We lose that winning Phelan as new tactics chief Kops it

EARLY Saturday kick-offs — and thus earlier drinking kick-offs — have one small silver lining: you have usually had too much to drink by about 10pm and are thus often forced to stagger home prematurely.

This means you might as well watch Match Of The Day, the BBC institution now in its 45th year. (And after four and a half decades, it still combines smug self-satisfaction with intellectual ultra-low-wattage to the kind of annoying degree that makes it best watched half-cut anyway).

So it was that I caught Mike Phelan’s post-match interview from the tunnel at Anfield and I’m sure I wasn’t the only Red to shift uncomfortably as I watched him, bewildered and nervous, blinking under the lights like a mole disturbed from hibernation. The Coneman began alarmingly by announcing we had been ‘outbossed’ in the second half.

‘Outbossed’? You either boss something or you don’t, surely?! He then declared (I paraphrase) that Liverpool had adjusted their tactics and that we didn’t respond to it. He then simply stopped, as if that were sufficient.

This, remember, is the man who, in the wake of Carlos Queiroz’s departure, is now in charge of our tactics and much more.

Yet he gave the impression that what had happened at Anfield had nothing to do with him, and that answers should be sought elsewhere.

From Fergie, perhaps? Well, as you should know, the reason why creatures like Phelan and Carlos Queiroz are, sadly, important is that Fergie isn’t a coach and can’t do these things himself, so is there much point in looking to him for detail? (In any event, he won’t speak to the BBC because of a past spat).

So we waited until the Sunday press, where Fergie finally appeared with this shrugging comment: “we didn’t cope with Liverpool getting about us well and that was the source of the defeat. It’s difficult to say why that should be.” Mmm. One would’ve thought €6million a year bought you someone who could overcome such ‘difficulty’ but there you go.

Calm down Kurt. It’s just one bad show. Fergie’s a reigning Double Champion and Ronaldo’s Messianic return is next week.

So congratulations to Liverpool: it was absurdly overdue and I am at least happy to see no-one at United has claimed the result was anything other than fair. Nevertheless, losing to Liverpool is always a grisly occasion.

Not the best week to be walking around in a United replica shirt, perhaps, in more than one way: not only do you risk derision after Saturday, you are also advertising the name of Wall Street’s current jump-from-the-ledge basket case, the $40bn-in-the-hole AIG, aka our ‘proud shirt sponsor and Platinum Partner’.

Platinum? Grotty silver-plate at best, in fact. A bit like Mike Phelan, then.

This could be the first case whereby a club might have good cause to seek to extricate themselves from a deal lest the firm besmirch the club’s reputation. (It’s usually the other way around, of course). Still, it could be said that AIG make an even better partner than ever for the spectacularly overloaded Glazer family, who can all face the ever-tightening credit crunch and recession abyss hand-in-understanding-hand.

One wonders if the United fans across the world who have been sucked into becoming AIG clients by United’s de facto recommendation will be quite so understanding.

And with all eyes on the weekend showdown (we’re taking tonight for granted, frankly) — if we were to go down at Chelsea and find that with, barely a month gone, we are already nine points behind, I doubt many of us will be feeling too ‘understanding’ of the Phelan Era either.