Journalist Marina Hyde peddles all the usual guff and bit more besides:
'I've often thought there should be an eerily arresting sign at Old Trafford, rather in the way the words "This is Anfield" accost visiting teams as they emerge from the tunnel at Liverpool. Only at Manchester United, it should be above the gate the players use to drive away from training, and should consist of a giant bloodshot eye above the words "Alex Ferguson is watching you".
No disrespect, but there's something about the way Alex Ferguson verbalises pastoral care that chills the blood. There's no denying he means it, in his way, but he has this unique ability to make being in loco parentis sound like menace.
This isn't a family, it's a business. It is Ferguson's insistence on casting it as some kind of sainthood that's so absurd. One only had to flick through Jaap Stam's book to confirm that some sins - say, the routine ordering of players to dive in order to win penalties - were treated rather less seriously than others.
Only in this atmosphere, really, could Roy Keane be beatified. "Wayne will find security in the dressing-room with people like Keane, Scholes, Giggs and the Nevilles," intoned Ferguson recently. "Wayne will see what these players have grown into and it is not by accident."
Yes. I can't help remembering that image of a manic Keane marching his straining dogs down his street after walking out on Ireland's 2002 World Cup Squad. I'd like to think Mother Teresa will be canonised first, but it's a funny old game.
Of course a firm hand is the best chance Rooney has of realising his superstellar dream. But let's not kid ourselves this is an episode of the Waltons. Watching that first Rooney press conference after he'd signed conjured up a far more darkly amusing image: the roundheaded dummy and the raddled old ventriloquist who pretty much loathes the thing but needs him to survive.
"Well done," whispered Ferguson creepily, after watching his newest recruit parrot the carefully crafted euphemisms about "being professional". Not a madly functional relationship, on balance, but on they go.'