Darren Ferguson: 'Dad said you've got to be honest with players, no matter how much it will upset them'

The Uniteds of Peterborough and Manchester play one another tomorrow in a pre-season friendly notable, more than anything, for the relationship between the two managers. There are a few young managers in whom Sir Alex Ferguson is said to take a fatherly interest, but in the case of the Peterborough boss the fatherly interest is literal, not that 35-year-old Darren Ferguson wants to be defined by the identity of his famous dad.

Indeed, one of the principal reasons he took the job is that Peterborough chairman Darragh MacAnthony did not once mention the old man during the 90-minute interview he spent trying to assess the cut of Ferguson's jib.

Sitting in a smart function suite at London Road, I am a little circumspect myself about bringing up Ferguson senior, but happily Ferguson junior seems cheerfully aware that until he starts showing tangible achievements as a manager, the interest he elicits from the media, if not from MacAnthony, is for one reason and one reason only. Like the son of a famous actor taking to the stage, he must have known that he was inviting comparison? "Yeah, but it's something that – how can I put it? – other people think about and I don't. If you want to do it, you have to do it your own way. It's good that I've got him for advice, but he's just a father like other people have fathers."

Well, not quite, but we'll come back to all that. First of all, how has Ferguson, in the job since January, been enjoying management after a playing career that embraced Manchester United, where he made 27 first-team appearances, Wolves, Sparta Rotterdam and Wrexham?

"Aye, it's been good. I've felt I've had to change the outlook and professionalism of the whole club: little things, like taking water bottles onto the training field, and eating together after training. And you have to get used to things you're not used to as a player, bizarre things at times.

"Like today, one of the players got a call, his wife had just put unleaded petrol in a diesel car and was stuck on the motorway. I was like, well, what do you want me to do about it? But you know, the lad has to go and help her out."

I ask him whether preparations for the coming season should encourage those tempted by Peterborough's short price with the bookies who, more mindful of the chairman's chequebook than the manager's expertise, have installed Posh as 4-1 favourites for the League Two title?

"Well, I've been involved in this league for eight years now, and it's a hard league to get out of. The bookies have made us ridiculous odds. They think we're going to run away with it, and that won't be the case. Anyone can lose to anyone. Last season we lost to Macclesfield and Accrington down at the bottom, and drew with Torquay, which cost us [a play-off place] in the end.

"I do think, though, that once you're out of this one the difference between League One and League Two is not that much. If you can get out of this one, you have half a chance of getting out of the next one." So is he eyeing up Premiership football in a few years' time? "You just never know.

"The chairman wants to have a right go at it, and as I say, if you get out of this one you can definitely go places."

In fact, he and his players have already been places: Marbella, to be exact, which is not a destination available to all League Two squads during the close season, but then not many League Two clubs are owned by go-getting young property barons like 31-year-old MacAnthony.

"The chairman has been great. He's very ambitious, a young man like myself, and we want the same things, as quickly as possible. He's given me what I want in terms of getting players in. We've got six players in, and tried to get rid of eight."

Among the newcomers is Charlie Lee, a combative 20-year-old midfield player who came from Tottenham, where he was reserve-team captain, and whose recruitment gave Ferguson particular satisfaction. "I'd been after him for a while last season in terms of getting him on loan but Tottenham wouldn't let him out. I phoned [Tottenham assistant manager] Chris Hughton at the end of the season, and Chris said Charlie wanted to get away and play, so I was pretty quick onto it. There were 16 [clubs] in for him, but we had a good chat, and I think he was impressed. He could see the ambition of the club."

It is not so many years since Ferguson made a similar move himself, away from a huge club where playing opportunities were becoming frustratingly limited, in pursuit of regular first-team football. The difference is that the man denying him the opportunities he felt he deserved was his own father. But let's go even further back, to the day his dad came into his bedroom when he was 15, and happily settled in Aberdeen, to say that the family would shortly be moving to Manchester.

"He said he'd got the Man United job. I knew he'd been offered lots of big jobs before, and turned them down, but this time he said 'look, I've got to go, I'd be off my head if I turned this one down'. So that was it. I wasn't happy. My brother was happier than I was, because he was already a Man United fan. I supported Arsenal. But it wasn't a good time for me to leave."

Did he, perchance, give his dad the hairdryer treatment? He obliges me with a short laugh. Like all those close to Fergie he insists that the hairdryer business is mythical. "No. But it was strange, and especially hard for my mother."

