Because he doesn’t shout about it, letting his feelings be known to millions all the time in the contemporary way, it’s easy to forget what a giant presence Bryan Robson is at Manchester United.
When Sir Bobby Charlton was struggling, Robson quietly took on some of his tasks as the face and figurehead of the club and though no-one is broadcasting the fact, he has filled the great man’s giant boots as the club’s elder statesman now.
There’s something very fitting about that, because for the players of real genius who’ve pulled on the jersey - Sir Bobby, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes - Robson was, and is, one of the first picks in an all-time best United XI. He’s a link back to the past, at a time when the memory of Busby and the spirit of Wembley, 1968 dims in the collective memory. The look on Robson’s face when I encountered him at Nobby Stiles’ funeral, a few years back, told you what the members of that great team meant to him. He was devastated.
The current crop of young players were not even born when Robson was United’s Captain Marvel – delivering in a way which would be remembered far more, had he played during the club’s peak Ferguson years.
But you could have heard a pin drop when he sat down with the under-18s and under-21s as part of a new project he is involved with, encouraging young players to take proper investment advice and avoid the chancers and financial predators on the edge of football.
Robson is working on this project with one of his United contemporaries, Simon Andrews, who was just outside the first team squad in the late 1980s and is now a financial specialist. ’I just got fed up of picking up another newspaper and reading that someone else in sport is bankrupt or been ripped off,’ Robson tells me. ‘I’ve been stung a couple of times myself.’
With typical self-effacement, he relates one of several bruising bad investment decisions he made, when a player. He’d been encouraged to invest in a hotel in the Canadian region of Whistler. ‘They’d send you updates about how the building was going, sending you maps and dimensions of the property that you owned,’ he says. ‘But when I tried to get my money out, I found it didn’t even exist.’
His role in the HPI (High Performance Individuals) project with Andrews is to switch on the young stars they are speaking to – from across football – to the idea of seeking structured advice which will shut out the con merchants.
It involves players submitting themselves to an HPI audit of where they are putting their money, and their financial hopes for the present and future. If they wish to follow up on suggestions in a resulting 16 to 20-page report, they will be pointed to experts in whichever field is relevant. ‘It’s ex-players helping players and we hope there will be a trust there, as well a knowledge and life experience they relate to,’ Robson says.
An estimated 40pc of professional footballers go bankrupt within five years of finishing playing. Wes Brown related last week how he had gone bankrupt because of a lack of knowledge in how he was investing. Chris Smalling is instigating legal action against his financial advisers KMW, alleging they failed to inform him about fees due if he withdrew his investment.
The vast sums of money in the game make players more prey than ever to spivs and chancers. Some are convinced that being represented by family members provides protection That can create a false sense of security.
The conversation with Robson turns to the subject of United’s own false sense of security, after reaching two cup finals and the Champions League last season, with Marcus Rashford the ultimate manifestation of how things haven’t turned out well. ‘There have been a few incidents of him going out in the evening,’ Robson says. ‘Having fun is part and parcel of a footballer’s life but you need to know there’s a line you can’t cross.’
Empathy yet realism, explaining why, to the very end of his time as manager, Sir Alex Ferguson always liked to see Robson close at hand, keeping an eye on United’s young players as they trained.
‘If I was standing watching training or at a match, he would say to me “Go on, what are you thinking? The truth!” Robson relates. ‘So we would have a word. And now and again, he would say, “If you feel that way about him, have a word with him.”’
None of the managers United have recruited since Ferguson left has asked Robson to do the same. Which perhaps tells us something about the club’s bumpy road, these past 11 years.