Furious Ferguson beats a hasty exit

WHEN Manchester United were on the wrong end of a 5-1 mauling at the hands of Manchester City at Maine Road in 1989, it prompted Alex Ferguson to scurry to his home and confine himself to his bed for the weekend, so deep was his disappointment at losing to United’s near neighbours.

Yesterday, having seen United lose at Old Trafford to City for the first time since 1974, the Scot was ushered out of the stadium, without uttering a word to anybody but his under-performing players, to catch a plane for South Africa to attend a press conference today to promote United’s summer tour of the country.

Whether South Africa is far enough away from Manchester is open to question, but the United manager may just have sneaked under his covers in business class to hide away once again.

Without Ferguson around to dissect United’s woeful performance against City that left his team facing the prospect of falling five points behind league leaders Arsenal this evening — the north Londoners are in action against Blackburn Rovers — assistant manager Carlos Queiroz could only make excuses for the champions’ inept display.

Queiroz said: “It was a very disappointing result for us. The lads tried their best to win, but it wasn’t our day. We just didn’t perform individually or collectively.

“We started with anxiety and we tried to win the game too early against a team who are always very well organised and threatening to surprise you on the counter attack. We had the wrong approach.

“But we had seven or eight players away who played 90 minutes for their national teams in midweek and that is always a problem. It is a not an excuse, but the team was affected by it.

“It was just one of those days, but we have a long race in front of us and we are ready to start again. We have strong belief because this result doesn’t mean that we are not a good team.’’

For City, this was a day when the club emerged from Old Trafford with not one victory, but two. On the pitch, Sven-Goran Eriksson’s team deservedly claimed all three points, but off it, their supporters honoured impeccably a minute’s silence in memory of those killed in the Munich air disaster.

Eriksson said: “Everybody that belongs to City as a fan can be very proud of what they did today. It was fantastic. They were silent for one minute and it was beautiful. The fans were not good, they were perfect.’’

It was cathartic victory for City, 34 years after they last tasted success at Old Trafford and man of the match Richard Dunne was keen to highlight the value of the result.

He said: “It’s a brilliant result. We’ve been a bit disappointing in the last few weeks, but today we got stuck in from the start and got the goals at the right time.’’