Yes, we’re all still feeling pretty City

HERE are the Seven Steps, those psychological stages you go through after the ‘bereavement’ of a historic thrashing like Sunday’s.

*Disbelieving shock — for about 20 minutes after the whistle.

*Overwhelming nausea — a good two hours or so.

*Flailing anger — the rest of the night.

*Sadness — waking up to next morning’s realisation that it wasn’t a dream.

*Cowardice – not going to work next morning.

*Acceptance — next match.

*Laughing about it – when hell freezes over.

I’m referring to the fans’ reaction, of course: it appears players andmanagement zoom through the stages somewhat faster than we do — a single afternoon, on Sunday’s evidence.

Rooney and his City player pals were living it up at Wings restaurant within hours of their showers; the Glazers were partying down atWembley after their helicopter jolly; and even Alex wasn’t letting the small matter of six City strikes keep him from the first of his 25th anniversary backslapping shindigs at Old Trafford.

Oh, and they do the ‘humour’ stage differently: jokes are fine. A source who attended said Fergie opened his party’s proceedings with a jolly “right then, let’s get the jokes and the banter out of the way about today’s result, then we can get on with enjoying the evening.”

The comedian duly obliged and “it was all beer and giggles thereafter.”

How very agreeable for them all.

You get the same jokes with slight variations every time we are thrashed, of course. It’s a moment of national celebration, after all, made worse for us by social media’s accelerants. “What’s the difference between Man United and a black cab?” “A black cab only lets in five.”

“What time is it?” “About six past De Gea.”

And there’s Lady Cathy shaking Fergie in the morning: “Come on, Alex, wakey-wakey — it’s seven.” “What? They’ve scored another?”

I’ll pause for you to get some stitches for your sides. I remember “it’s six past Bailey” coming back from Portman Road in 1980: I didn’t laugh then, either.

So, “we’re a right bunch of b*****ds when we lose,” as the Strettie song goes. (As plenty of bloodied Blues found out on Sunday night in town, I am told.)

Still, I suppose this is all good rites-of-passage stuff for that spoilt younger generation who may have come to believe that simply losing a European Cup final constitutes an abject disgrace.

You never forget your first bloody good hiding, whether it be from your dad, your team’s rivals, or that suspiciously Amazonian bird you unwisely went home with after one too many.

Almost 36 years ago this week, The Doc’s feted young team, to whom we were so recently comparing this side, were going through an identical sequence.

An unconvincingly tight home win over Norwich had preceded a poor display at Anfield, and then came the apocalypse against City: we were thrashed 4-0 — and on a school night too.

I wagged off the next two days in order to avoid the music. I have never forgotten what it felt like to be hammered so badly that you have to cower in self-imposed house arrest lest a roaming Bitter spot you.

Fourteen years later, when Fergie’s transitional team exploded 5-1 at Maine Road, I remember being pleased to hear that Alex had felt he had to undergo the same domestic purdah, so embarrassed and ashamed was he. Somehow, knowing that he ‘understood’ was a great comfort.

Here was a manager to whom This Thing Of Ours didn’t have to be explained. And now I wonder: would that younger, hungrier Fergie have sauntered off to a self-glorifying booze-up party on the very night of humiliation for which he himself was so largely to blame? Ah. It seems I’m still stuck at the ‘flailing anger’ stage…