"With that sort of form we're not good enough in terms of the championship," Ferguson, usually that fierce protector of his own, glowered afterwards. "It's not championship form and I can't excuse anyone at the club for that. Nine parts of our game is good but the 10th part, the most important one, is just not there. It's not good enough."
United are now 11 points behind Chelsea and nine behind Arsenal and, opting for the scattergun as his choice of weapon, Ferguson then made the bizarre claim that Graham Poll had failed to award his side a penalty as some sort of retribution for the dubious one that Wayne Rooney had conjured out of Sol Campbell a fortnight earlier. In total, there were five separate occasions when United turned longingly towards the referee, and Poll misjudged at least one, when Antoine Sibierski all but rugby-tackled Louis Saha to the floor from an early corner.
United were calculated as having 82% of possession at one stage, and 67% in total, with only 7% of the game played in the third of the pitch directly in front of Roy Carroll. Kevin Keegan had half a dozen players missing and felt no need to apologise as he reflected upon their total of precisely zero shots on target throughout the entire match.
The greatest concern for Ferguson might not have been the quality of United's finishing but their ability to deliver the killer pass. At times it seemed as though the ball over the top to the galloping Saha was their only form of incisiveness. Cristiano Ronaldo's crosses seldom beat the first defender and the same applied to Ryan Giggs when he came off the bench for Liam Miller, once again ineffectual. Gabriel Heinze, at left-back, went the other way, frequently overhitting the ball like a golfer opting for a six-iron when a wedge would do.
Ferguson was entitled to criticise his players but his assessment of the penalties smacked of paranoia and any remaining sympathy all but disappeared when he chose to defend the indefensible Smith. The reality was that either of Smith's studs-up lunges on Paul Bosvelt and Dunne was so reckless that it could have justified a straight red card, yet Ferguson still felt the need to complain.
"He's had two tackles in the whole game," he griped. "When you look at the number of fouls they have given away and they've had only one yellow card - it seems absolutely ridiculous."
Not as ridiculous, though, as the sight of Manchester United playing catch-up to Bolton Wanderers.'