I believe I have influenced people in my long life in football. I do not suggest that any player or manager has consciously copied me. Experience means not only lessons learned from mistakes. It also means a collection of worthwhile information quite subconsciously pigeonholed in the brainbox, from talking to or watching others with something to say or to show. So although I have not copied any man my football thinking has been influenced by close contact with great men from my boyhood.

I was as football daft as any of the boys in the village of Bellshill, and dafter than most, and we had our idols already. There were two young fellows called Alex James and Hughie Gallacher, for instance. They would be about eighteen or nineteen, I suppose, I about nine or ten. They were little whippets as footballers go, but they were famous. Why, everybody in Bellshill, knew what players they were! They played at the time for two juvenile teams in the area, juvenile meaning teams in lower status than the Scottish League but brimful of the best young players in the villages who had not, or not yet, reached the big game.

I was still at school, of course, but I was hamper boy to James's team, humping kit, and generally helping and fussing about. I do not know why, but something went wrong with Alex James's boots, or they were missing, and the great man borrowed my football boots. I was a big boy and he was a little man. Soon the village knew about it. I proclaimed it to all my friends or whoever was in earshot. "Alex James played in my boots!" It will have been noticed that I proclaim it still, and that is because, as young as I was and as small and insignificant though little Bellshill might seem in the big world of football, I saw magic in those early days, the magic of two of the greatest footballers in the game's history in one small village.

Magic because even then James used to mesmerize his opponents with a feint that said: "Now I'm here, now I'm not", and Gallacher used to paralyse them with a dribbling run and power of shot and a line of pertinent or impertinent patter to go with it...

I played against James and Gallacher in their later but still great days, after Gallacher had left Newcastle United for Chelsea. I was a nobody, but they remembered the boy who had looked after the hamper and always had words of encouragement for me, their opponent now, with a welcome `Well done, son,' or "Well played, Matt." Not that this in any way deterred them from leaving me sitting on my bottom with the rest.

His mother, Nellie, was the daughter of an Irishman, Jimmy Greer, who worked down the pit in Orbiston with Matt's father, Alexander. Matt was followed by three girls, Delia, Kathy and Margaret, in the years leading up to the Great War. Privacy was a luxury; baths were taken in a tub in the living room.

Bellshill is a town still riven with the enmity that characterises sectarianism in west central Scotland. Matt's parents were a hard-grafting couple who refused to share the religious bigotries of so many of their neighbours - Catholic and Protestant in uneasy adjacency. Religion for the Busbys was a private matter. Socially, it was important to coexist, for life in this troubled coal and steel area was hard enough. With this in mind, perhaps, in 1914 Matt was sent to school at St Bride's in Bothwell (since demolished - the present school was built in 1973). It's a short trip from Orbiston but a world apart in atmosphere. Bothwell today is better known as the charming, adopted home of successful soccer stars, ex-pat English among them, and even in Matt's day it had a quieter facade than Orbiston and Bellshill. Not that the young 'Mattha' had many carefree years in which to enjoy it.

His family sought refuge from the toughness of life in an unforgiving area, but the catalyst for change was the war, which snatched the lives of Alex Busby, claimed by a sniper's bullet at Arras in France in 1916, and three of Matt's uncles. Of the Busby menfolk, only Jimmy Greer and Matt were left when the war ended. Already an intelligent and well-behaved boy, Matt was compelled by circumstances to grow old before his time. Maturity was a hat he was forced to wear at a young age, and like the trilby for which he was renowned in the fifties, it looked good on him.

Matt had always seemed wise beyond his years and eager to acquire knowledge; the death of his father, and his assumption of the role of man of the house now induced in the amiable youth a certain paternalism. It was a trait for which many a young man whose life was touched by Matt would come to be grateful.

Matt Busby, tall sturdy Scottish international wing half back, who now manages Manchester United with the same distinction that he showed on the football field was the model player in that position.

In fact, I firmly believe that Busby would have been an ideal player in any position on the field simply because he had everything that I have stressed as being necessary in the make-up of a footballer. And he had it developed to an extraordinarily high degree.

His passing, ball control, heading ability, interception, tackling and manoeuvrability were exceptional and to play against him must have been an inside forward's nightmare.

