Alex Notman remembers sitting in the Cliff training ground the morning after the night before. It was Thursday, December 3, 1998 and the previous evening the 19-year-old Scottish striker had made his debut for Manchester United. Now, his fellow Scot and the club’s manager was striding towards him….CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>

“I thought you did really well last night,” Alex Ferguson told Notman that morning. “I really think you can get in front of a few people in that squad, just keep going the way you’re going.”

There had been just under 20 minutes left of a League Cup tie at White Hart Lane when Ferguson beckoned Notman back from his warm-up.

“I wasn’t sure if he was going to put me on, the next thing he’s called me back to get on and then he put me on up front,” remembers Notman. “It was me, Solskjaer and Sheringham because at that time I think we were 2-1 or 3-1 down. I felt I did really well.”

Ferguson’s comments the following morning backed up that view. Unfortunately, those players he was trying to get in front of were Solskjaer, Sheringham, Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke. It explains why it never quite happened for Notman, who got close to squads after that but couldn’t build on his debut.

Not that he ever lost faith. The season he made his debut has gone down as United’s greatest, culminating in the Nou Camp on May 26, 1999. By then, the young forward was back in Scotland, following events from afar after a dispiriting loan spell at Aberdeen.

Notman still felt a part of that success, even if his involvement came in the one competition United didn’t win that season. He also retained the faith that his move to Pittodrie was just another step on the ladder to breaking the glass ceiling at Old Trafford.

“I always felt that I was going to go to Aberdeen, hopefully banging in a few goals, do really well and come back and still be heavily involved,” he said.

“I wasn’t really getting involved with the first team much. I remember going in to see Sir Alex [in February 1999], knocking on his door and just saying to him, ‘look, what about maybe getting out on loan somewhere?’ And he was like, ‘yeah, all right, he literally said, ‘give me half an hour’. And he called me back up and then he had been on the phone to Aberdeen and said ‘right, you’re going to Aberdeen’.”

The move didn’t work out and Notman felt the manager at the time, Paul Hegarty, hadn’t wanted him. It was the beginning of the end for him at Old Trafford as well. That was a far cry from the expectations and the excitement that occupied his arrival at the club, joining permanently from Rangers at 15 when he had finished his education in Scotland.

He was spotted by a United scout three years earlier, playing for Tynecastle Boys Club in Edinburgh, and started to go down in the holidays to train in Manchester. In Scotland, he was with Rangers but when it came to deciding whether his future was at Ibrox, United or elsewhere, it was a personal touch from Ferguson that convinced him to move south.

“He was always involved and when they wanted me to sign, he brought all my family down, my dad, immediate family, even my gran and grandad and my auntie, sisters,” Notman told the Manchester Evening News.

“He put us up in the Castlefield Hotel. That night he came over, I think I’d been training or had a game, I was with Andy Perry as well, the United scout, and he [Ferguson] came over and he had a meal with us all and told my mum and dad that he really wanted me to sign for United. It was just an unbelievable touch really.

“I was a massive Rangers supporter, and Rangers still wanted me. To be honest I had the pick of clubs that I could have signed for – 10, 15 clubs back then,. But he came along that night and made it clear that he wanted to sign me.

“That same weekend we went to a game and he took me in the dressing room before and then back in the dressing room after the game, so that was an unbelievable experience and a great weekend. That was the kind of personal touch that made me want to sign for United.”

Notman was banging goals in for fun for the A team, B team and the reserves, often forming an unstoppable partnership with another young striker who joined the club from Norway, Erik Nevland.

Nevland is a couple of years older than Notman and his United career only lasted three more appearances, but for a while there was excitement bubbling away about their potential, so much so that Ferguson sang their praises before they had come close to a breakthrough.

In November 1997 Ferguson said of the dup: “They’re the best young strikers the club’s had, as a pair.”

Notman certainly got the impression his fellow Scot liked him, saying he got the “vibe” from him that he was close and his debut should actually have come earlier than it did. It was October 1997, when Notman was still 18, that his performances in first-team training earned him a spot in the squad for a League Cup tie at Ipswich.