Does his mother get the credit she deserves for her part in his father's career, does he think? A pause. "She gets credit off the right people. He acknowledges that he wouldn't be where he is without her." Which figures, because they say that behind every successful man there's a woman. Is there one behind him? "I've just got divorced, actually."

To puncture the brief ensuing silence, I ask him to recall the move to Manchester, which turned out to be as traumatic as he'd feared. "I spent my last school year at Wilmslow School. It was the worst year I've ever had, being called 'Sweaty Sock' for a year."

A few months later, however, despite an offer from Nottingham Forest, he was on the books at Old Trafford. A move brokered by his dad? "No, it was the youth-team manager who made the decision. My father and I had a conversation and agreed that if I got to first-team level it could be awkward." A pause.

"As it proved."

In terms of charges of nepotism? "No. The other players were great. They knew what my father was like and the standards he set, and they knew he wouldn't be bringing his son in if I didn't have something. I sort of knew that too, in the back of my mind. I did quite well in my first couple of years, and got into the first team when I was 18. Sheffield United away. I was a sub but I came on after five minutes for Neil Webb. We got beat 2-1.

Then on the Saturday we played Everton at home. Giggsy made his debut as well. We were hammered 3-0. I thought 'Jesus, this is hard work'.

"After that I was in and out. I played the first 15 games the year we won the league (1993), but then I got injured. I got a medal, but the bar was lifted then. Cantona came, Keane came. I knew I wasn't going to get a regular place, then Wolves came calling, which was a good move at the time."

How easy was it, I ask Ferguson, to sustain an emotional father-and-son relationship at the same time as a professional manager-and-player relationship?

"There was no real father-and-son relationship at the time. I found that the most difficult thing, in fact I ended up moving into digs, which I felt would be better for me. It became just a working relationship, although there were times when, to be honest, he left me out of the team and never should have done. But he didn't have the power then that he's got now, so I knew what he was going through. I didn't want to be knocking his door down saying this or that, so it got difficult for both of us, to be fair."

Can he remember a particular low point? "Yeah, one particular game against Coventry and I hadn't really played that season but I played well. Then we played Everton in the quarter finals of the League Cup and he left me out for Bryan Robson. That was it for me. I said 'look, I have to get away'.

"He was a bit upset when I explained to him why. He realised he'd made a couple of mistakes with me, like in his team meetings he'd say 'I'm leaving Darren out, his mother'll kill me'. Things like that. I didn't find it funny, but obviously he felt uncomfortable, and that was how he tried to deal with it."

I venture that being left out in favour of Bryan Robson was not the greatest insult a footballer ever had to bear. "Yes, but I'd played well, and I don't think he'd have left anyone else out in the same situation. The nepotism thing worked in reverse the whole time."

So Ferguson signed for Wolves, although that didn't go the way he'd hoped, either, with five managers in as many years. After an enjoyable spell in the Netherlands he wound up at Wrexham, where he spent seven years, latterly as captain, did some coaching, and fully expected to get the manager's job in due course.

"I have to say it was disappointing [to be overlooked when Denis Smith was sacked]. I've always wanted to be a manager rather than a coach. I think I can make decisions, and man-management suits me."

He has sought the advice of several managers other than his father, he adds.

"Davey Moyes, Aidy Boothroyd, Brian Flynn, Walter Smith, they've all been great. It would be foolish of me not to speak to people like that. Apart from anything else I'm registered as a player here, and I wanted some tips on being a player-manager. They all said 'don't do it'. So unless there's an outbreak of leprosy, I can't see myself playing."

And what advice has he received from the man who will sit in the away dug-out tomorrow? "Not much, to be honest. He's said you've got to be honest with players, regardless of how much you're going to upset them. At the end of the day, sentiment will cost you your job."

A job that Sir Alex almost gave up of his own accord? "Yes, that was one time when I gave him advice, me and my other brothers. We all knew it was wrong for him to retire, and he's proved that. I think he's got to carry on for as long as he can, as long as he has the drive to build another team. I think this one will be his best, too, the way they play, with so much pace and flair."

Will he then, be pitting his wits against the greatest British club manager of all time tomorrow? "It's difficult to say. Bob Paisley won three European Cups. But Man United is a hard club to manage and 20 years there is an incredible achievement. It will certainly be interesting with him in one dug-out, me in the other."

Not that the confrontation has anything to do with nepotism, perish the thought. "Barry Fry [Peterborough's director of football] arranged it. It's a match I could do without, actually."