Sir Alex Ferguson has never been one to miss an opportunity to rub salt in the wound or make clear his distaste for Liverpool at any given opportunity.
It’s what you’d expect from a legendary Manchester United head coach, of course, with Graeme Souness recalling a gracious, if somewhat cheeky, gesture from the Scot who’d sent over a case of champagne to the then Balckburn boss back in 2003.
“United got the better of Arsenal the previous season and that’s where the champagne from Fergie came in. I was manager of Blackburn Rovers in 2003 and the case was awaiting me when I arrived at the training ground one morning in May that year,” the former Red wrote in his column for the Daily Mail.
“We’d done the double over Arsenal — beating them 2-1 at Highbury and 2-0 in our stadium — on the way to a sixth-place finish.
“Those wins were obviously an enormous help to United clinching the league title that year, because they won it by five points. Fergie made sure I knew.”
One can only imagine how devastated the ex-Sky Sports pundit must have felt knowing his victories over the Gunners had inadvertently helped the Red Devils clinch the title.
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Arsene Wenger’s men, to their credit, would go on to reclaim their Premier League crown the following campaign, with Liverpool only managing second-place finishes in 2008/09 and 2013/14 before Jurgen Klopp brought the title home to Merseyside.
A 30-year wait was quite the hiatus from the top of the English top-flight, and it remains a great shame that fans weren’t able to celebrate such a significant moment in the stands owing to restrictions then put in place amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Fingers crossed we get the chance to put that right under this manager!