Well done.

“I think he’s still got that aura,” he said. “You can see it in the younger players as soon as the boss is about; they are attentive to what he’s doing, what he is overseeing, what he is looking at. So he still gets a big response, not just from the young players but from the senior players as well because of his achievements and his desire to win he still has a lot of respect from everybody at the club.”

Ferguson has already won twelve league titles and two European Cups with United, amongst others, and Robson reckons no manager will come close to touching his record.

“I don’t think it will ever be matched again just because of the way football is going, plus it’s just an unbelievable record that he has set now,” he added. “The question that you get asked everywhere, especially when you’re working with global companies, is “what are his qualities on the leadership and the management skills?” Quite rightly people are going to ask that because of the success that he has had. You get asked that all the time. Obviously Manchester United is really popular because of Sir Alex as well.”

For more insight from Bryan Robson and other leading managers plus exclusive Premier League highlights go to www.yahoo.co.uk/sport

“We’re smarting from the four goals we gave away last week,” he told the official site. “We tend to make it hard for ourselves. We subject our supporters to that sort of drama. For years and years, it’s been like that. Hopefully, we’ll make amends on Monday.”

City boss Roberto Mancini has repeatedly said that his team have no chance of winning the league after they blew their eight point lead to let us over take them. Fergie knows Mancini is just doing this to take the pressure off their players and insists it won’t have any impact on United.

“Roberto wants to take the pressure off his own players,” he said. “It won’t affect our approach or our attitude to the game. We know the situation we’re in. We’re in a better position than Manchester City. We could come out with two results, whereas they have to win. Although you know this club’s attitude – we’ll be trying to win. You would have to be a confirmed masochist to enjoy it. But we are looking forward to it and the players will be fully prepared for it.”

“Alex Ferguson must have been laughing his head off watching the highlights of Manchester City’s game on Saturday,” he said. “It was not so much the fact they dropped another two points in the race for the title. It was the on-pitch implosion lead by Mario Balotelli which will have told him what he wanted to know. Manchester City are starting to crack. Balotelli’s behaviour on Saturday was a disgrace. He had spent the whole afternoon wrapped up in his own personal soap opera. At a time when City need everyone pulling in the same direction, he acted like a selfish spoilt brat. When it came to that second-half free-kick moment he turned even his own fans against him. City were struggling and running out of time when he chose to have a stand-up row with full-back Aleksandar Kolarov over who should take a free-kick. It sends out all the wrong messages. For City it was the low point of the season.”

Today’s papers have reported that Balotelli and Yaya Toure had to be dragged off each other at half-time and Mancini revealed that he was tempted to sub the striker off after five minutes following his attitude on the pitch.

Tick tock.

Video of the freekick fall out

“We all know that football can turn around and bite you,” he said. “That’s why we make the point about experience. We have a small advantage, not a great advantage, and one that can change in a single game. The important thing is that most of our players have had experience of winning the title – Ferdinand, Evra, Giggs, Scholes, Carrick and Rooney. If they hadn’t, we might be in trouble but they are well accustomed to it.”

Sir Alex Ferguson claimed he wasn’t expecting us to go top today but is pleased with the team for turning things around.

“It’s a surprising day for us I suppose,” he said. “I’m happy to be there because only a few weeks ago we were five points, and at one time seven points, behind and now we’re a point ahead. So we’ve turned around eight points and it’s a credit to the players and also to the resilience of our squad because, as everyone knows, we’ve had a lot of injuries. I don’t care about being top of the league just now. More important was our own performance. We needed that performance after the disappointment of Thursday. But the players played fantastic football today and I was really, really pleased with that part.”

“The Premier League has written to me asking me not to talk about the England manager’s job,” he said.

When asked why he had received the letter, he replied: “I’ve absolutely no idea. I’m not supposed to discuss it.”

Whilst Bilbao’s second goal appeared to be offside and their third came in bizarre circumstances after the referee arranged a strange freekick, they were clearly the better team.

Sir Alex Ferguson has claimed that if United improve their defending in the second leg they will be able to progress to the next round.

“We were well beaten, I have to say they were the better team,” said Ferguson. “I thought our defending wasn’t very good tonight and that kept us on the back foot all the time. Our attacking play was very good at times and it was an open, entertaining match. But Bilbao were the better side. We can still win the game. No question. We showed we can make chances against them, but obviously we have to defend better. I need to really look and see how we can maybe bring Rio Ferdinand in without disrupting the league programme.”

Despite taking the lead, United conceded two goals and had to endure a nervous final few minutes after Ajax dominated the second half.

United played with what most would see as our future back five, although Sir Alex Ferguson believes he took too much of a risk in leaving out our more experienced players.

“I must say, I’ve got to accept I’m responsible for picking the team and tonight I picked too many young players in the back four positions – that was a big problem in terms of experience,” said Ferguson. “It was a big risk I took. Ajax are fantastic in terms of keeping the ball. Their first goal I thought was a handball (in the build-up) but although they had a lot of possession they didn’t look like scoring. But that goal gave them confidence and we only had one shot in the second half. I thought we were very poor in the second half.”

There have been several managers who have been linked to the job over the years although unlike Ferguson, haven’t managed to maintain success. From Roy Keane to Mark Hughes, Sven-Göran Eriksson to Steve Bruce, United have been linked to them all, but Sir Alex reckons the decision needs to be made in a few years time when he’s ready to pack it in.

“Never discussed it – it is a dangerous game,” said Ferguson. “At this moment in time there are about half-a-dozen managers doing very well in the Premier League, all the others are fighting for their lives. Is that going to be the same in two or three years’ time when I’m ready to quit? Some may have lost their job. I think United need to have someone experienced. If I was coming into United today I would struggle because of the beast it is. When I came in we were in a valley because Liverpool were the dominant team and United were well adrift from that so we had to rebuild the club and it wasn’t easy, it took time. But the experience I had was the success from Aberdeen and that gave me a chance in terms of respect from the dressing room and gave me self-confidence I could do the job. If I was taken from the job in Aberdeen today it would be a much more difficult task even though I was successful.”