An im­promp­tu vis­it from Sir Alex Fer­gu­son left Macarthur FC play­ers flab­ber­gast­ed yes­ter­day, with the Man­ches­ter Unit­ed leg­end catch­ing up with his for­mer star strik­er, Dwight Yorke.

Yorke joined the A-League club ear­li­er this year in his first post­ing as a head coach, hav­ing fine-tuned his craft at Unit­ed’s acad­e­my in re­cent years.

Ear­li­er this week, the 50-year-old re­vealed that Fer­gu­son had been in touch af­ter he won his first tro­phy as a man­ag­er, guid­ing the Bulls to an Aus­tralia Cup vic­to­ry over Syd­ney Unit­ed, and now the man­age­r­i­al vet­er­an has popped by dur­ing his trip Down Un­der.

Yorke had been giv­en no­tice that the Scot would be stop­ping at some point, but his play­ers were none the wis­er, and the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald re­ports that some stars were heard say­ing “what the f***!?” up­on see­ing the 80-year-old on the touch­line.

“It’s a won­der­ful sur­prise to all of us – he didn’t have to be here,” Yorke said via Fox Sports.

“Prob­a­bly he’s off to the races at some point – I know that he’s got a big pas­sion for his horse rac­ing,” he added.

“(But) we’re look­ing for a lit­tle bit of a pick-us-up – not that we’re in a bad spot – (and) they don’t come much big­ger than Sir Alex be­ing here (on Thurs­day).

“I’m very lucky and priv­i­leged that I still have that re­la­tion­ship with him.

“How of­ten do you have some­one of his tal­ent come in­to this part of the world? I look back, and I’m very lucky to (have been) un­der his man­age­ment skills.

“He’s al­ways been help­ful. He’s al­ways giv­en me the en­cour­age­ment to go for­ward.”

Macarthur is cur­rent­ly fourth in the A-League af­ter three games, win­ning once and draw­ing twice. (Dai­ly Mail)