Following Manchester United’s 3-2 win over Liverpool last weekend, Sir Alex Ferguson praised our players, praised the performance but questioned Fernando Torres for going to ground easily to win the freekick from which Liverpool made it 2-2. The ball had got away from him, Edwin Van der Sar was going to get there first, and John O’Shea and Torres stumbled in to each other. Torres immediately turned to referee, signalling for him to be sent off.

One throw away remark from the manager, “Torres made a meal of it, an absolute meal of it. There is no doubt he tried to get the player sent off,” stole some of the headlines, instead of all the talk going to the incredible achievement of Dimitar Berbatov for scoring a hattrick against Liverpool.

“If you think about Berbatov scoring a hat-trick – the first to score a hat-trick in 64 years in that game – you’d have thought that would get the back-page headlines, but that was stuck on the inside,” said Ferguson. “It was all me saying Torres was a cheat, which was absolutely ridiculous press. I said, quite rightly, that I thought he had made the most of it. That’s not to say the guy’s a cheat. It could apply to any player in a given moment, taking advantage of a situation. But that was disappointing from a lot of the press. I thought Berbatov would have grabbed all the headlines, which he really did deserve.”




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