Yorke in The Times:
“He is 60 years of age and I’m sure that when he was a player, they used to do that (go out on the town) much earlier, but I’ve never felt it was the right thing for me to do. When he bought me, I was the same type of person I was when I left — a single man who likes to enjoy life. He knew exactly what he was buying into. Then it was fine, of course. When it’s going well for you, these things are overlooked, but as soon as it goes bad, they analyse every little aspect of your life. I didn’t change. I was living the same way as I did when I was the main man at the club, but now they were looking at every little thing to find fault with me. I was prepared to change, even tried it for a bit for the good of the cause, but it made me very unhappy. I just wanted to be me — a free spirit. When I try to become somebody else, it doesn’t work.
“When I came back after the summer, I was fitter, leaner and more focused than ever, and I had a very good pre-season. He (Ferguson) had bought Ruud, but I was linking well with him and thought we were going to be playing together. That seemed to be the plan, but then he played Paul Scholes there instead. That was the beginning of the end for me.
“I thought I was hard done by — especially after all the things I’d done to try to get my career at Manchester United back on track. He (the name Ferguson appears to be unspeakable) knew every step I took (diet, gym work, extra training), he’d seen what I was doing. In the physical tests we were put through, I came out on top, along with David Beckham. Those results are all there in black and white, but that was never made public. Nobody knew of the work I put in behind closed doors, all people ever heard about was my lifestyle.
“My relationship with Kate, or Jordan as everybody knows her, was a big tabloid thing, and every time we were spotted the picture got used on a Friday or Saturday, when it was probably taken on a Tuesday. I’ve never been one to break the rules and go out the night before a game.”
“The manager didn’t want me to play in those games. He said we weren’t going to qualify anyway, but that wasn’t the point.
“Trinidad and Tobago is my country, and I’m the main man there. The annoying thing is that for my first two years at United I gave up international football to establish myself at the club. Then, in the third year, politics came into play. In Tobago, I had a stadium built in my name, so when Trinidad and Tobago were trying to qualify for the World Cup, there was no way I couldn’t help them.”
“The way it finished there is not how I wanted to go. After scoring 63 goals in three seasons I didn’t become a bad player overnight. I feel I could still be playing for Manchester United, I really do. You want to be playing for the best in the Champions League, challenging for the title and so on. I miss that, and I feel I should be there.”