Matt Busby joined Manchester City from the small Scottish club Denny Hibernians in 1928, originally as an inside-right, but his career blossomed when City switched him to right-half. He never had a crunching tackle, but so precise was his timing that he stole the ball off your toe. For all he was a resolute defender, he loved to get forward; in many respects he was what we would term today an attacking midfielder. Matt won an FA Cup winners medal in 1934 when Manchester City beat Portsmouth 2-1 in the final. City's teenage goalkeeper Frank Swift was so overcome with emotion he collapsed and had to be carried to the Royal Box to receive his medal. Matt moved on from City to Liverpool in 1936 for what was then a considerable fee of £8,000 and stayed at Anfield until war broke out in 1939 when, like just about every other player of the day, he joined the services. Matt did turn out for Liverpool in unofficial matches during the war years and guested for a number of clubs situated near to wherever he was stationed, but effectively his playing career ended in 1939.

One of Matt's greatest strengths as a player was his passing. Not only could he split open defences but the pass was always so beautifully timed and weighted it was perfect for City forwards such as Eric Brook, Freddie Tilson or Alex Herd to latch on to without breaking their stride. For all players were tightly marked in the thirties, Matt could overcome all that with one sweeping pass. I think his ability to pick out team-mates with superlative passing was indicative of his great vision even then.

That Matt was a visionary there is no doubt. He pioneered youth systems and took part in European football against current thinking. We all accept these as part and parcel of the modern game, but then they were radical. He built three great United teams - one in the immediate post-war years led by Johnny Carey, the Busby Babes of the fifties and United's League Championship and European Cup-winning side of the sixties that included football's holy trinity of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.

From player in the thirties to manager in the Swinging Sixties, for all he was an innovator, he never changed his style, always holding true to a belief in sportsmanship, open entertaining football and the virtues of family life. As a manager he enjoyed patriarchal status but because of his receptiveness to new ideas was never considered old-fashioned. To this day, he is still thought of as being one of British football's foremost innovators. In creating his Busby Babes, Matt set up a network of scouts throughout the British Isles to find the very best young players. Up to that point, managers more or less just tapped into what young talent was about within a 30-mile radius of the club. Matt changed all that, but his desire to create a great team of United-bred youngsters was foiled by the Munich air disaster of 1958 in which Matt himself came close to death. Resolute and undeterred, he overcame tragedy and rebuilt. His reward came in 1968 when his League Championship side of the year before became the first English club to win the European Cup when they beat Benfica 4-1 at Wembley.

Probably the classiest wing half back I have ever met was Matt Busby, and I am not surprised he has made such a success of his job as manager of Manchester United, for Matt was not only a great player, he was also a great teacher.

Surely football has never seen such an immaculate passer of the ball than the cheerful, likeable Scot. It was uncanny to see him change the direction of a game with one shrewd pass, which always went speedily and accurately to the right man.

There was never anything slipshod about Matt. Only the best would do and no matter where the ball was he was always working, always taking up position, always thinking a couple of moves ahead of anyone else. So no wonder Matt Busby covered more ground in each match than any other player on the field, and to what wonderful purpose!

It's well known that Matt played at right-half for City, but really his strongest foot was his left. His top move was to get past a few players moving towards the centre of the field, then switch it by hitting a ball over to the corner flag where Ernie Toseland would already be into his stride. That created lots of goal chances. Matt was, I suppose, what you call a "schemer" these days. He was such a good player and yet he only earned himself one cap before wartime. We often used to joke about how good that other fellow must have been to keep him out of the Scottish team. Matt was a great example to the younger lads. But like one or two other of the lads, he'd sneak off to the toilets for a Woodbine on occasion. Having said that I can rarely recall him swearing and he was a clean-living chap on and off the field. He was a great example to the younger players.

Call it confidence, conceit, arrogance, or ignorance, but I was unequivocal about it. At the advanced age of thirty-five I would accept the managership of Manchester United only if they would let me have all my own way. As the manager I would want to manage. I would be the boss.

This being so I would not have any excuse if I failed. Nor would I offer any. They could kick me out...

But I did think I knew about football and footballers. Technical knowledge alone will not make a manager in any organization. It is incomplete without a feeling for people. Whether the loss of my father had subconsciously given me a feeling of being unprotected, I do not know. Certainly there is some gap for a boy without a father when all other boys around him could talk about theirs incessantly and did.

Perhaps it induced in me some paternal, protective feeling for other unfortunate or sensitive young people. Whatever induced it I had it. I was only a boy when I left home for the first time to go to Manchester City. Not all boys are tough and adventurous, though in the Seventies fledglings seem to regard it as "chicken" not to leave the nest, whereas it was only the rare bird who flew before the war.

