Manchester United had dismissed Ron Atkinson after a poor start to the 1986-87 First Division season. Chairman Martin Edwards remembered Ferguson from the deal that brought Gordon Strachan from Aberdeen two years earlier, and director Michael Edelson contacted the Scottish club pretending to be Strachan's agent.
Edwards recalled to Four Four Two magazine: “We had to contact him to find out if he wanted to come, before we made the official approach. If I just rang Aberdeen up and said, ‘It's Martin Edwards from Manchester United’, we thought they might not put me through to him. So Mike spoke to Aberdeen's switchboard, pretending to be Gordon's agent. They put him on.”
A clandestine meeting with the United board followed at a motorway service station outside Glasgow. Atkinson had been dismissed that morning; by 9.15pm, United had secured the agreement of their new manager.
Ferguson was leaving Aberdeen, where he had won two European trophies.
On accepting the United job, Ferguson said: “Manchester United are the only club in the world I would have left Aberdeen to join. I'm looking forward to a tremendous challenge. Everything has happened so fast that I'm slightly bewildered.
“I recall the late Jock Stein once telling me that the biggest mistake he made was to turn down the Manchester United job. And I made sure that I wouldn't do the same, but it will be a great wrench to leave Aberdeen.”
His first weeks in England were difficult. United lost 2-0 at Oxford and drew 0-0 with newly promoted Norwich before Ferguson secured his first home victory, beating QPR 2-0 sixteen days after his appointment.
In his programme notes before that match, he made his ambition clear: “There is only one way to go, and that is forward. The aim at this club must clearly be to win the championship.”
Former team-mate Gordon Strachan recalled the calm before Ferguson found his stride: “When it finally happened they were like ‘Wow, what happened there?’”
Ferguson waited almost five years for his first United trophy, the European Cup Winners' Cup, but that success began a remarkable run. He went on to win 13 Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns, spending nearly 27 years in charge and collecting 38 major trophies at Old Trafford and 49 across his managerial career.
His partnership with assistant Archie Knox also produced domestic mishaps. Ferguson recalled that they shared a flat in Timperley and took turns cooking. One Sunday, plates he had put in the oven to warm exploded across the kitchen while he prepared breakfast.
“Archie was screaming and I thought I was going to kill the two of us!”
United will mark the 40th anniversary of Ferguson's appointment with an invitation-only dinner at Old Trafford, attended by around 100 guests from his time at the club.