How Pep Guardiola ignored Alex Ferguson's pleas to replace him – and 7 other things we learned from United legend's new book

Alex Ferguson lined up Pep Guardiola as his potential successor at Manchester United but the Spanish coach didn’t call him before taking the Bayern Munich job.

In his new book Leading Ferguson said the club “established that several very desirable candidates were unavailable” before David Moyes was hired in 2013 for an unsuccessful 11-month spell in charge.

After Guardiola left Barcelona in mid-2012, Ferguson had dinner with the former Barcelona coach in New York but, as his own retirement was not on the agenda yet, there was no “direct proposal” for the Spaniard to one day take over at United.

“I asked Pep to phone me before he accepted an offer from another club but he didn’t and wound up joining Bayern Munich in July 2013,” Ferguson writes in the book, which was published on Tuesday and co-authored with Michael Moritz.

Although Ferguson publicly announced the end of his near 27-year reign as United manager in May 2013, he had decided in December 2012 to retire after his wife’s sister died. Guardiola announced in January 2013 that he would take over at Bayern for the next season.