Squeaky bum time not all that squeaky

IT’S easy to get too blasé about the success we’ve had in the Fergie era; we take for granted the cascade of silverware and our perennial status as The Team To Beat.

But it still impressed me to realise this morning that this is our 20th successive title-chase.

Never mind your ‘classic Liverpool’ of the post ‘76 era, or Revie’s Leeds: there is no club in English history who can match this record of consistency, and of hardened experience of what we have all come to know as ‘squeaky bum time’. (How fitting that is was Fergie himself, the ultimate expert in this matter, who coined that deathless phrase).