Sir Alex Ferguson has laid in to the English press, claiming they didn’t give us appropriate praise for our performance against Bayern Munich and citing their happiness at our Champions League final defeat last season.

“It is hard to understand the press,” said Ferguson. “Someone told me that coming back from the Champions League final in Rome last year they were all delighted on the press bus that we lost. They were absolutely pleased that we lost; the English press. The person who told me was disgusted. That is a fact. He had no reason to lie to me. Our performance on Wednesday was fantastic. At 3-0 it could have been 5-0. We were magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. But that gets lost just because people want a headline out of what I said about the Germans. That is disgusting because the players deserved some praise.”