Sir Alex Ferguson: squeaky bum to selling a virus

On the 1999 Champions League triumph
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Football. Bloody hell.”

On Gary Neville
“If he was an inch taller he’d be the best centre-half in Britain. His father is 6ft 2in – I’d check the milkman.”

On Italians
“When an Italian tells me it’s pasta on the plate I check under the sauce to make sure. They are the inventors of the smokescreen.”

On media criticism of Juan Sebastián Verón
“On you go. I’m no f****** talking to you. He’s a f****** great player. Yous are f****** idiots.”

On Liverpool
“My greatest challenge is not what’s happening at the moment, my greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their f****** perch. And you can print that.”

On the 2003 title race
“It’s getting tickly now – squeaky-bum time, I call it.”

On kicking a boot into David Beckham’s face in 2003
“It was a freakish incident. If I tried it 100 or a million times it couldn’t happen again. If I could I would have carried on playing!”

On Arsene Wenger
“They say he’s an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages. I’ve got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages!”

On the referee Alan Wiley
“The pace of the game demanded a referee who was fit. It is an indictment of our game. You see referees abroad who are as fit as butcher’s dogs. We have some who are fit. He wasn’t fit. He was taking 30 seconds to book a player. He was needing a rest. It was ridiculous.”

On José Mourinho
“He was certainly full of it, calling me boss and big man when we had our post-match drink after the first leg. But it would help if his greetings were accompanied by a decent glass of wine. What he gave me was paint-stripper.”

On Rafael Benítez, reacting to the Spaniard’s infamous ‘facts’ press conference
“I think he was an angry man. He must have been disturbed for some reason. I think you have got to cut through the venom of it and hopefully he’ll reflect and understand what he said was absolutely ridiculous.”

On whether Liverpool would win the title in 2007
“You must be joking. Do I look as if I’m a masochist ready to cut myself? How does relegation sound instead?”

On Manchester City’s Carlos Tévez poster
“It’s City, isn’t it? They are a small club, with a small mentality. All they can talk about is Manchester United, that’s all they’ve done and they can’t get away from it.”

On City again
“Sometimes you have a noisy neighbour. You cannot do anything about that. They will always be noisy. You just have to get on with your life, put your television on and turn it up a bit louder.”

On Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid
“Do you think I would enter into a contract with that mob? Absolutely no chance. I would not sell them a virus. That is a ‘No’ by the way. There is no agreement whatsoever between the clubs.”

On Manchester United’s 19th league title
“It’s not so much passing Liverpool. It’s more important that United are the best team in the country in terms of winning titles.”

And on their 20th
“Look at me – it’s taken 10 years off me today. It’s these tablets, they’re great!”