A sunny golf course, the middle of May. Sir Alex Ferguson is off duty. It is Sunday and he has popped around the corner to Mottram Hall, from his house in Wilmslow, for a quick 18 holes. But there are ghosts on the golf course, red-shirted apparitions that rise from the bunkers and dance across the fairways. Ferguson knows these visions well. For 12 months he has been striving to lay them to rest.

Golf was to have been the staple of his retirement, but instead it remains a snatched pleasure on a spare Sunday morning, a brief becalming of a life that, at the age of 61, is still driven and defined by work. Why is he working? The ghosts. Had he quit as planned in 2002, these ghosts would be with him always. You work in football management for 27 years and almost every one is burnished by triumph. Then, year 28, your last, is so anti-climactic that everything you have done previously is brought into question. Do you end it there? A fine retirement that would have been.

The ghosts. Patrick Vieira running over the seventh green. Thierry Henry lurking among the trees that run along the right-hand side of the dog-leg ninth. Arsène Wenger smirking beside you on the tee at the 18th. Arsenal. This is May 4, 2003, the last day they will haunt Ferguson. “We won the Premier League three years in a row (from 1998-99 to 2000-01) and the last two of those weren’t that exciting. But last year? You can’t beat that,” the manager smiled. “Coming down to the second-last game of the season. I was out golfing and every shot you play you see a red and white jersey in front of you, know what I mean?” That afternoon Arsenal lost to Leeds and United won the championship. To paraphrase the song Ferguson’s players sang in celebration, he’s got his trophy back.

And now? “You’ve seen him,” said Peter Kenyon, the Old Trafford chief executive. “Alex is as good as he’s been in five years. The demeanour, the body language, the hunger, the commitment — it’s all there.”

Ferguson arrived upon an interesting word as he sought to explain the difference 12 months has made to him and his team: “We re-invented ourselves by winning the League. We got back to where we were.”

A SOFTLY-LIT hotel suite, the beginning of August. Ferguson is on duty. He is sitting at a polished oak desk in a private room at the Barclay Inter-Continental in New York. The Waldorf Astoria lies across East 48th Street; Grand Central Station, the Chrysler building and the shopping mecca of Fifth Avenue are nearby. This is Midtown, Manhattan, and Ferguson, with his febrile mind, is invigorated.

The Barclay is one of New York’s grand hotels, where self-assured nonchalance is the thing and you are considered loud if you raise an eyebrow, let alone your voice. Yet on Monday, when the United team arrived and walked through the plush, sleek lobby, the iciness was broken. Guests laid down their espressos and dry martinis to go and have their photograph taken with Ruud van Nistelrooy — even a group of players from the Italian side Roma.

Van Nistelrooy’s 80 goals in two seasons at Old Trafford have made him, in lieu of David Beckham, Manchester United’s new face. He has scored on this tour of the US — a swivel-volley against Juventus especially — goals that came straight from the gods. If only everything in life was as reliable as Van Nistelrooy.

“We don’t have another Ruud,” Ferguson said frankly, “and I haven’t been looking for one in the transfer market. I don’t know where you could get another one anyway. There’s nobody in the game who can play directly up as a striker, alone, and score a volume of goals like he does. Well, maybe Ronaldo. Ronaldo can do it if he wants.”

Ferguson is fitting in this interview between bits of work. He is insatiable, overseeing every last detail of what his players are up to with his usual forensic eye. Tomorrow the squad is going for dinner with their counterparts from Juventus at Le Cirque. “Do you want the lads to wear their club blazers?” asks Diana Law, United’s press officer. “Aye,” says Ferguson. “But find out what the Juventus boys are wearing first.”

The interview cannot begin until he snaps shut his mobile phone, on which he has been in earnest conversation. Transfer business? Probably. United are still looking to make two more big signings before the window closes on August 31, but their manager is giving little away. One, he concedes, will be a defender. The other, though he will not say as much, is likely to be a penetrative, attacking player.

Just as there is only one Van Nistelrooy, there is nobody like Ronaldinho, Ferguson believes. Though the manager feels he has done excellent business in securing Tim Howard, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Kleberson (though that transfer is not yet formalised), all young international players who will add depth and potential to his squad, he is conscious that Beckham has gone, Juan Veron could follow, and there has been no marquee signing.

“We want to win the Champions League again and that’s where Ronaldinho came into the equation. I felt if we’d got him we’d have had a big chance in Europe,” Ferguson said. “Without him we can’t really do anything different (in style of play) to be honest with you. I think he’ll be a great player.”