons at the club was not enough to earn the nose job he had been promised by Ferguson.
Manchester United's leader keeping a keen nose for medals
By Patrick Barclay
At the risk of upsetting Paul Ince on Charity Shield morning, it must be disclosed that the Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, has promised a special reward to one of his players: if Steve Bruce completes 10 years with the club, he will be awarded not only a testimonial but a nose job.
This world exclusive was revealed by the jovial captain during a pause in treatment for a groin strain in preparation for today's Wembley occasion and surely even Ince, whose contractual demands have become a talking point among United supporters, would have no objection to the unique incentive. After all, Bruce has broken his nose often enough in the course of duty. How often? Nine times, as estimated? "I've lost count," he said. "Anyway, the gaffer says part of my new deal is a new nose at the end of it all. I'll hold him to it."
Bruce has three years to wait for his cosmetic surgery and, since he is already 33, the question of how long he can remain an active member of the team has been posed, especially since the arrival from Blackburn in early summer of David May. Bruce did struggle at times while United were striding to the Double, but his insistence that a simple knee operation has dealt with the cause was buttressed last week by Ferguson, who said: "He'll give us another year and a half - guaranteed - and then we'll see. May will be an ideal replacement when the time comes, and I signed him because, after Steve's knee trouble, we couldn't take chances, but Steve will be there again."
Club captain now, in succession to his fellow north-easterner Bryan Robson, Bruce will bring a more bubbly, extrovert style to the role. Although it may seem paradoxical that the only non-international in Ferguson's side should have been the one to lead them to consecutive championships, enthusiasm and drive have carried Bruce a long way and he has no thoughts of counting his medals when there are more to be won. His blessings, yes. He has earned a place in Old Trafford's heart.
Football, as Danny Blanchflower said, is about glory and what more glorious memory could there be than Bruce's favourite: the ecstatic few minutes of stoppage time when he scored twice against Sheffield Wednesday, turning defeat into victory while Ferguson, his assistant Brian Kidd and the best part of 40,000 others gave themselves over to abandoned celebration of the accurate belief that 26 years of waiting for the title were about to end? Would anyone swap that, and everything else, for a couple of dozen caps?
Of course not, Bruce vigorously agreed, before stating that this United wanted now to prove themselves the greatest of them all, to be talked about before the Law-Best-Charlton side and the rest. "We started by lifting this horrible thing hanging over the club, and then the Double brought us the compliment of comparison with the Busby days. But there's a determination to go further. Let's see if we can make it three titles in a row (a feat achieved only by Huddersfield in the 1920s, Arsenal in the 1930s and Liverpool in the 1980s). We believe it should already be three in a row – we thought we were the best team when Leeds pipped us – and the lads are ready to give it an almighty go.
"I think we've got to regard the championship as our principal aim and the European Cup as a bonus. The crazy rule about foreigners won't help us. But we're all excited by the challenge of meeting Hagi, Stoichkov and Romario in front of 120,000 at the Nou Camp. Going out to Galatasary last season was our biggest disappointment and this is our opportunity to redress the situation. To win at home and abroad will be difficult but not impossible – Milan did it."
Talk is easy. Appetites diminish.
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