Defeat is the hardest word for Fergie

HOW does that old line go, which George Dubya once so memorably cocked up on camera?

“Fool me once, shame on you — fool me twice, shame on me,” wasn’t it?

That says all that’s required as we survey the post-Anfield debris.

The volcanic Fergie played a blinder again, spewing hot lava all over the shop, which duly solidifies into dozens of column inches across all the papers. Gary Neville did his bit too, with what is becoming his regular habit of mouthing off at all and sundry to headline-grabbing effect as he prowls the touchline. (I daresay he has to do something to justify the salary that he so loudly proclaimed he deserves the other week, as it isn’t by playing much football these days. But is a whingeing shop steward worth 60k a week?)

‘Operation Diversion’ hasn’t worked quite as well as it did after Sunderland, though. Most media outlets have still managed to find sufficient space to give all United’s failings a thorough airing, with Rio in particular being placed in the public stocks and pelted with Torres’s discarded Alice bands.

Sunday was undeniably unpleasant and disappointing, and if there exists such a creature as an MUFC-FCUM- Bucs tripartite fan, he must have been tempted to start Monday morning teetering on a high ledge.

(FC were harshly KO’d from the Cup, and the Bucs’ PR trip to Wembley was a backfiring disaster.)

And to think that a week ago I had been foolishly entertaining fantasies of us giving Liverpool a 1969-style kicking! Once we saw that Torres had made the team at 2pm, all such fanciful notions went out the window — shortly followed by what was left of Rio’s reputation, if you believe some pundits.

Certainly, it is hard to escape the temptation to see something iconically symbolic in those freeze-frames of an 80% fit girly Spaniard out muscling and outpacing a 100% fit Rio.

And how Fergie must have rued, for the umpteenth time in the lad’s record-breaking Anfield career, his initial judgement that Torres was unlikely to be an accomplished goalscorer at Premier League level!

That infamous MUFC scouting verdict, supposedly backed by state of the art coaching stats ‘n’ charts, must be threatening to go down in Old Trafford history as the most woefully misjudged expert report since they gave Michael Knighton’s back-of-a-matchbox plans the thumbs-up.

But amidst all the brouhaha, at least give Fergie credit for one thing — he did admit Liverpool deserved to win. Such concessions are becoming a habit with the old man. He’s apologised to Wiley, and may well add another, of some kind, to Sunday’s inexperienced official.

You may recall he uncharacteristically held his hands up after Rome too. As his older players often claim, perhaps OAP-dom is teaching him the mellow wisdom of knowing when to concede, with as much grace as you can muster. Even though, clearly, that’s never much in Fergie’s case.

So, just as we said after Sunderland, thank goodness for our next opponents. Last time it was a generally compliant Bolton and their Fergie-sucking manager who did the honours (albeit with a late scare or two). This time, it’s an even more fanatical Fergie zealot — in the shape of Sam Allardyce.

Last week, he charmlessly blamed his own players for “not understanding the instructions” he gave them.

You might think the fault may have lain in the utter incomprehensibility of the deliverer, rather than the wretched recipients. But Sam is never wrong, and certainly never at fault. Fergie, at least, has learned to move beyond that kind of bullying juvenility.

Besides, ‘sorry’ only seems to be the hardest word: for Fergie, ‘defeat’ cannot be beat.