STILL NURSING the wounds from Manchester United’s controversial elimination from the Champions League, Alex Ferguson rounded on what he called a “mist of venom” surrounding the club.

The United manager was aggrieved the excellence of his side’s first-half performance against Bayern Munich had been forgotten amid his comments that the way Bayern’s players had surrounded the referee in a successful attempt to get Rafael da Silva dismissed was “typical Germans”.

“The most important thing about Wednesday night’s game is how well we played. But you have lost that in the mist of your venom,” he told reporters at the club’s training ground at Carrington. “The Germans let themselves down in the way they behaved by getting the boy sent off. If they don’t recognise that, there is nothing I can do about that. It was totally unfair – they bullied a young referee into it.

“He (Rafael) has barely touched him. (Franck) Ribery did more to him than he did to Ribery. The issue was how the Germans reacted; they knew the boy was on a yellow card, they surrounded the referee. We see that happen time and time again with players waving an imaginary card to the referee – and he succumbed.

“I don’t know if it was last season or the season before, but there was a referee’s edict that anyone showing an imaginary card should themselves be booked. Well, there were six that should have been booked.

“What has been lost in all this is our performance. We were 3-0 up and it could have been 5-0. We were magnificent and that has been lost just because you want a headline about what I say about the Germans. That is disgusting, absolutely disgusting. The players deserved some praise from you lot because their performance was outstanding. At the end of the game you are forced by Uefa rules to do a television interview. It is a bad time to do it.”

Ferguson has always been suspicious of flash interviews conducted immediately after the final whistle when emotions are at their height. His sometime mentor Jock Stein told him a manager should wait at least 48 hours before commenting on a controversial game. And he has long been suspicious of the club’s press corps, whom he accused of celebrating United’s defeat in last year’s European Cup final.

“Someone told me the other day that when the press came back from the Rome final (against Barcelona) they were all delighted,” he said. “They were on the press bus and pleased that we lost. It is disappointing when there is a British team in a European final and even one member of the British press wants us to lose. Someone on the bus told me he was absolutely disgusted at the behaviour of the British press at the European Cup final and he had no reason to lie to me.”

Ferguson did not comment on reports that Manchester United’s debt had meant they were unable to fund a bid for the Valencia forward David Villa. The signing of the 21-year-old Javier Hernandez and the Fulham centre-half Chris Smalling is evidence United’s transfer policy will be aimed at younger, cheaper footballers.

“There is always conjecture about players,” Ferguson said. “Last summer it was Ribery and Karim Benzema, and he was one of the targets that we set out to get because he was 21, and now it is David Villa. I am sure by the end of the season there will be half a dozen more.”

Ferguson has admitted he did not bring Benzema to Old Trafford because he thought the €35 million fee Real Madrid paid Lyon was inflated, adding that United had to move swiftly to sign Hernandez from Chivas de Guadalajara once he made the Mexican national squad because his price was in danger of rising. “That created a problem for us because, if he went to the World Cup and did well, we were going to lose him.”

The manager was adamant Wayne Rooney would play no part against Blackburn tomorrow after aggravating his ankle injury against Bayern in a match that Ferguson had said the striker would miss.

However Rooney’s wife, Coleen, at Aintree for the Grand National meeting, suggested the England international was making a typically rapid recovery. “He is fine and his ankle is fine,” she said. “He has been into training today.”

Guardian Service