Anyway I was homesick, and it did not help when, having used a senior player's football boots by mistake one day, he gave me a tremendous blasting.

There was a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between first team players and the rest, and an even wider gulf between players and management. They were office managers in those days. A player saw the manager only on Saturday in the coach or if he called you up to his office for a rocket.

I had the doubtful pleasure of playing against Stanley Matthews and the real pleasure of playing with him for the combined services. He would come to you with the ball at his dainty feet. He would take you on. You had seen it all before. You knew precisely what he would do and you knew precisely what he would do with you. He would pass you, usually on the outside, but as a novelty on the inside. If you went to tackle him it was merely saving time for him. He then simply beat you. If you didn't he would tease you by coming straight up to you and showing you the ball. And that would be the last you would see of him in that move. If you were covered he would do the same with your cover man and his cover man and so ad infinitum. Then, in his own good time and not before, he would release the perfect pass.

In his moments he would tear a man apart, tear a team apart. He might not be in it for three-quarters of the game. In the other quarter he would destroy you. He wasn't in it in his winning Cup Final for Blackpool against Bolton Wanderers in 1953 for much that mattered until the last phase, during which he destroyed Bolton and laid on the victory. He usually laid everything on for others to finish off. No amount of cover would have stopped him in his magical moments. People were as aware of him as they are of any player today. They set out to stop him as they set out to stop the best today. But the best can't be stopped just by setting people on them.

Stan Matthews was basically a right-footed player, Tom Finney a left-footed player, though Tom's right was as good as most players' better foot. Matthews gave the ball only when he was good and ready and the move was ripe to be finished off. Finney was more of a team player, Matthews being more of an inspiration to a team than a single part of it. Finney was more inclined to join in moves and build them up with colleagues, by giving and taking back. He would beat a man with a pass or with wonderful individual runs that left the opposition in disarray. And Finney would also finish the whole thing off by scoring, which Stan seldom did. Being naturally left-footed, Tom was absolutely devastating on the right wing. An opponent never seemed to be able to get at him. If you were a problem to him he had two solutions to you.

Tom Finney could and would and did play in any forward position. Like Stan Matthews he was never in any trouble with referees. Stan was knighted after his immense period as a player. Tom was awarded the OBE. I do not say that Tom should have played until he was fifty. I do say that I was sorry he did not play for two or three years more than he did, even though he was in his late thirties.

How can anybody say who was the greater ? I think I would choose Matthews for the big occasion - he played as if he was playing the Palladium. I would choose Finney, the lesser showman but still a beautiful sight to see, for the greater impact on his team. For moments of magic - Matthews. For immense versatility - Finney. Coming down to an all-purpose selection about whom I would choose for my side if I could have one or the other I would choose Finney.

He (Matt Busby) was wonderful to deal with. He made everybody feel important. Everybody felt the same, whether you were the chairman or the lads who swept the terraces. He always put you at your ease, always made you feel comfortable. It was like talking to your dad. But I was still always in awe of the man. He was a hero when I was a kid, and to actually get to know him ... it was like a Jim'll Fix It, I suppose: to meet and speak with your hero, and actually work with him.

He was the most humble o f people. If anybody could be excused for thinking they were special, he was the person, but that was never a feeling you got from him. Even people he never met he had an effect on - they felt they knew him. I'm just so sorry I only got to know him in his later years.

It was utterly extraordinary that three great managers, Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Bill Shankly, came from the same area of Scotland, and it was, I think, very significant. These people absorbed the best of the true ethos of that working-class environment. There was a richness of spirit bred into people from mining areas.

I'm likely to see it that way because my father worked in the pits for a while, but there is no question that there was a camaraderie. Stein said that he would never work with better men than he It was utterly extraordinary that three great managers, Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Bill Shankly, came from the same area of Scotland, and it was, I think, very significant. These people absorbed the best of the true ethos of that working-class environment. There was a richness of spirit bred into people from mining areas. I'm likely to see it that way because my father worked in the pits for a while, but there is no question that there was a camaraderie. Stein said that he would never work with better men than he did when he was a miner, that the guys who got carried away with football were never going to impress him much, and although Shankly was completely potty about the game and was the great warrior/poet of football, he nevertheless retained that sense of what real men should do, the sense of dignity, the sense of pride. All of that was present in Matt.