ASKED AT the end if he had anything else he wanted to say to the press, Alex Ferguson looked startled. There was a moment of confused silence before the Scot, amid laughter from both the podium and the floor, spread his arms wide and announced with good natured but unmistakable sarcasm, "I love you."

So the press conference with the manager who has, on balance, been better disposed towards the media over the last few months ended in Moscow yesterday.

A better indication of how the United boss views the sizeable press corps that has followed him from Britain came when a Spanish journalist inquired about the chances of Cristiano Ronaldo joining Real Madrid.

"Eh, you get some idiots here," muttered Ferguson, "I thought it was just back in England."

Even after 22 years in the Old Trafford hot seat, the 66-year-old appears to view occasions like these as point-scoring exercises with his critics. But, to be fair to Ferguson, he is clever enough to keep answering the questions.

A few weeks back at Goodison Park, Avram Grant provided the perfect reminder of why, no matter how exasperated you might become at the treatment you are receiving from the press pack, it's best to keep on doing that much at least.

Yesterday, the media wasted no time before reminding the Israeli why he had become so frustrated that he replied to everything at Everton with one syllable or less.

The first question he was asked was whether he is tempted, in the event Chelsea win this evening, to simply walk away. It was a standard fall-back for someone seeking to avoid asking yet again whether a manager will be sacked, and the man who asked it struggled a little when Grant simply replied with a question of his own: "Why?"

Grant's future, though, does remain as an issue, so the prize for daftest question went to the Israeli reporter who asked whether, when he was given his first management job - in charge of a youth team 35 years ago - he ever thought he "would be sitting here today".

Again it was formulaic stuff and Grant looked the way Ferguson had sounded an hour or so earlier: utterly weary with it all. "Of course not," he sighed, "I wanted to do well with the youth team."

His problem, unfortunately, is that he struggles to say anything interesting when he is not revealing, as he did yesterday, that his office walls are adorned with pictures of heroes like Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Muhammad Ali, or talking about his family history as he did after the semi-final at Stamford Bridge; he spoke that night with compelling dignity of how his father had lost almost all his family in the Holocaust but somehow remained optimistic (inevitably, somebody asked, "Does that put it all in perspective, Avram?").

When asked a reasonable question yesterday about the importance of midfield to what promises to be a highly tactical encounter this evening, he could manage no more than platitudes about United being strong in attack, midfield and defence.

Sure enough, somebody filled the premature silence with an inquiry regarding the last time he spoke to Roman Abramovich.

Ferguson, though, had been asked whether he felt his experience of such occasions - European finals, not press conferences - might give him an edge, and he was duly respectful toward his opponent.

"I don't think so," he said. "He's done remarkably well in his first season with Chelsea and there's nothing to suggest that he'll be overawed by this game. I think back to my first European final (a Cup Winners Cup game between Aberdeen and Real Madrid in 1983 which the Scots won 2-1), and I didn't shrivel."

Grant seems unlikely to either, although he is at least unlikely to make good on his apparent promise to drink with the press boys if Chelsea win. Asked if he had anything to say to them, and told what his opposite number had said, he remarked, "I love them too and I know they love me because they always ask me if I am staying or going."

And with that he was gone.