In contrast, Sir Alex Ferguson does not seem to have his own signature tactical style.

During the 26 seasons that Ferguson coached Manchester United, Manchester United played defensive counterattacks, passed the ball and controlled the ball, pressed high, played with three central defenders, and passed and cut - Manchester United tried almost any popular style, and tried it well.

Ferguson is very old-fashioned when managing the locker room, but on the tactical level, he is very flexible and good at learning and quoting.

Ferguson likes to learn, or to put it more bluntly, Ferguson likes to imitate.

The word "imitation" may not sound nice, but objectively speaking, this is Ferguson's style. He imitates whoever is popular and whatever tactics are popular. And it is not just imitation. Ferguson can add his own tactical ideas. Therefore, Manchester United under Ferguson's leadership is always at the forefront of the times.

In the early days of Ferguson's coaching of Manchester United, Ferguson still adopted the classic English 442 two-wing flying tactics, and the performance of this formation was not very good - of course, this was because Manchester United's overall strength was not good enough in the early days of coaching and the Class of 92 had not yet really grown up.

By the late 1980s, Ferguson was actively seeking change and began to imitate a variation of Michels' total attack and defense system.

Linus "The Sphinx" Michels is the originator of the Dutch Total Football style and the master of Cruyff. Although Cruyff is the first person that comes to mind when talking about the Total Football style of passing and controlling the ball, this tactic was created by Michels. From a certain perspective, Cruyff, including Rijkaard and Guardiola later, were all imitating and learning from Michels' Total Football style and making improvements.

Ferguson also learned from Cruyff, Ancelotti who was not as good as him at the time, Wenger's Arsenal's frontcourt passing and cutting cooperation, Van Gaal's backcourt passing method, and Mourinho's defensive counterattack.

The last few years of Ferguson's time at Manchester United were the era when Guardiola's passing and controlling style of play at Barcelona rose to prominence, and Ferguson even studied and imitated Guardiola's passing and controlling style of play seriously.

Therefore, Ferguson's Manchester United has never had only one style of play. They imitated whoever was the strongest, but they did not copy and paste other people's formations and tactics. Ferguson reorganized the team based on his own understanding and the characteristics of Manchester United players, so as to quickly form combat effectiveness.

If we have to say what Ferguson's tactical style is, then Ferguson's tactical style is changeable and difficult to understand.

If we have to make Ferguson's tactics specific, then the characteristics of Ferguson's tactics are the traditional English "two wings flying together".

During Ferguson's coaching period, Manchester United's formation was always changing and never fixed, but the traditional idea of ​​both wings flying together has always been throughout.

No matter how tactics and formations evolve, Ferguson's foundation of "two wings flying together" has never wavered - this also shows that Ferguson is definitely not a coach who has no tactical opinions and always likes to change things according to the trend, but a coach who truly understands how to structure the formation to achieve the core intention.

Ferguson prefers to use quick attacks from both flanks, and then use long passes, crosses from the bottom or inverted triangle passes to complete the offense.

This kick is simple, rough, and effective.

Of course, this places very, very high demands on the two wingers.

In Ferguson's philosophy, tactics don't need to be fancy. Even if they are fancy, they are used to confuse the opponent. But what the head coach must understand is that the real core tactics should be as simple as possible.

Ferguson believes that formations and tactics are only for the purpose of enabling core players to get the ball and shoot. If core players are forced to serve the fancy formations and tactics, then that would be putting the cart before the horse.

The current popular European style of play with wingers as the core of the offense is, to some extent, imitating and learning from Manchester United's double-wing play.

Another feature of Ferguson's tactics is that he never uses attacking midfielders.

It's not that he doesn't like the attacking midfielder tactics, but because in Ferguson's view, the technical requirements for players in this position are too high. He also wanted to create it when he was training Class 92, but he simply couldn't do it.

In Ferguson's view, a player who can be called the world's top attacking midfielder must have one characteristic - when breaking through the frontcourt, he cannot be restricted by less than four opponents.

There are only a few people in the world who can be called top attacking midfielders, and most of them are concentrated in Italy.

Moreover, even if he gets the world's top attacking midfielder, he still has to redesign the tactics and give up his beloved two-wing flying.

The world-class attacking midfielder who met Ferguson's requirements did not want to come to Manchester United, but Ferguson did not want to give up the two-wing attacking midfielder for him, so in the end, Ferguson gave up the attacking midfielder setting.

During Ferguson's 26 years as Manchester United coach, he has used almost all formations and tactics, but the only thing he has never used is the attacking midfielder tactics.

It is not a problem to not have a front midfielder. Ferguson's alternative method is to bring a defensive midfielder up during the attack to assist in the attack in the middle of the frontcourt.

After all, Manchester United's offensive core is still on the two flanks.

In short, Ferguson turned Manchester United, which was already in chaos, into a prosperous dynasty with his strict and almost autocratic management style and his tactical thinking of lowering himself to seriously study and imitate popular playing methods.

This dynasty will not collapse because of the departure of big-name stars, nor will it collapse because of management chaos, nor will it collapse because of the bloodsucking of Jewish financial groups.

Because of Ferguson, many serious problems and contradictions of Manchester United were covered up.

In the later period of Ferguson's coaching at Manchester United, he was actually forcing Manchester United to prolong its life.

But it is undeniable that this life-extending ability is too strong, especially in the 2010-2011 season, Manchester United's combat effectiveness once again reached its peak.

In today's match, Southampton is facing the strongest team in the Premier League this season, bar none. (End of this chapter)