Fergie: It Was A Warning

The Reds won 2-1 despite falling behind with a McBride goal. Giggs' and Ronaldo's goals brought us three more points and Fergie is understandably delighted.

However, the boss did not hesitate to admit that we were lucky against an impressive Fulham side.

"Suggesting it was a smash and grab job is putting it mildly," he said.

United are now nine points clear but Fergie did not waste to much time to stress his fact - he opted for praising our opponents.

'It is significant,' he said, referring to our growing advantage. 'Especially with the way we won the match, scoring so late on. But Fulham will feel very aggrieved that they didn`t win the match."

"We have to thank the goalscorers for digging us out of a hole. And we can look at van der Sar`s performance in the second half as a reason we won the game.'

That's true though I failed to mention it in my match report. I believe United were in control for much of the second half but their counters always scared the hell out of me. Fortunately, Edwin was there and it was impressive how he shrugged off his first-half error to go and excel in the game.

So, as you see, Sir Alex admitted Fulham would have deserved to get something out of this game. But he'll never say he would have accepted a draw at a certain point of the game.

"In situations like the one we were in, you look for certain players to come to the fore. I was never thinking of settling for a draw.

'In my experience when you have got players with the ability that we have, you hope they are going to produce something. I tried to keep all the possible goalscorers on the pitch. It gave us a goal threat."

I got the explanation I wanted: Larsson was on the pitch until the end because Fergie wanted to keep all the potential goalscorers. Sounds good but it was a bit risky, with three strikers. It paid off so I won't complain.

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.