United’s defeat to Tottenham in the League Cup quarter-final in December 1998 meant it was the only trophy they didn’t win that season
“I think it was Coca-Cola Cup at the time and I’d been training with the first team and he [Ferguson] said to me ‘you’re come with us tomorrow night’. I said, ‘oh, I can’t. He said, ‘what do you mean?’ I said, ‘oh, I’m away with Scotland’,” said Notman.

“Erik Nevland went and came on for that second half. So I’d have probably even made my debut back then. I wish I’d gone but unfortunately, it’s hard to get out of when your country calls you up. I didn’t really have a choice to make. I think I just had to go when you get called up and you’re fit.”

Notman had begun to hold his own in training from a young age. He remembers being in his first first-team session and playing alongside Roy Keane. Age was no barrier to a tongue-lashing from the tough-tackling and tough-talking Irishman.

“I remember the very first time that I trained with the first team, I think I was only 15,” he said. “We were doing keep ball and I was on Roy Keane’s side.

“I gave the ball away two or three times and he absolutely hammered me, he gave me a right b*****king. I was only 15, but tell you what I never gave the ball away after that one. That was him, he was just a winner. You could see the difference in the standard.

“They train like they play, they’re just born winners. And then if you’re going to be training with that group then you need to be up to that standard. It didn’t matter who you were, it didn’t matter if you were 15 or you were 30. If you weren’t producing or you weren’t playing right, then you should have been told and rightly so. That’s the standard and that’s why they were so successful over the years.”

Even after he returned from his loan spell at Aberdeen to a squad that had won the treble, Notman felt he would get a chance. There was another brief loan with Sheffield United before he got the call to go and see Ferguson in November 2000.

“It was never ever in my mind to leave permanently,” he added. “I always believed that I would get my chance and if I just kept going, kept scoring goals in the reserves, then eventually I would get a chance. But it never really happened.

“Then I always remember when Norwich had put a bid in for me, he called me in the office and he said, which was a real surprise to me, ‘this has been your best season for the last like two or three’. And then, I never said anything, but I kind of thought to myself, well, I thought I was doing well.

“You know, I wish somebody had pulled me in and said, ‘by the way, you need do better or need to do this, need to do that’. But I thought I was doing well, but obviously they didn’t think I was doing that great.”

Notman was 20 when he moved to Carrow Road but a persistent injury flared up and he managed just 58 appearances for Norwich before retiring at the age of 23.

“My right ankle was a problem, that started at United. I must have sprained that from 15 to when I left at 20 a good seven or eight times. You would be out for two or three weeks and then you’d be back but I’ve done that a good few times,” he said.

“At Norwich it was a game live on Sky against Ipswich, I blocked a shot from Mark Venus and same thing again. I had done it that many times I just thought ‘same thing again’, I’ll be out for three weeks and then I’ll be back. But it never worked out like that.”

Notman had worn away the ligaments in his ankle and after seeing a specialist and undergoing surgery he was told it was impossible for the ligaments to be reattached. He attempted one more comeback before breaking down again and had to call it a day less than five years after his debut for United as a 19-year-old.

Having played such a pivotal role in convincing a 15-year-old to leave Scotland to sign for United, Ferguson had an influence again. Notman was wondering what the rest of his life would have in store when his phone rang and a familiar voice said hello.

“I’m really sorry you’ve had to finish, if there is anything we can do to help I’m only on the other end of the phone,” Ferguson told Notman. There was even the offer of a coaching job back at the Centre of Excellence at United.

“I was 23 when it all happened and I was still so young, I was kind of sickened by it to be honest. I needed to break from the game,” said Notman.

Instead, his wife’s uncle offered him a job in the oil and gas sector. He took it but never thought he would stick at it. Twenty-one years later he is still in the trade. And his ankle is still strong enough to allow him the odd vets’ run out and five-a-side game.

Source: Manchestereveningnews

…CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>