Fergie Betters Sir Matt's Record!

Much has been made of Sir Alex Ferguson's Champions League record over the years. The ABUs claimed that one final over 21 years shows that he's not a great manager after all; the sensible people admitted that his record should be better in that particular competition but he's been staggeringly unlucky at times.

The truth is that before yesterday's game there was a chance that he would exactly mirror Sir Matt Busby's European Cup record. The great Scot took his team to five semi-finals and lost four. Milan had knocked United out twice under his reign and of course they stopped Fergie's team last year.

Progress against Barcelona means that Fergie's semi-final record now reads two out of five - it's not great but it's better than what the legendary Busby achieved. We had our fair share of bad luck in this competition, we lost to inferior teams, we lost to teams we should have beaten but for naive defending and profligacy in front of goal.

We were due this success and deserved to go through. After so many spectacular failures, I'm more than happy to accept this piece of uglyish success.

Of course there is another record: United have won both their European Cup finals, therefore both Sir Matt and Lord Fergie have perfect records in the deciding game of the competition. If SAF keeps up this tradition of winning then he will finally, irreversibly, unarguably become United's greatest ever manager.

You can see why it is so important for him, can't you?