Sir Alex Ferguson once claimed that his greatest achievement was knocking Liverpool off their fucking perch. After dominating football for years, dwarfing our success with theirs, our manager was proud that he had created team after team which now dominated English football.

By the end of the month, the job could be well and truly complete, with a record 19th title in touching distance. This would make us the most successful English club of all time, but the manager concedes he couldn’t have possibly imagined achieving this when he first came to the club.

“I didn’t envisage it at that time,” he said. “I couldn’t have envisaged being here that long anyway. The aim at the time was to match them and then be successful ourselves. I came to win that title. Once we won it the club took off. It has been an exceptional period of time but getting the first one was always going to be the target.”

Ferguson said that this 19th title will be important for the history of the club, as recognition for the size of our club.

“It’s for the history of the club that it is important,” he added. “It’s like with the European Cup. There is the history of Real Madrid and AC Milan and then there’s another bracket – Liverpool, Ajax and Bayern Munich. We should definitely be in there as well.”