Arch rivals go head-to-head in Europe: Clash of the tartan terrors

A tentative peace between Sir Alex Ferguson and Gordon Strachan will be put to the test tonight

Strachan believes his former manager thrives on conflict

Grudge or no grudge? Have Sir Alex Ferguson and Gordon Strachan, one-time Aberdeen allies but long-term foes since, buried the hatchet? Or, in the wake of Strachan claiming recently that they get on, have they papered over the cracks of a fractious, bitter relationship as they seek to bury the hatchet into each other's reputations on the pitch?

Manchester United are hot favourites against Celtic in the Champions' League tonight, and anything but a win against a side manifestly inferior in man-for-man talent would be a source of huge professional embarrassment for Ferguson, even without the added spice of facing Strachan. Celtic, mirroring the "wee man" attitude of their manager - who has always sought big achievements in a feisty manner to compensate for his small stature - know that a point will be regarded as a moral victory. Whatever they say in public, both men would relish the right result, and for personal reasons.

Events of the past month suggest more than a hint of spin in Strachan's claims of current harmony. Thursday 10 August was the publication date of his autobiography,Strachan: My life in football. Strachan tells various tales of Ferguson's bullying as a manager. He reveals how Ferguson once wept in front of him with remorse that he had neglected his family. He says Ferguson feels such stress that he has a nervous cough. He admits that he had an antagonistic attitude towards Ferguson's agent son, Jason, because: "I have been bullied by one Ferguson; I am not going to be bullied by another."

Strachan also wrote that since Ferguson's own autobiography in 1999, when Ferguson made a series of biting comments about him, "Fergie and I have hardly spoken to each other. On the occasions our paths have crossed, we have tended to communicate no more than necessary."

On 24 August, Celtic and Manchester United were drawn together in the Champions' League. The next day, when asked about their relationship, Strachan said: "To put it in perspective, the last time we saw each other we spoke for 40 minutes about football, families and other things. If we have anywhere near the relationship we are supposed to have then that doesn't happen." Strachan reiterated the point yesterday.

What a rapid turnaround, from communicating "no more than necessary" to 40-minute chats. Similarly, it is a little hard to swallow that Strachan criticises Ferguson in his book, and then effectively asks his readers to discount chunks of animosity.

"I have always kept a discreet public silence [since Ferguson's book]," Strachan writes. "Nevertheless, I have always felt deep down that it would be good for me one day to give my side of the story. In doing so now, I have no wish to score any points off Fergie. I just want to put the record straight from my point of view."

As they say in the tough Muirhouse district of Edinburgh where Strachan was born and raised: "Aye, right pal! Pull the other one."

Strachan includes incidents that are not only sensitive but that undermine Ferguson's hard-man image. One passage describes Ferguson's turmoil after his wife, Cathy, was rushed to hospital in the late 1980s, and how Strachan's wife, Lesley, helped with ironing, shopping and looking after Ferguson's three sons. Strachan tells how Ferguson sat in his front room, "pouring his heart out. . . While talking about not having given [Cathy] and his children enough attention, he became so emotional that he burst into tears."

In a summer interview inScotland on Sunday to publicise his book, Strachan admitted that he had hesitated "a wee bit" in describing Ferguson's tears. He included it anyway, on page 7.

Asked in the same interview whether he liked Ferguson, he replied: "I don't dislike him." The interviewer then wrote, cryptically: "It is also clear from Strachan's off-the-record comments that he knows far more damaging things about Ferguson than ever got near his book."

Though the Ferguson-Strachan relationship truly went off the rails when Strachan left Aberdeen in contentious circumstances, their personalities always clashed, one an authoritarian ranter, the other wilful and "gobby". One confrontation came in a Uefa Cup game in Romania in 1981-82, where Aberdeen were trailing 2-0 at half-time. Ferguson recalled in his autobiographyManaging My Life: "I set about Gordon in a manner that could fairly be described as blunt... The wee man was, however, in one of his nippy sweetie moods, full of caustic comments. What he regarded as smart ripostes struck me as senseless meanderings."

This was not the most acidic swipe that Ferguson took at Strachan in his book. He described how Strachan wanted to leave Aberdeen in the 1983-84 season, so Ferguson set up a deal to sell him to Manchester United only to find Strachan had signed a separate deal - later rescinded - with Cologne. "Though I always felt there was a cunning streak in Strachan, I never had imagined that he would pull such a stroke on me," Fergie wrote. Later, after the pair were reunited at United, Strachan decided he wanted out of Old Trafford after telling United that he wanted to stay, a turnaround in 24 hours that Ferguson found "sickening", Ferguson wrote. "Our lives had been enmeshed for most of a decade but I knew in a moment that I wouldn't want to expose my back to him in a hurry."

Strachan's response, in his book, was to describe his old boss as "a man who thrives on conflict", a man who wept at his failings as a husband and father, and a man who, as Scotland's then manager, coughed all night at the 1986 World Cup (specifically through nerves is Strachan's interpretation).

There praise for Ferguson, too, and admiration for his results if not his methods. Strachan says Ferguson is "the game's motivational master". He also accepts Ferguson had a huge influence on him personally, although he tempers that by adding: "I think I owe just as much, if not more, to men like Ron Atkinson and Howard Wilkinson."

The lasting impression of the pair, from their own words, is that Ferguson appreciated Strachan's skills, at least at Aberdeen, but disliked being challenged. Strachan has always resented Ferguson's bullying, such as being told: "Who would want a crap player like you?"

Strachan wrote: "I needed him to treat me as an adult, not a kid. Not long after he joined me at Manchester United and took up from where he had left off with me at Aberdeen, I remember telling him: 'Listen, you spoke to me like that nine years ago. It might have worked well then, but it is not going to work now'. But the screaming and shouting did not cease - it just got worse and more personal.

"One day it would be great to sit down with him and have a proper chat about our clashes, to bring our relationship closer to what it was like in its most harmonious periods." Tonight will probably not be the time.

Scots' strop: A feast of fury

Ferguson On Strachan

'I hurled a tray of cups filled with tea towards Strachan, hitting the wall above him... he obeyed instructions in the second half'.

Explaining a half-time rant at Aberdeen

'It was disappointing when I went there [to Old Trafford in 1986] to come upon a player who bore scant resemblance to the man I remembered at Pittodrie... diminished by living in the shadow of the likes of Robson, Whiteside and McGrath'.

'When managers and players who have achieved much together find their paths diverging, the most either side can expect is that the parting will be conducted with mutual respect and transparent fairness. I found little evidence that those were Gordon Strachan's priorities'.

On Strachan's departure from Pittodrie

Strachan On Ferguson

'I do not think anybody needs to be reminded about Fergie's autocratic, abrasive style of management'

'I had loved playing for Ron Atkinson at United. After being beaten with a big stick for so long at Aberdeen, it was refreshing to have a manager who trusted and appreciated me, and treated me as an adult. When Fergie moved to United, I had to endure the big stick again'

'Even as a manager I have found it difficult to discount the possibility of Fergie taking a particular interest in putting one over on me'.

On his paranoia that Manchester United lost at home to Derby in 2001 to secure relegation of his Coventry side